Saturday, July 28, 2012

Explorers

A day late on this one. I blame work. And laziness. So both sides of the work spectrum, I guess. Anyway, let's look at some numbers quick.

Coming into this week the pick-o-bot is 92/196 for a correct % of 46.9%. Home teams are at 106/197, so still a bit ahead of me. I don't know what the "experts" picks were like as of late, but I'm not gonna go look it up just now anyway.

Oh, okay, yes I will. The best expert is 88/197. The 197 number includes the RSL game, which I didn't get in in time, but did pick corret. We'll account for that next week. Here's the numbers for Week 21.

Team
Result
GD
Confidence
Real Salt Lake
WIN
+2
97.65%
Vancouver
LOSS
-2
97.65%
Toronto
WIN
+1
92.67%
Houston
LOSS
-1
92.59%
Montreal
DRAW
0
89.44%
New York
DRAW
0
89.44%
Dallas
DRAW
0
52.68%
LA
DRAW
0
52.68%
Kansas City
WIN
+2
95.91%
Columbus
LOSS
-2
95.91%
Colorado
DRAW
0
76.99%
Seattle
DRAW
0
76.99%
San Jose
WIN
+3
100.00%
Chicago
LOSS
-3
100.00%
Portland
WIN
+1
80.82%
Chivas
LOSS
-1
80.82%
Philadelphia
WIN
+2
93.98%
New England
LOSS
-2
93.98%

Monday, July 23, 2012

Rate ALL the players

So this is the moment I've been waiting for. Well, not really. An idea I had a few weeks ago though. I've been cranking out what are more or less automated player rankings for awhile now, and while I like the concept of rating players from both teams against in each other in matches or SKC players against each other for player of the month, it seemed like establishing an MLS wide baseline and rating ALL the players would be the best way to really gauge player performance. So, with the all star break coming up, I decided to do it.

I guess first and foremost, if any one wants a Google Doc version of this, here it is. This also has all the players and is sortable by team. It didn't seem to copy the formatting, so if you're really interested drop me a line and I can send you an .xls file.

MLS Player Ratings

I won't go into the maths, but I've basically taken the scores from the MLS fantasy game, found the average player score, the standard deviation in the score, and then made their rating equal to 5 (i.e. average) plus or mius their z-score based on far their player score fell from the average players score.

I should note that I do actually correct for playing time as well, so that some one who just plays one minute of each game and records a point doesn't run up an artifically inflated score. This is actually important when I do head to head matches, but I discovered that over the whole season it barely matters, since players play a lot of minutes and the stats just kind of drop out. It was still interesting to see though.

I actually did crank out ratings for every rostered MLS player (and even some who are no longer on MLS teams) who didn't see minutes, but the effect of having a whole bunch of players who never played made the ratings a little wonky, so I ultimately decided to just rate players who had seen the field thus far in the season.

If you're interested, both Konrad Wazycha for SKC and Dicoy Williams for Toronto have seen exactly one minute of playing time this year.

Anyway, here's the top 25 or so players in the league, according to this equation I just pulled out of my ass.

Player
Team
Rating
Rank
Chris
Wondolowski
SJ
8.8
1
Aurélien
Collin
KC
8.7
2
Landon
Donovan
LA
8.6
3
Lee
Young-Pyo
VAN
8.2
4
Brad
Davis
HOU
8.2
4
Dwayne
De Rosario
DC
8.0
6
Andy
Gruenebaum
CLB
8.0
7
Joe
Cannon
VAN
8.0
8
Kenny
Cooper
NY
8.0
9
Tally
Hall
HOU
7.9
10
Will
Bruin
HOU
7.8
11
Jay
DeMerit
VAN
7.8
12
David
Beckham
LA
7.8
12
Thierry
Henry
NY
7.8
12
Nick
Rimando
RSL
7.7
15
Dan
Kennedy
CHV
7.6
16
Graham
Zusi
KC
7.6
16
Kei
Kamara
KC
7.6
18
Jimmy
Nielsen
KC
7.5
19
Alvaro
Saborio
RSL
7.5
19
Kyle
Beckerman
RSL
7.5
19
Patrice
Bernier
MTL
7.4
22
Bobby
Boswell
HOU
7.4
23
Troy
Perkins
POR
7.4
23
Kevin
Hartman
DAL
7.4
23

It's actually sort of interesting how many keepers made the list, but I guess it makes sense in that they get a lot of playing time and play a pretty important role in the game.

I also took a minute to calculate the average ratings for each team, which was kind of interesting in that it more or less mirrors the standings and there's not all that much between each team.

Team
Average Rating
Kansas City
5.37
San Jose
5.36
New York
5.31
Houston
5.30
Real Salt Lake
5.29
DC
5.26
Vancouver
5.13
Chicago
5.05
Seattle
4.99
Colorado
4.93
Dallas
4.91
New England
4.84
Montreal
4.83
Chivas
4.82
LA
4.82
Columbus
4.81
Portland
4.81
Toronto
4.75
Philadelphia
4.69

I suppose the interesting part of that is how low LA is, and how high Dallas is. Everything else looks more or less in line though. Make of that what you will.

I don't really have a lot more to add in all honesty. I thought about putting up a list of the "worst" players, but that seems a little unfair. But I plan on doing this again at the end of the season and comparing, and so far, I think there's a lot of interesting data in there to use as jumping off points for further discussion and analysis.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Can you imagine losing power in this heat?

Week's over so I iterated... is that right? Spell check says it is, so we'll go with it. Iterated the power ranking system again this week. Everything seems to check out pretty well. DC has fallen far with it's second straight loss and San Jose is riding high above everyone else, even with the loss.

Again, sort of harsh to TFC, but I think they're coming back. Conversely, Portland seems to be spiraling out of control, so here's to hoping the All-star break can help them recover whatever it is they're supposed to have.

Team
Rank
Weekly Δ
SHFR
Weekly Δ
San Jose
1
NC
150,685
-6,031
DC
2
NC
128,655
-9,502
New York
3
NC
117,647
1,625
Kansas City
4
NC
112,245
-2,509
Salt Lake City
5
NC
111,111
585
Houston
6
+1
105,769
4,320
Vancouver
7
+1
100,000
0
Chicago
8
-2
100,000
-3,448
Seattle
9
NC
96,916
-306
Columbus
10
NC
94,421
671
LA
11
NC
90,535
3,035
Philadelphia
12
NC
86,275
3,272
Chivas
13
NC
79,710
-1,059
New England
14
+1
78,292
-655
Colorado
15
-1
78,014
-2,138
Dallas
16
+1
73,333
2,388
Montreal
17
-1
70,288
-898
Portland
18
NC
68,966
-1,503
Toronto
19
NC
62,678
1,985

Congrats again to San Jose, let's see if they can keep it up.