2016 Playoff Projections, or Hope By The Numbers
- Thread starter mgarbowski
- Start date
We play well so often and deserve to win so often yet it always seems to go against us. Normally over the course of the season this would even itself out so hopefully we will go on a winning streak again soon. Ive seen alot of stats about how we have to win a certain number of games at home etc but we don't fit this trend as its clear our style of play doesn't suit our pitch. I see no reason why we can't continue to maintain our away form.
Lets face it if we got a home playoff game we would lose so i would rather us come 6th as i think we would have more of a chance! Maybe PV has this idea too and tells the team to give up a late goal.
Lets face it if we got a home playoff game we would lose so i would rather us come 6th as i think we would have more of a chance! Maybe PV has this idea too and tells the team to give up a late goal.
Reasons To Be Cheerful
As noted on the previous page, with some good data from SteveV (plus charts - I've gotta improve my chart game), the playoff line jumped up quite a bit at the end of last season.
I tried to figure out what happened and found that it was at least in part a result of things that I think are unlikely to repeat. But let's start with the slightly not-so-good news.
Interconference Games
The East usually loses points when it plays the West and this suppresses the playoff line for the East. The MLS schedule lowers the number of interconference games in the last 2 months of the season. Last year there were 15 IC games in September and October, representing 15 of IC games during the last 20.5% of the season. This year there are only 11 IC games in the same period. This would actually cause the playoff line to go up compared to last year if form holds, but I'm not too concerned about that because f the next factor.
Interconference Results
Last year the West outperformed the East earning 142 points in IC games to only 97 in the East during March through August. Then, for some reason, the East went on a tear winning 27 points the last 2 months compared to 15 for the West. That, I'm sure, did more to raise the playoff line in the East than the simple number of IC games. I've no idea why this happened, and no reason to expect it will repeat itself. It could of course, but there seems to be no reason to predict it will. If that is in fact the case, expect the line not to rise so much late in the season.
Frequency of Ties
Last year there was an extremely low number of ties in the last quarter of the season. A game tha ends with one team winning creates 3 points. A tie only creates 2. So ties lower the total number of points in the league and thereby lower the total number of points needed to make the playoffs. So I checked.
I divided the season into 4 quarters of 9-8-8-9 games, and then counted how many ties came in each quarter league wide. Ideally I would do this for East Conference games alone but that was too hard and I think this is a good enough proxy. Last year only 16.7% of the total ties for the year took place in the 4th quarter of the league schedule. That's the lowest percentage for any quarter in the last 5 years. I found no trend that the 4th quarter tends to have the lowest number of ties. I did OTOH notice that in 4 of the last 5 years the second half of the season had an unusually-seeming number of ties: 43%, 55%, 46%, 42%, 35%. The average in those 5 years was that 44% of ties came in the second half of each season.
But then I went back to the previous 5 years and that trend disappeared and the second half tie percentages are 52%, 50%, 57%, 43%, and 51%, which yields a nice 50% average. Basically there is no pattern, but if you look for an anomaly the 4th quarter of 2015 had the third lowest percentage in MLS in the last 10 years. That is unlikely to repeat this year. Again, it could happen, but I see no reason to predict it. This would mean that again, the playoff line should not increase so much at the end of the season the way it did last year.
Specifically in the East, here is how each team just stopped generating tie games at the end of the season in 2015:
Chicago last draw August 29
Columbus last draw August 19
DC One draw after June
Montreal no ties in last 8 games
New England 1 draw after July
RB last draw August 5
NYC last draw August 19
Orlando one draw after August 8
Philadelphia one draw in last 9 games
Toronto no draws after July
The chances of this happening again are beyond my ability to calculate but it seems really unlikely. I do think the final playoff line will be higher than where it is right now, but I think it will be a few points lower than last year.
As noted on the previous page, with some good data from SteveV (plus charts - I've gotta improve my chart game), the playoff line jumped up quite a bit at the end of last season.
I tried to figure out what happened and found that it was at least in part a result of things that I think are unlikely to repeat. But let's start with the slightly not-so-good news.
Interconference Games
The East usually loses points when it plays the West and this suppresses the playoff line for the East. The MLS schedule lowers the number of interconference games in the last 2 months of the season. Last year there were 15 IC games in September and October, representing 15 of IC games during the last 20.5% of the season. This year there are only 11 IC games in the same period. This would actually cause the playoff line to go up compared to last year if form holds, but I'm not too concerned about that because f the next factor.
Interconference Results
Last year the West outperformed the East earning 142 points in IC games to only 97 in the East during March through August. Then, for some reason, the East went on a tear winning 27 points the last 2 months compared to 15 for the West. That, I'm sure, did more to raise the playoff line in the East than the simple number of IC games. I've no idea why this happened, and no reason to expect it will repeat itself. It could of course, but there seems to be no reason to predict it will. If that is in fact the case, expect the line not to rise so much late in the season.
Frequency of Ties
Last year there was an extremely low number of ties in the last quarter of the season. A game tha ends with one team winning creates 3 points. A tie only creates 2. So ties lower the total number of points in the league and thereby lower the total number of points needed to make the playoffs. So I checked.
I divided the season into 4 quarters of 9-8-8-9 games, and then counted how many ties came in each quarter league wide. Ideally I would do this for East Conference games alone but that was too hard and I think this is a good enough proxy. Last year only 16.7% of the total ties for the year took place in the 4th quarter of the league schedule. That's the lowest percentage for any quarter in the last 5 years. I found no trend that the 4th quarter tends to have the lowest number of ties. I did OTOH notice that in 4 of the last 5 years the second half of the season had an unusually-seeming number of ties: 43%, 55%, 46%, 42%, 35%. The average in those 5 years was that 44% of ties came in the second half of each season.
But then I went back to the previous 5 years and that trend disappeared and the second half tie percentages are 52%, 50%, 57%, 43%, and 51%, which yields a nice 50% average. Basically there is no pattern, but if you look for an anomaly the 4th quarter of 2015 had the third lowest percentage in MLS in the last 10 years. That is unlikely to repeat this year. Again, it could happen, but I see no reason to predict it. This would mean that again, the playoff line should not increase so much at the end of the season the way it did last year.
Specifically in the East, here is how each team just stopped generating tie games at the end of the season in 2015:
Chicago last draw August 29
Columbus last draw August 19
DC One draw after June
Montreal no ties in last 8 games
New England 1 draw after July
RB last draw August 5
NYC last draw August 19
Orlando one draw after August 8
Philadelphia one draw in last 9 games
Toronto no draws after July
The chances of this happening again are beyond my ability to calculate but it seems really unlikely. I do think the final playoff line will be higher than where it is right now, but I think it will be a few points lower than last year.
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I Think The 23 Set piece Goals in 26 Home Games Stat Is Very Wrong
HRB has this stat and doesn't provide a source, and but the RSL announcers mentioned the 23 set-piece concessions at home stat (without adding how many games) during the condensed match. They said it right after the Burrito goal off a free kick. So they are probably the original source for this.
I went back and reviewed the summary and sometimes highlights of every game.
I count 12 set-pieces conceded last year, with 6 at home. This counts the SKC throw-in as a set-piece.
I count 8 this year, all at home. That adds up to 20 total, and 14 at home. If you want to be strict and exclude the throw-in it is 19 and 13.
It's possible I missed one, or maybe even 2-3, but there's no way I missed 9 home set-piece concessions. Plus I think I'm right.
We have in fact played 26 home games, so the stat has that going for it.
Here they are with the game number, date, H/A, Type, scorer, and minute
2015
1 3/8/2015 Orlando Away Free Kick kaka 91
4 3/28/2015 SKC Home throw-in Opara 13
11 5/15/2015 Chicago Home free kick Cocis header 14
13 5/30/2015 Houston Home corner kick Bruin header 16
14 6/6/2015 Philadelphia Away corner kick Sapong 46
17 6/28/2015 NYRB Home free kick Duvall 52
Home free kick Miazga 73
26 8/23/2015 Galaxy Away free kick (quick kick) Zardes 36
28 9/12/2015 Dallas Away corner kick Michel 45+
31 9/26/2015 Vancouver Away corner kick Amarikwa 72
32 10/2/2015 DC Away free kick Saborio 90+
34 10/25/2015 New England Home corner kick Rowe 55
2016
2 3/13/2016 Toronto Home free kick Perquis 45+
4 3/26/2016 New England Home free kick Tierney 38
8 4/27/2016 Montreal Home free kick Oduro 90
13 5/21/2016 NYRB Home corner McCarty 3
Home corner McCarty 51
Home free kick Veron 83
Home corner Baah 89
15 6/2/2016 RSL Home free kick Burrito 67
That's still terrible but I guess qualifies as slightly positive news. I also note that both times we conceded more than once in a game has been to our favorite local energy drink team.
Also, 6 of them were at 45 to 45+ or 90 to 90+. That's killer.
HRB has this stat and doesn't provide a source, and but the RSL announcers mentioned the 23 set-piece concessions at home stat (without adding how many games) during the condensed match. They said it right after the Burrito goal off a free kick. So they are probably the original source for this.
I went back and reviewed the summary and sometimes highlights of every game.
I count 12 set-pieces conceded last year, with 6 at home. This counts the SKC throw-in as a set-piece.
I count 8 this year, all at home. That adds up to 20 total, and 14 at home. If you want to be strict and exclude the throw-in it is 19 and 13.
It's possible I missed one, or maybe even 2-3, but there's no way I missed 9 home set-piece concessions. Plus I think I'm right.
We have in fact played 26 home games, so the stat has that going for it.
Here they are with the game number, date, H/A, Type, scorer, and minute
2015
1 3/8/2015 Orlando Away Free Kick kaka 91
4 3/28/2015 SKC Home throw-in Opara 13
11 5/15/2015 Chicago Home free kick Cocis header 14
13 5/30/2015 Houston Home corner kick Bruin header 16
14 6/6/2015 Philadelphia Away corner kick Sapong 46
17 6/28/2015 NYRB Home free kick Duvall 52
Home free kick Miazga 73
26 8/23/2015 Galaxy Away free kick (quick kick) Zardes 36
28 9/12/2015 Dallas Away corner kick Michel 45+
31 9/26/2015 Vancouver Away corner kick Amarikwa 72
32 10/2/2015 DC Away free kick Saborio 90+
34 10/25/2015 New England Home corner kick Rowe 55
2016
2 3/13/2016 Toronto Home free kick Perquis 45+
4 3/26/2016 New England Home free kick Tierney 38
8 4/27/2016 Montreal Home free kick Oduro 90
13 5/21/2016 NYRB Home corner McCarty 3
Home corner McCarty 51
Home free kick Veron 83
Home corner Baah 89
15 6/2/2016 RSL Home free kick Burrito 67
That's still terrible but I guess qualifies as slightly positive news. I also note that both times we conceded more than once in a game has been to our favorite local energy drink team.
Also, 6 of them were at 45 to 45+ or 90 to 90+. That's killer.
Thanks, but blame the RSL announcers. They started it, and I can't fault HRB too much for running with it. I even accepted it at first. There's a post or two here where I rant about it. But I also started thinking there was no way we had enough last year to get to the 23 total. If we had it would have been an issue the way it is this year.
No. We gave up PKs of course, but they're not what I consider a set piece and I didn't count them. Maybe the RSL announcers counted them, because I guess you could call a PK a set-piece in some sense, but it's kind of irrelevant to the discussion as nobody gets angry when you fail to stop a PK. You might get angry at a dumb foul, or at the refo for the call, but not the fact that the PK scored, except maybe for rare rebounds. You think we could have given up 9 PK goals at home over 2 years and that explains the difference?
I have no recollection of how many PKs we've given up, but they are technically a set piece, as they are dead-ball kicks, and if it fits the narrative then I could see HRB including it.
What about that goal after the missed save from Saunders versus Vancouver? That's a goal from a set piece, right?
PKs were what popped in to my head as well, along with the disclaimer about them only kinda being set pieces. I wouldn't be surprised if that explained the discrepancy.
It probably is PKs to make up the difference, but if so that's a case of letting definitions confuse things. Nobody cares how well a team "defends" penalty kicks. They all suck at it, and it's a fundamentally different animal than corners and free kicks, even though they all start with a dead ball.
It's the narrative though. I bet that long SKC throw in also was counted since it was a deadball situation.
I think the SKC throw should count, even though by definition it probably doesn't fit. SKC worked it like a set piece; no reason to treat it otherwise. I know you can't for official stat purposes but when you're measuring team performance it makes sense.
- We followed our 3-game win streak by getting 5 points in the next 5 games.
- We just finished a 4-game home stand where we managed 4 points, and for which most of us expected 6-9 points. This made worse an already bad home record.
- The combined Away record of our 4 opponents for that home stand before it started was 3 Wins 14 Losses and 5 Ties.
- We have 3 Home losses and 2 of them gave our opponent their only Away win of the season so far.
In the PPG standings we have slipped to 5th place. I think we were as high as third in the PPG standings at some point but I don't have a record of it. We were definitely in 4th place 2 games ago.
The PPG line is up to 43. When I started the thread it was at 38. We have a ~1.5 PPG cushion. When I started the thread we were in 6th and defined the playoff line so that's an improvement but it would be nice to have more.
So, worse than we hoped, but better than some alternatives, including last year.
How we get to various point totals over the remaining 18 games:
If we keep ties to a minimum, we just need to go 2 games over .500 and we should be in good shape. But as ties go up so must the number of wins over losses
What's Next
7 of our next 9 games are on the road. Between now and August 13 we will have a very good idea if our very solid road record is something real we can count on, or a flash in the pan. After that stretch we finish with 5 at home and 4 away.
What we are up against are 7 teams whose collective Home Record is 28-12-12 for 1.85 PPG. Put another way, opposing teams who have visited the 7 teams we are about to visit have managed only 0.92 PPG against them.
That doesn't mean we're destined to do that. We underachieved at home. We now have to overachieve on the road. But not by much if we take care of business at home starting now.
Let's say we win both home games in this stretch against the Red Bulls and Colorado.
2-0-0 | 6 Pts | 3.0 PPG
Then we can go just
2-4-1 | 7 Pts | 1.0 PPG on the road
for a combined
4-4-1 | 13 Pts | 1.44 PPG in the 9-game stretch.
Then we would have 34 points with 9 to play and can see a clear path to the playoffs. But if we drop points against RB or Colorado, at home, the road games become more crucial.
Not only do we have the best road record in the league, but last time I checked this week we also were the only ones to have a positive goal differential. Other teams hemorrhage on the road. If we go into Seattle and take the win, we're really the road warriors. New cheer needed for Mad Max....
If we beat Seattle in Seattle, we would go 3-0-0 against Cascadia teams on the road. Win at Vancouver. Win at Portland. Win at Seattle. Damn.
Do remember that that win at Vancouver was last year, but either way, thats a pretty awesome record to boot.
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