Rate ALL the players... AGAIN!

So I did this at the halfway point and decided to do it again. I went through and assigned ratings to every MLS player.

Of course, it's all very arbitrary, but the easiest way to do it was to grab their fantasy poitns from the MLS fantasy game and calculate based off those. There's plenty of room to argue that poitns are weighted poorly or that playing time is too much a factor in rating a players worth, all very valid and I would agree. This was just the easiest way to dump a set of numbers in and crank out some kind of result. The formula is basically a players points (modified by playing time to assure that guys who score 2 goals in 10 minutes don't jump to the top of the list) minus the average players points divided by the standard deviation of all player points + 5 (the average player would have a rating of 5.00).

Here's the top 25 players in MLS for the 2012 regular season

Full ratings are available here

They kind of break down for players who play little or not at all. I hesitate to call any one at the bottom of the list "poor", but I guess, if you wanted to, you could look at all players with 1,000 minutes or more of playing time (the average MLS player logged 991.3 minutes this season) and pick the worst player there. If we use that criteria the worst player in MLS this year was... Shavar Thomas of Montreal! Yay Shavar!

Given that the average player logged 991.3 minutes and notched 0.047 points per minute played (roughly 46.7 points) the most average player in MLS this year was... Bryan Meredith of Seattle!

No surprise that Wondo get's top honors, his was a season for the ages.

You can argue that keepers are overrated in this system, and I would tend to agree. Given that most of them play most of the full season they tend to accumulate more standing, so there's that.

I'd also like to hand out an Ironman award. I thought Jimmy Nielsen would be the only player to play every minute of every game this year, but Drew Moor actually did the same thing, and did more than just stand between the posts to do it. Gotta say that Drew definitely worked this year. Respect.

So I guess using these ratings as criteria, MLS awards for me would look like this

MLS MVP : Chris Wondolowski (San Jose)
 - runner up : Graham Zusi (Kansas City)
MLS Defender of the Year : Matt Besler  (Kansas City)
 - runner up : Aurelien Collin (Kansas City)
MLS Comeback Player of the Year : ummm... I guess Chris Pontius (DC)? I always thought this was a weird award...
 - runner up : oh god... ummm... umm... Eddie Johnson (Seattle)! Or do they have to come back from injury and not just wandering in a European wasteland?
Goalkeeper of the Year : Andy Gruenebaum (Columbus). Weird to give it to a keeper on a non-post season team, but Columbus could have been the new Chivas were it not for him.
 - runner up : Tally Hall
Newcomer of the Year : Patrice Bernier (Montreal). This is another silly award.
 - runner up : Lee Young-Pyo (Vancouver)
Rookie of the Year : Austin Berry (Chicago)
 - runner up : Nick de Leon (DC)

Added a few extra tabs to the google doc and took a few minutes to tabulate average team ratings. I did both all players and players >1000 minutes (to avoid "bench" players dragging the rating down), but what actually correlated best with results was taking the average of the two averages (i.e. (all_players_average + players>1000_minutes_average)/2). Correlated reasonably well with season long performance (R^2 = 0.74)... New York surprisingly low and colorado surprisingly high, otherwise seems reasonable. Kansas City probably too high compared to San Jose...

Utterly meaningless in the end, of course... but who doesn't like a big block of meaningless numbers.

Probably more to come later, but for now, that's that...

Power's off!

I guess that title isn't all that funny if you live in the North East... good luck guys! If it gets real bad I might come out there to hand out some bottled water.

No, really, I actually might. That'd be neat.

Anyways, here's the last iteration of power rankings. No real change until you get to the bottom of the table, but then things got a little funky. Take a look and see what I mean.

No real playoff implications there, but interesting to see how things ended up.

Here's your last infographic of 2012. Click for bigness.

And, finally, here's you last flavor of the week numbers.

So... does this mean anything? Well, I do like to try to look at thigns pragmatically, and, if you remember, I actually broken down this same system for use in the Euro tournement and got some interesting results. Called it Spain over Germany, which was almost half right, and then called the Dutch collapse, which I actually thought was kind of impressive. Let's see how the 2012 MLS playoffs will look if we assume that the higher ranked team wins.



So, there you have it. Kansas City loses to San Jose in Buck Shaw... Bummer :(

I'll break down some more numbers later, but for now, that'll just about do it for me this year. I've got plenty of plans to tweak this during the offseason, so don't worry too much! I'll be around!

Whoa.

You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't include a link to Alan's great work putting together a completely awesome infographic detailing the history of professional soccer in America.

It's poster worthy in it's epicness and I highly highly recomend that you go check it out and waste a few minutes exploring it. Lots of great info displayed super well.

The History of Professional Soccer in the United States

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

And now, a few days late, again, is our Week 31 MLS power rankings.

Actually very little changed in this iteration, so not much to talk about, except that I will say DCs recent form has me feeling a little vindicated that my model didn't drop them too much. I will say they're the team I least want to face in the playoffs, even without DeRo.

Here's how the table looks this week

San Jose unsurprisingly out in front, with SKC at 2, DC hanging in at 3, and New York and Chicago swapping places at 4 and 5.

Toronto is awful.

Here's the handy dandy chart for your veiwing pleasure. Click to embiggen.

And now your five week moving average flavor of the week table. Oh look, it's San Jose at #1. What a surprise...

So there you have it, your penultimate MLS Power Rankings. Next week should be a stats blast as I comb through the numbers and dig out some interesting factoids. Tune in! If you dare.... and if I remember to get everything done on time...

And the award goes to...

Okay, that wasn't too bad. Took a few minutes and tabulated year long player ratings so I could dish out some yummy digital awards. Let's just make the announcements before we hit the actual numbers, shall we?

Here's your 2012 SKC Team Award Table of Glorifying Tableness

ZUEEESSSSSS. People have been calling this his breakout year given his increased role with the USMNT, but I think most SKC fans will tell you he broke out last year, and this is his standard operating level. Which is awesome.

One of the big factors in Zusi's place at the top is that, while SKCs defense has been brillient, it's largely a team effort, with a monster back line and a great keeper. The offense, on the other hand, was hit or miss all year long, but largely relied on service from Zusi, who looks likely to end up as the MLS assists leader this year with 15. He also bagged 5 goals of his own, which isn't too shabby.

Tied on defense were the Nielsen/Besler tandem. I know Collin plays it sexy, and let's face it, he is, but Besler has been a workhorse this year and every bit as effective as Collin while logging almost 300 more minutes. And though we didn't really score on long throws towards the end of the season, his canon arms played a big part in a couple early season goals and kept defenses checking another options whenever SKC wins a throw in the attacking half.

Nielsen played a great season as well, commanding and controlling the back line which gave him a much better sense of positioning in his net, which I think is his strong suit. He doesn't have the reflexes that Hartman had, but his instincts and footwork were solid and his place at the top of the all time MLS GAA average board (4,000+ minutes) is well earned. You could even take that up to 8,000+ minutes and he'd still be #1. That's really a great accomplishment for some one who was thinking about retirement 3 years ago.

Honestly, I've been really impressed with this team as a whole. I think people were worrying about depth at the start of the season, but everytime some one has gone done due to injury, illness, or earning the wrath of the Vermes bench-hammer, some one has always been there to pop in. Even more encouraging is just how young this team is. Things have already been a success in my book for 2012, and 2013 seems like it could start off very well as well.

Of course 2012 is still unfinished. Onward until dawn for the 2012 MLS Cup. It should be thrilling.

Oh, right, I forgot about numbers.

Here's numbers! I will note that in these ratings players are ranked only against other SKC players. I'll have probably "better" numbers at the end of the season when I tabulate ratings for ALL MLS players. Won't that be fun?

October is my favorite month.

Halloween? My birthday? End of the MLS season? What's not to love!?

Well, first and foremost, and, I guess, onlymost for this post (oooo, a rhyme) is that with the last game of the month (and season), it's time to drop the October player ratings. Here's what they look like.

Man of the month goes to none other than Jimmy Nielsen, largely for his performance in New York to keep a clean sheet and make SKCs life just a little easier. Also made a great penalty save against the Union, even if it got slopped up by Hoppenot (who I think could have a breakout year next year).

Will he turn out to be the team MVP? Best keeper in the league? LEAGUE MVP!? Only time will tell.

I'm gonna do annual team ratings and awards next though, so not that much time...

If it wasn't an away game, why was I in Philly?

So I was stuck out in Philadelphia for this one. The fine people at P.J. Whelihan’s put the game on for me and I got to hang out with an old friend I hadn't seen in years, so good all around.

I may have had one beer too many, and I know I was chatting more than watching, so maybe I'm not the best observer for this, but it seems like a lot of local chatter was on how poorly SKC played and how they need to play better in the post season... I personally thought they looked really good. Kept a tight back line (for the most part, there were two almost breakaways I remember that I guess could have turned the game), bossed the midfield, forwards made some good runs into space. I think Philly really never had a chance.

I also noticed a lot of Philly fans complaining about how thuggish SKC is.

I'll be the first to admit a guy like Collin does thug it up. I don't think you can really argue that. But on the whole, SKC is middle of the pack of the league in terms of fouls commited, cautions issued, and ejections. SKC plays a very disruptive midfield which I think other teams don't like, and other teams fans don't like to watch, but it really is a controlled chaos, mosh-pit style of whole team defending, and I, personally, am on board with it.

Philadelphia, on the other hand, is at the bottom of the fair play table, commiting more fouls, getting more cautions, and having more players ejected than almost any team in the league. I saw one Union fan saying he'd rather see SKC win like LA or Seattle, both teams that foul more, get more cuations, and more ejections than SKC does.

I don't really wanna be that guy to Philly fans so I haven't said anything, but I do think a lot of MLS fans don't watch other teams in the league or don't have a good overall picture of what's happening within the league to warrant these comments. If any MLS team is full of thugs and hacks, the stats suggest that it's the Union, not Sporting.

Okay, off my soap box. Let's look at player ratings.



I will say Jimmy's number is inflated due to his pentalty "save" that later went in, but on the whole I think the numbers look about right. Kei with two incredible assists to seal the East for SKC which earns him man-of-the-match honors this week. Kudos, Kei!