BS Rankings

Took a minute to see what happened if I averaged all the rankings folks over on BigSoccer are generating (2 Elo rankings and 2 numeric systems in total), and I've got to say, it looks pretty good. Let's just call em BS Rankings. I may try to do this weekly.

Teams ranked first by mean rank, then by median rank if tied, and if still tied, ranked by standard deviation of ranks, lowest to highest. Click to embiggen.

I actually think the combined rankings look better than any of the individual ones. I was impressed. The craziest thing to me is the team tiering. i.e. RSL is clear #1, Seattle is clear #2 , LA and MIFC are interchangable, Colorado, SKC, RBNY and Portland are all interchangable, Dallas, Chicago, San Jose, New England and Philadelphia are all basically interchangable, then there's Houston, then Vancouver, then Columbus and Chivas are interchangable, then Toronto and DC.

Dos a cero o Cinco a cero?

So just some quick musings here so I can get everything on paper prior to the match, in order to maintain what little credibility I have (which is 0, I believe...).

First off, I did just iterate the "Power Rankings" for the Hex I've got. Here's how the table looks.

Team	Rank	Rating
Costa Rica	1	409,091
USA	2	409,091
Honduras	3	346,154
Mexico	4	346,154
Panama	5	204,545
Jamaica	6	183,673

Interestingly, you'll note Costa Rica and the US are tied, while Mexico and Honduras are tied. At this point I don't think there's much question that the US and Costa Rica should hit the auto-qualify spots, the only question may be in what order do they do it.

The bigger race, of course, will be Honduras and Mexico. I think Mexico has the harder schedule, playing teams #1 and #2 away. Sooooo, if we wanted to make predictions, I'd go out and say that Costa Rica, the US, and Honduras auto-advance and Mexico wins up in the #4 spot playing (and probably beating) New Zealand.

The bigger pill, of course, is the falling of Mexico. Now, is a weak Mexico good for CONCACAF? Objectively, I'd argue no, we want a Federation full of strong teams and with 4 slots to potentially fill, I think Mexico has a much better chance of beating New Zealand than either Panamda or Jamaica. But as a USMNT? Let Mexico crash and burn. That's what a rivarly is.

He's a chart illustrating performance over the last 7 matches. Actually goes back a little further than that, including qualifying in past rounds and Gold Cup performances. Basically, this is rankings over the last 9 "ranking periods", covering a total of 13 games played.

 

 

And now the fun stuff. Tonight I think I want to see the US play tight, compact, and defensive. We don't need a win here, and with injuries and suspensions I don't want to see us playing risky. We'll be in our own house and should be able to dictate the game somewhat. Mexico is the one who needs to come in and get a result. I'm always weary of teams who recently fire their coaches, as they seem to have a great first "prove yourself" match afterwards (see Columbus v Houston for a great recent example).

 

Mexico is a dangerous team and their lack of results I think has been more teams coming and taking a cuatious approach at Azteca rather then actual poor performance. The US was hammered while away in Mexico and, honestly, a bit lucky to escape with a point. Turn that draw into a Mexico win and I bet the Hex looks a whole lot different today. 10 games isn't a lot.

 

So, yes, I'm advocating we get back to "Bruce-ball" or "Bradley-ba;;", stay tight and compact in the middle, keep numbers behind the ball, and pick moments for a fast counter against a Mexico team that's really going to need to come in and play open. Heat could be a factor as well. A second half couner running at tired Mexican legs could well be the winner.

 

My prediction?

 

A gritty 1-1 draw, which will almost be enough to get the US auto-in.

 

Isntant-Classico? I doubt it. But these games are always fun.



[Clever_Title]

Numbers shaking out well this week, with the possible exception of New York. Impossible team to figure out, seems like they're playing well and then lose to Columbus, draw with Philly, lose to Chivas, then bounce right back with some wins. Still sandwhiched between New England and Chicago, but those two teams are trending down and NY is, once more, on the rise, so who knows what'll happen against Toronto next week. Kansas City back to winning ways, Colorado stops their slide and Seattle and Montreal jumping up the table. Click to embiggen.

Downing the Rapids

Back at it then, I finally sat down and cobbled together some player ratings for the Colorado game. This was the first game my wife and I were able to get to without the kids so it was a blast. We also happened to get free Budweiser beer garden passes which...... is so not worth $20. I mean, sure, endless beer is good, but it's not great beer, and the food selection wasn't exactly awesome. But, still, free is free, and it was kind of our five year anniversary, so, yay!

Managed to grab a few pictures as well, so let's just dump those and then get on with ratings, shall we?

Really good results, we needed all the points at home we can get. One thing that I sort of noticed though was that, while we've gotten good att maintaining possession and passing the ball around from side to side amongst our defenders with midfielders probing somewhat, our forwards seem pretty stagnant at the top of the 18 yard box. I'd like to see them getting more active, with the wide players switching sides with the ball to draw defenders out, or at least make them think a little, and hopefully getting Claudio open to work some magic in the middle. We'll see if that can happen.

Anyway, ratings. Yes. Here we go.

Colorado Radpids	Rating
Clint Irwin	4.6
Chris Klute	4.6
Drew Moor	4.1
Nathan Sturgis	4.1
Mavell Wynne	4.1
Dillon Powers	5.1
Hendry Thomas	4.6
Shane Oneil	5.6
Deshorn Brown	4.1
Atiba Harris	4.1
Edson Buddle	6.5
Vincente Sanchez	4.6
Martin Rivero	4.1
Team Average	4.6
Sporting Kansas City	Rating
Jimmy Nielsen	5.6
Matt Besler	5.1
Chance Myers	4.6
Aurelien Collin	6.1
Seth Sinovic	4.6
Graham Zusi	7.5
Oriol Rosell	4.6
Paolo Nagamura	4.6
Benny Feilhaber	7.5
Soony Saad	4.6
Dom Dwyer	6.1
Kei Kamara	4.1
CJ Sapong	5.6
Teal Bunbury	4.1
Team Average	5.4

So a bit of a toss up between Zusi's game winner or Benny's awesome blast for Man of the Match. I'm gonna have to go with Benny on this one. He's stepped it up a bit in the second half of the season, and his goal really openeed the game up and forced Colorado to come out. All in all a much better performance from SKC and 3 sorely needed point from home.

We're baaa-aaack

Huh. Long hiatus. There's actually an explanation for that one, and it doesn't involve a new kid. Not really. My work had been languishing on IE7, and I generally try to knock out entries around my lunch break. Google seemed to have updated their Blogger interface and it no longer worked for the Enterprise IE7 I was on, so I kept on posting to Big Soccer, but let this blog languish. I'm gonna try to pick it up again in the near future.

Anyway, like I said, I've been mostly keeping up with Power Rankings. Player ratings, less so. Power Rankings have been crazy though. The league has been so tight and there's been so many twists and turns that the new mashup system I started using has been a little wild. I may have mentioned it before, but I think I'm going to weight recent results less next season, simply because there's so much variability, though on the flip side, a few unpredictable weeks have the league sort of turned around anyway, so who knows?

I did change the format somewhat to a more "explanatory" (is that a word) table, showing the season rank and the rank over the last 5, the average of which is the ultimate rank. I also added a snapshot column, showing their most recent form and a Form column, showing whether they're trending up relative to their current ranking position or down. So here's the table for Week 28. Click to embiggen.

Bottom five teams can all probably be written off at this point of the season and Vancouver needs to turn things around to avoid joining them, but other than that, the league is wide open right now. It's going to be a great finish to the season methinks.

How the mighty have fallen... behind.

Catching up again, I Swear.

Okay, so this is NOT the most recent power rankings to reflect games from this weekend, this is everything up through the weekend before last. I'm not skipping it because rankings are dependent on past results, so I would need to update the spreadsheet anyway, and it's trivial to add the rankings and graphics once that's all done. So, without further adu (not a Freddy joke) here it is.

Lots of weird movement in the middle this week. I think callups and the like made things screwy, combined with a more dynamic model and a lot of teams seemingly unable to figure out how they want to play this season.

Table.

Graph.

That is all.

Sleep when youre dead, which may be soon...

Okay, getting caught up again. Numbers through June 19th. No commentary other than whoever said that having your second kid is easier than having your first needs to get punched in the dick until they're infertile. Movement might look a little screwy given the weird scheduling. Next week may not be better...

Anyway, rankings...

Graph.

I'm going to bed.

What is this I dont even

Sort of a weird week this time around. Montreal just can't quite grab that #1 spot. I think it's the games in hand that's holding them back, believe it or not. Colorado my big surprise of the week, jumping up 3 places. I triple checked to make sure it wasn't an error... seems legit. This is what happens when you weight recent form more heavily, I guess. Kansas City continuuing the gradual fall, and Chivas only staying out of the basement thanks to Toronto and DC.

Table.

Graph.

I may well fall behind on this in the coming weeks, gonna have a second kid born on Wednesday(plus or minus a day or so) so who knows how much sleep I'll get... we'll see.

M^3 (May Man of the Month)

I debated whether or not I wanted to do this now or after the USOC match tonight, but I think I'll drop it now and not consider the USOC match since there's generally no stats to cull from it and at this stage it might get a little lopsided. Plus lots of guys are out on international duty and such and it may not be fair.

Here's the inter-team player ratings for May. Note that this isn't baselined against other players or other teams, just how much each poayer played in May and what their contributions were (statistically speaking). So a guy rated below five wasn't neccessarily bad, just had below average contribution to team success this month.

With that said, here we go.

Ike Opara nearly steals it from Zusi, but Graham comes out on top, playing in 427 minutes and notching a goal and two assists and generally playing exceptionally well, earning an unsuurprising callup for the USMNT. Congrats, Graham. I really need to get a better photo...

6 hours of no power!? Eat the children first.

Actually, no, I didn't lose power in the storm last night, though it sounds like a lot of people in the area did. We'll see how we fare tonight though...

Speaking of faring well, how about those Sounders, eh? Not too shabby.

The two midweek games threw this off a bit. Kansas City actually drops a little bit, despite picking up two road results (well, you can argue the DC one I guess). Mostly RSL's domination helped them up. LA moves up despite losing, again, helped by crushing Philadelphia midweek. Dallas still holding on to the top spot, Chivas droppping like a rock. With three Ps. How's that for not caring about spelling or typos?

Overall rankings look pretty good to me. SKC perhaps a bit low.

Here's the table.

And here's the graph. starting to see some real movement and trends here. Next week should be interesting for some teams.

I did what I swore I wouldn't...

So I told myself this season I was going to stick with the same methodology that I started with. And I thought I really meant it. But then I came up with something better. So I'm changing. I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. Or something.

While the system had been working pretty well so far, it still didn't seem to capture 'momentum' shifts all that well. However, Itried to compensate that with adding a Flavor of the Week ranking syste. I've ultimatly decided that the 'mashup' system, using both systems and then combining the rankings, was probably the best, and when comparing it to how other sites rank teams, it looks like it's doing a better job.

Remember, these are still purely numerical, data driven rankings, that don't hvae any input from me other than results. I think it's become a very good way to creating "power rankings" that mirror what "experts" are saying and is backed up by results and not just hand waving mumbo jumbo.

Anyway, enough exposition. Let's check the numbers.

I'd note that I also did back calculate "mashup" rankings for each team over the course of the season. This will do away with the need for some of the extraneous info I had been providing earlier. From now on it'll just be teams rankings and movemnet form the last week and a chart showing ranking position over the course of the season.

Numbers. Yes. Here.

Dallas still at the top, New York with a big jump, and both LA teams with big falls (poor Chivas ;/ ).

Here's the graph for the full season. Check out Vancouver. What a crazy poor season they've had... Click to embiggen, I'm trying to go with a .png to see if that makes it prettier.

 Annnnd... that's all I have to say about that. More fun next week. Until then... courage.

WORTH IT!

So all aboard the "omg omg salary numbers!" train now, huh?

Well, because I love spreadsheets, let's take a look at one. Here's an estimate of player value, based on current "fantasy points" (i.e. collected Opta stats, each assigned values, like 5 points for a goal, 3 points for an assist, 4 points for a defender keeping a clean sheet, 0.33 points for a key pass, etc.), adjusted for games played, and then compared to the log of a player salary (under the assumption that it takes a ten fold increase in pay for a two fold increase in play, i.e. a guy making $1,000,000 is twice as good as a guy making $100,000).

Perhaps not surprisingly, Graham Zusi is one of the best values in MLS right now, though not THE best. That honor goes to Matt Hedges, making $64,000 while anchoring the FC Dallas defense. Aurelien Collin also comes in as the 3rd best value in the league, which I found a little surprising, but maybe it's not that much of a stretch.

Here's the table of the first bunch of players. Click to embiggen.

It's harder to say who the worst value in MLS is, as things like injuries/loans/etc. knock some guys to the bottom who may not have had a chance yet.

All said, it's early in the season, but I think it's interesting to see how some guys seem to be performing above their pay grade so far.

Magic Bonus Update!

Magic bonus update!

For awhile I've thought about making a tweak to the formula to make it a little more sensitive to short term performance. I've sort of tried to account for that with the Flavor of the Week rankings, but today I thought I'd try to go ahead and combine the two and see how the average looks. i.e. the "mashup" system would be equally weighted between season long performance as well as last five game performance. I don't know if I like it more or less but I'll track it for a few weeks and see how it looks.

Edit - 

Huh. You know, after comparing the mashup numbers, I think I might like them more. They compare really well with what ESPN and MLS have while still maintaining some numerical defensibility and still identifying teams where the other rankings seem to be too knee jerk.

I think I'm gonna keep the mashup numbers and start including that weekly.

Snow? In May? I hate everything.

Plus I left my Kindle in Philadelphia and they're charging me $32 to ship it. $32!!! I'm even a Marriott Gold member! Insane. Crazy. Whatever.

Okay, so nothing too drastic this week except things starting to shake out like they should. Chivas in free fall, almost crashed out of the top 10, and LA comes back down to a reasonable rating. Below 200,000 is what I expect from just about everyone unless they're really flying, so we'll see what next week brings. San Jose the surprise poor performers of the year, and Kansas City keeps putting together the right result at the right time to stay in the top tier. Here's how the numbers looked this week.

Three folks tied on 9. I like how they're sorted right now, but if you think it should be different, just use the power of mental visualization to do whatever the hell you want, I don't care.

Here's the FOTW ranks. Looks pretty good to me as well.

And, last and least, the SHFR graph. I'm debating when I should switch it from log to regular, but for consistency, I'll keep it log for at least another week or two. Click to embiggen.

Quatro de Sporting... or something

Man do I love eating tacos. Even more so when watching my team crush their opponents so thoroughly. Seriously, I had been wondering when I'd get to see a proper blowout, and here it was. Chivas looked just miserable the entire match and seem to have completely lost whatever mojo they had at the start of the season. I do feel bad for Dan Kennedy though, the auto-red for DOGSO is so harsh in my mind. He made a foul on a player in the box, that should be a yellow if it's a foul that resulted from an actual play on the ball and not something tactical or malicious.

Still, how bout that Bieler, eh? Playing like a gynecologist. Clinical in the box.

Okay, I'm done with that joke now.

Anyway, here's the player ratings for this one.

Any surprise here? Total domination by SKC, Zusi with man of the match, even after leaving the game a little early. Smart sub by PV, it's gonna be a long week, and I really, really want to lay into Seattle on Wednesday.

No Besler in the 18 was a little odd... hopefully just resting and no injury or illness. But a great performance across the board, and hopefully a goal means CJ gets a bit of his confidence and swagger back.

And Bieler is proving he was worth the money. If he keeps scoring like this he'd be arguable one of the better DP signings in the league I'd argue.

They have the plant, but we have the Power

Sorry I'm late. I'm out of town and working. I don't owe you anything. YOU CANT MAKE ME DO ANYTHING.

Also I'm tired.

No witty commentary. Here's numbers.

SHFR graph.

Week 9's flavor of the week. A little surprised SKC is still ranked so high. Two good weeks are keeping them up, they should be falling soon...

Timmmbbbbeerrrrrrr

So... how bout them Timbers eh? Who'd've thunk they'd be carving out an identity as a road team? And why do I have to be the asshole who says it...

THE TIMBERS WOULD BE A BETTER TEAM IF THEY PLAYED ON A BIGGER FIELD.

Seriously, they look really good when they have space to work in. Jeld-Wenn doesn't suit their style. It's just not that great of a stadium. there. I said it.

Anway, was a poor game all around, actually. My wife (8 months pregnant) twisted her ankle, so we decided to leave early so we could get her home to ice it (and avoid all the traffic getting out of the lot). And by early, I mean I literally went to get the car at the opening kick and missed Chance Myers first MLS goal. Which is funny, because I was totally talking to one of the trainers on the flight home from New York about Chance and asked whether he thought he'd ever score. He laughed and sort of shrugged, saying Chance lit up the Reserve League back in the day with goals in almost every game, but just didn't seem like he'd ever score in an MLS game. And then, yeah. One minute in. Was hillarious. Did I post about that in my New York post? No? DAMMIT! Okay, I should have.

Anyway, yeah, I was really glad to see Chance score, and one would think that scoring early would mean te game would be a done deal. Forcing visitors to chase a game that early, for that long, seems like it would be perfect for SKCs style, and yet, somehow, defending just fell apart. I actually Jimmy had a really poor game in the nets, and the lack of run-of-play goals worries me some...

Still, early in the season, and it's hard to say Portland is a poor team this year, so... let's see the numbers.

No real surprise seeing Chance Myers as man of the match, unless you count a player from the losing team (not to mention a defender whose back line leaked three goals) as a surprise...

Wanna see some pictures? Suuuure you do.

Where my boats at?

One more iteration in the books. Not a whole lot to say really. Midweek games throw a small little wrench into the system so Kansas City maybe "dinged" a bit more than they should after the cross country road trip while NY gets a bit of a bonus bump despite the midweek loss, but the rankings actually look pretty good to me. Chicago and Seattle almost out of the basement and DC and New England in need of some results, and quick. LA a bit vindicated in maintaining the top spot.

The numbers.

The handy dandy chart.

And the flavor of the week. A little surprised to see Chivas still so high, actually, but they'll likely drop next week.

BACKUP YOUR DATA!

Yeah, so I nearly lost everything on my laptop this week... fun stuff. Overnight data recovry worked though and now I've got everything backed up. I actually had it all backed up on my Google Drive accoun anyway (I love you Google Fiber), but was still a scary moment...

Anyway, enough about me, let's look at some numbers. A bit of movement this week. Unfortunatly LA and Seattle both have lagged a game or two behind eveyrone so their ratings still aren't the best, along with New England, but everything else is starting to take shape. Vancouver doing some downward movement and Chivas keeps climbing, along with Portland and Kansas City. LA at the number one spot but slipping a little bit. Still, as the only undefeated team, the math makes their rating look quite good. I imagine that'll settle down in the coming weeks. Montreal not quite out of their spot yet and Houston takes a bit of a hit as well. Chicago not quite doing enough to get out of the basement, though they'll likely jump Seattle next week unless something interesting happens. And what's up with New York?

Speaking of New York, I'll be traveling to the game next week in Harrison. Should be fun, last year was the first time I'd seen SKC win on the road.

Anyway, here's the table.

And now the graph, which is still a little hard to get a handle on, mostly due to LA. Still a log plot as well... Click to bigify.

And now we've got enough games to start doing a Flavor of the Week analysis. This is done in a similar way to the season long power rankigns except it only looks at the last five games. In that way it's more of a snap shot of how teams are performing at this instant and is more variable than the other rankings. Since it's early in the season this only impacts teams that have played six games. Essentially, it's ignoring the first game for those teams, so it's a little different than the season long rankings. It'll get more divergent as the season goes on.

Annnnd... that's all Ihave to say about that.

Tis a funny game

You know, this was the second home game this year that was really far from enjoyable, except this time we actually got a good result from it. It's an odd game like that. One goal can totally skew one's perspective. I imagine had DC held us to a 0-0 draw their fans would be thrilled. A few seconds of lapse and it's time for Ben Olsen's head.

I'm not saying any veiw is right or wrong. I'm just saying.

I'm also saying this is one time when I actually disagree more than usual with my ratings system. I thought Aurelien Collin had a pretty poor game, both defensively and in distribution, but aparantly the people over at the MLS Fantasy game disagree, because he apparently had some excellent defensive work with no mistakes...

Any way, here's the player ratings. Soony may seem low but it's important to remember that playing time actually is a facotr, so notching an above average rating while only playing seven minutes is pretty exceptional.

You can see SKC had the edge in overall average rating, and I think that showed. Unlike Chicago, DC actually seemed to come to play, and a little more quality from Pajoy could have made it a very different game. How bout that Beiler though, huh? Acquisition of the season at this point, surely...

But, yeah, Collin with Man of the Match. Not sure I'd give it to him objectively, but who am I to argue with numbers?