State of the MLS Run In: 6 Weeks To Go

by sidereal on Sep 13, 2011 2:01 PM PDT in Major League Soccer: News & Analysis

As the regular season winds down I'm going to be posting a weekly summary of the some of the data and predictions we're generating, which should give you some context going into each week of games.

Previous Week

MLS play got back into the full swing of things last week after the international break, and it was a week that had a dramatic impact on the state of the league. One of the subtleties of using a simulation to determine probabilities is that some results matter more than others. If a team is very likely to win a game then their average result in a simulation will be quite high — sometimes over 2 points. And if that team then goes on to actually win the game then the difference between reality and our prediction is less than a point, so it doesn't move the needle on the probabilities much. But if a team is very favored to win a game (like say FC Dallas vs New England) then the difference between prediction and reality is over 2 points and can have a much bigger impact on the results. In a week where multiple seemingly unlikely outcomes occur, there can be big shifts in the predictions. This week saw Real Salt Lake beat the Seattle Sounders in Seattle, FC Dallas lose to New England, and the New York Red Bulls get held to a draw at home by the Vancouver Whitecaps. The first means that the Supporter's Shield race is all but done. The first two combine to put Real Salt Lake in the driver's seat for the 3rd position in the Western Conference. And the last changes the picture in the Eastern Conference and the bottom of the wild card standings.

Playoff & Trophy Probabilities

This is each team's up to date odds of making the playoffs, winning the Supporter's Shield, and winning the MLS Cup based on simulating the remainder of the season 10000 times.

Avg Pts for Playoffs		43.24
	Avg Pos	Avg Points	Playoff %	Change	Supporters Shield %	MLS Cup %
Los Angeles	1.13	64.81	100.0	--	89.32	21.50
Seattle	2.87	57.25	100.0	--	4.38	12.01
Real Salt Lake	3.02	56.69	100.0	+0.10	5.68	11.02
FC Dallas	3.76	55.18	100.0	--	0.58	7.59
Kansas City	6.60	48.92	97.16	+8.39	0.0	12.34
Columbus	6.74	49.40	96.34	-1.46	0.02	9.80
Colorado	6.83	48.79	97.72	-0.04	0.00	4.08
DC United	7.52	47.73	87.86	+21.08	0.02	10.83
Philadelphia	8.89	45.17	76.71	-6.36	0.00	5.40
New York	10.30	42.84	61.24	-8.43	0.0	3.10
Houston	10.79	42.61	42.11	-7.31	0.0	1.37
Portland	11.28	42.10	33.24	+7.32	0.0	0.51
Chivas USA	13.08	38.62	9.77	-11.83	0.0	0.37
Chicago	14.40	36.36	2.89	-3.28	0.0	0.02
San Jose	14.51	36.53	2.89	+2.12	0.0	0.04
New England	15.62	34.44	0.46	+0.41	0.0	0.02
Toronto FC	16.23	33.59	0.04	+0.04	0.0	0.0
Vancouver	17.44	29.99	0.0	--	0.0	0.0

Teams Eliminated

Teams that have been eliminated by three decreasingly stringent standards. Read here for more details.

Mathematical Elimination (Unable to make the playoffs in any scenario)
None
Effective Elimination (Unable to make 40 points even with perfect play)
None
Projected Elimination (less than 1% chance of making the playoffs in simulation)
New England, Toronto FC, Vancouver

Remaining Strength of Schedule

Using the same simulation, we can also determine remaining schedule strength by seeing how a league average team would do with each team's remaining schedule. Teams at the top have schedules against which an average team got the most PPG, meaning we think they have the easiest remaining schedule.

	Avg Team Points	Matches	Pts / Match
Colorado	7.58	5	1.516
Toronto FC	7.42	5	1.484
FC Dallas	8.771	6	1.462
DC United	12.884	9	1.432
Seattle	8.576	6	1.429
Portland	9.903	7	1.415
Chicago	9.687	7	1.384
New England	8.249	6	1.375
Vancouver	9.62	7	1.374
New York	9.543	7	1.363
Kansas City	8.163	6	1.36
Los Angeles	8.136	6	1.356
Houston	8.035	6	1.339
Chivas USA	7.91	6	1.318
Real Salt Lake	10.451	8	1.306
Philadelphia	9.115	7	1.302
Columbus	9.055	7	1.294
San Jose	8.62	7	1.231

Seattle's First Round Opponent

This is the likelihood of each team being the first playoff opponent for Seattle (either in the preliminary round or — more likely — in the Conference Semifinals).

	Matchup %
Real Salt Lake	45.7%
FC Dallas	23.4%
Colorado	4.9%
Los Angeles	4.2%
New York	4.1%
Houston	4.0%
Philadelphia	3.4%
Portland	3.3%
DC United	2.0%

Cascadia Cup Odds

This is the % chance for each of the Cascadia teams of winning the rivalry cup.

	Odds
Seattle	64.66
Portland	19.91
Vancouver	15.43

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Comments

I think these illustrations captures the danger of falling out of an automatic slot.

That’s a three percentage point swing on MLS Cup chances.

by agtk on Sep 13, 2011 4:18 PM PDT reply actions

I'd much rather face RSL than FCD in the first round

I think we showed that despite the loss, we were definitely the better team (and we also beat them at Rio Tinto fairly comfortably), but it’s always elbows and nail-biters with FCD.

by Nevtelen on Sep 13, 2011 5:15 PM PDT reply actions