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.