Picking up right where they left off - Edson Buddle and the LA Galaxy
With my trip to Europe in late-May and World Cup kicking off soon thereafter, I have neglected to cover my domestic league for the last month and a half. As the World Cup winds down and MLS starts back up after its two week World Cup break, it's now time to re-focus on domestic league action.
Projected League Finish
It's been nearly six weeks since I last updated my charts for projected MLS finish (reminder: see this post for my statistical methodology and this post for my color coding methodology). Figure 1 shows the updated predicted finish based upon team performance to date.
Figure 1: Predicted MLS finish based upon team play to date (click to enlarge)Regular readers will note that I have added a new column at the far right. This column represents the Sports Club Stats chances for making the MLS playoffs. Here's a description of how they calculate those percentages.
Sports Club Stats calculates each team’s odds of making the playoffs, how each upcoming game will impact those odds, and how well they have to finish out to have a shot. It knows the season schedule and scores for past games. Each night it grabs any new scores from the internet and simulates the rest of the season by randomly picking scores for each remaining game. The weighted method takes the opponents record and home field advantage into account when randomly picking scores, so the better team is more likely to win. The 50/50 method gives each opponent an equal chance of winning each game. Both methods let an appropriate percent of games end in a tie or go into overtime in leagues where that matters. When it’s finished "playing" all the remaining games it applies the league’s tie breaking rules to see where everyone finished. It repeats this random playing out of the season million of times (try it yourself), keeping track of how many "seasons" each team finishes where. Finally it updates this page with the new results for you to read with your morning coffee.
I use the weighted method as I feel it is more accurate, especially this deep into the season when we have gotten a good feel for how each team will perform. The website also has Pythag methods as well as forecasts as to which of the upcoming games have the biggest impact on teams' chances of making the playoffs.
Using loose statistical theory of a p-value of 0.05 or less signifying a statistically significant relationship, I have used the following color coding scheme for the Sports Club Stats data related to playoff chances.
- 95% or greater = green
- 50% (i.e. flip of a coin) to 90% = yellow
- Less than 50% = red
As one can see, my rankings align very well with those from Sports Club Stats until we get to the bottom quarter of the league where my model does not take into account the strength of the teams faced in future matches.
What the chart tells us is that we only have ten teams competing for playoff spots at this point in the season. Even then, the gap between 7th and 8th versus 9th and 10th is pretty big. The rapidly fading Houston Dynamo must turn things around in a week or two or any chance of the playoffs will be dashed. While the gap between the Chicago Fire and San Jose Earthquakes on projected season points is significant, the Earthquakes are going in the wrong direction.
Alas, my Seattle Sounders are playing for pride, CONCACAF Champions League, and US Open Cup wins at this point. They are all but eliminated from the post season hunt, even before our second DP, Blaise Nkufo, shows up for post-World Cup duty. We'll see if the notoriously fairweather Seattle sports fans stick around when their team is not making the playoffs in their second season.
Major movers
Moving Up: FC Dallas (+3 spots), New York Red Bulls (+3), four teams who moved up 1 spot. The most important of the four was the Chicago Fire who moved into 9th place in the table and have an outside shot at the playoffs.
Dropping Down: New England Revolution (-4 spots), Houston Dynamo (-4), and the San Jose Earthquakes (-3). It's almost sad to watch one of the storied franchises in the league, the New England Revolution, fail so miserably this year. They and DC United are on pace to finish behind the expansion Philadelphia Union.
LA Galaxy are still on record pace
Even with Buddle and Donovan absent for a month of World Cup duty, the Galaxy continued to roll towards shattering the season point record of 64 points set by the Houston Dynamo in 2005. They did encounter their first loss of the season, just before the World Cup break, to none other than Real Salt Lake. I am not under any delusions that Real will catch the Galaxy in point total before the end of the season, but they are clearly the second best team in the West. Not only are they running away with the top two seeds in the West, but both teams are on pace to shatter the MLS season goal differential record of 22 goals set by DC in 2007 and Houston in 2005. If they keep form, they will play out of the West in this year's playoffs. That would set up a heck of a Western Conference finals assuming that neither gets tripped up in their first round match up. Given last year's MLS Cup upset, highly contested matches this regular season, and a possible Western Conference finals match up, we may just be witnessing the beginning of good rivalry.
Golden Boot Competition
Figure 2 shows the latest data for the 2010 Golden Boot competition, and where each player stands versus the historical distribution of Golden Boot finishers.
Figure 2: 2010 Golden Boot standings versus historical distribution
Edson Buddle's goal against Seattle on Sunday kept him on pace to finish better than 98% of the Golden Boot finalists in the history of MLS. It will be a tall task for him keep up the pace, so here are the critical games player per goal values for other key percentiles:
- 5th percentile = 1.165
- 10th percentile = 1.304
The rest of the pack has started to regress towards more reasonable percentiles after a hot start to the year.
This Week's Matches with the Biggest Impact on Playoff Chances
Here are this week's three matches with the biggest impact on the MLS playoff race. All changes in chances of making the playoffs listed in a Win/Draw/Loss format.
- San Jose (+12.7/-0.2/-8.7) vs. Philadelphia (5.6/-2.4/-5.7)
- Chicago (+11.8/-2.4/-9.4) vs. Salt Lake (0.2/0.1/-0.3)
- Houston (+10.8/-3.4/-10.0) vs. Columbus (0.3/0.1/-0.3)
Happy MLS viewing to everyone, and enjoy Sunday's World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain!
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