MLS Predicted Finish: May 9th, 2010

Predicted League Finish (click to enlarge)

This week saw many teams play two games as MLS attempts to bank matches ahead of the World Cup break in the middle of the season. This action also helps any prediction methods like the one I use, as a greater number of matches helps minimize errors associated with isolated hot streaks. Herewith is my summary of the impact of last week's action after a brief reminder of the background on my prediction methods. The background section will be a standard feature in each weekly post on MLS predicted finish, so regular readers of the blog can skip over it.

Background

In a previous post I noted three regression equations that I developed that have very good correlation to the last 5 years of play in MLS: finishing position vs. points, finishing position vs. goal differential, and points vs. goal differential. I use each team's current points and goal differential to project how they will finish the season in those categories, use those projections within the regression equations to predict finishing position, and then take the average of the three predictions to develop an average finish used to rank the teams.

Subsequently, I made a post explaining the range of values in goal differential and points that provided greater confidence in finishing position. This post set minimum values for goal differential and points required to achieve the 95th% confidence (CI) and prediction (PI) intervals. These minimum values are used to color code each team's projected season totals in goal differential and points, indicating the likelihood of the teams' finish in the Top-8 of the league.

Now, on to the impact of this week's action.

Galaxy continue to roll

I was fortunate (?) enough to witness the buzzsaw that are the LA Galaxy as they dismantled my Seattle Sounders for a 4-0 win. The team seems to have used last year's MLS Cup loss as a driving force in this year's campaign. Landon Donovan ran all over the pitch Saturday, keying three of the goals and then scoring his first of the year for the fourth. Seattle certainly contributed with their own bad plays on defense and in goal, but it took LA's killer instinct to take full advantage of them. This match followed LA's 1-0 win over Colorado mid-week, meaning they picked up 6 points and an average of a 2.5 goal differential per match. I didn't think they could get much better in season-ending finishing statistics, but they moved their goal differential up 3 (83) and goal differential up 9 (49) with last week's matches.

To give an indication of how well they continue to play, the only other two teams that are "all green" in the three key attributes are the Columbus Crew and San Jose Earthquakes. Neither team has played more than six games, which means they are greatly benefiting from a fast early season start with a high multiplier for total games (30) divided by games played (5 and 6, respectively). Even then, both teams are nearly 20 points behind and have less than half the goal differential of LA. Simply amazing!

Seattle continues to struggle

Of personal interest to me is the poor play of the Seattle Sounders. I mentioned before that their three ties from stoppage time goals would come back to haunt them. This weekend's loss to the LA Galaxy only made things worse. Seattle is now mired in last place in the hyper-competitive Western Conference (see discussion below). This week they stayed "all red" - their goal differential (-4) finally caught up with their low point total. Things won't get easier for the Sounders either - they face the East-leading NY Red Bulls this week at Red Bull Arena. It may be a long, hot summer for one of the league's most visible franchises. Seattle fans are a fickle bunch, and it will be interesting to see how many more sell outs the team records if their fortunes continue to deteriorate.

The West is dominating the early season

Six of the Top-8 teams are from the Western Conference. The Red Bulls loss this week lowered them to the sixth position, and two of their metrics (goal differential and points based off goal differential) turned red. The only other Eastern Conference team in the Top-8 is Columbus, who has only played 5 matches and is benefiting massively from a huge multiplier for their projected season-ending statistics.

This week also witnessed increased definition around the red-yellow-green statistics for each of the predicted attributes. There is now clear delineation around the eighth place position - those below it are now all red. The picture of possible league finish position is becoming clearer with the greater number of games played, yet we're only a third of the way through the season.

Biggest movers

Top three teams moving up in average predicted finish are:

• Real Salt Lake (+5): Real's 3-0 win over Philadelphia moved them up four spots based upon points, three spots based upon goal differential, and four spots based upon projected points based upon goal differential.
• San Jose Earthquakes (+4): San Jose's 4-0 win over the Red Bulls moved them up one spot based upon points, six spots based upon goal differential, and seven spots upon projected points based upon goal differential.
• Chivas USA (+3): Chivas' 4-0 win against New England helped mitigate the effects of a 2-0 loss to Houston on Saturday. More importantly, they benefited from the poor performance of others at the bottom at the table. They're now just two positions out of eighth, and are yet another Western Conference team beating out the bulk of the Eastern Conference.

Bottom three teams moving down in average predicted finish are:

• Chicago Fire (-5): Chicago's 4-1 loss to Toronto moved them out of the sixth position and down to eleventh. It cost them three spots based upon points, six spots based upon goal differential, and six spots upon projected points based upon goal differential.
• New England Revolution (-4): The Revolution's losses to Chivas and Columbus cost them three spots on points, eight spots on goal differential, and five spots based upon points from goal differential.
• New York Red Bulls (-3) and Colorado Rapids (-3): Losses by each team this week moved them towards the bottom end of the Top-8 spots in the league table.

Another interesting view of the table

Finally, I'd like to make readers aware of another awesome resource for ongoing table predictions throughout the season (HT: Boco_T). The guys at Sports Club Stats have a great prediction tool for any league you want to follow, including MLS. They use Monte Carlo statistical methods to project likely finish position, as well as the impact of a win, draw, or loss in the next match on each team's playoff chances. I'd suggest readers check out the website if they're interested in such data. I've added their EPL and MLS tables to my "Favorite Blogs and Websites" section to the right of this post.