Over the past three weeks Atlanta has done everything in its power to add a little more excitement to the end of the regular season. They have gone 16-3 and catapulted themselves into the NL playoff picture. By Cool Standings’ reckoning they now have a 21% chance of winning the NL Wild Card. Here is how that 16-3 run has affected their Wild Card hopes (again based on Cool Standings numbers):

Their chances grew only a little bit in the first two weeks, but in the last week the Braves have gone 6-0 while Colorado 3-3. As a result their WC chances have quadrupled from around 5% to over 20%.

In the past two weeks (which misses the beginning of their torrid pace, but is one of the splits that FanGraphs provides) their batting has provided a nice jolt, with a wOBA of 0.348. But their pitching and defense has been the major reason for the success. Their FIP has only been slightly above average 4.05, but their ERA has been 2.9. This is courtesy of a low BABIP, but more so of a huge 83% LOB. Their pitching has been very clutch, (1.43 clutch over the past two weeks, for an explanation of clutch see here), performing better in high leverage situations like when runners are on or when the game is tight.

So over the past two weeks Atlanta has preformed well, and either got a little lucky or raised to preform even better in the most important situations, depending how you look at it. Either way the great run has added a second race of interest in the last week of the regular season.