Monday, April 2, 2012

MLS Round 4's Conditional Formatting

UPDATED April 5th to include Sounder at Heart, Oshan and Jeff Sagarin. Links at bottom.The power ranking above takes the player rating of each player and averages them up by position and groups by team. The 1-19 rating is the rank by field assignment as classified by STATS, Inc. I think it works well. At the very least, it's Christmass'y.

OBSERVATIONS:

• Variance between positional rank tells me Vancouver and New England are unpredictable right now. NY and Houston not far behind them in crazy.

• MLS more than any other domestic pro sport, doesn't have need for power rankings. Un-balanced schedule this year but everybody still plays everyone at least once. Just use the table and throw in a inflated or sour pick on a popular team like Portland, LA or Seattle. They'll call you an analyst. Advance yourself in the name of helicopter entertainment over actual competition and honest evaluation through proven tools (never mind that USMNT city burning behind you, wait... Did you say burning? We'll sell commercials!). Go with it! GO! $$$$

• Teams gamin' my system: Portland and Chivas USA. Ranked 3 places higher on my POWER RANK than the true table.

• Teams undervalued by my thingy: DC United, New England and Colorado. I've got them 2 or 3 places lower than league table.

• Locked in to spots (My power ranking, positional rank and league table rank = match closely), Best to Worst:

1. Sporting KC
2. San Jose Quakes
7. Columbus Crew
11. Chicago Fire
17. Philadelphia Union
19. Impact Montreal

If your team isn't on that list then the maths are telling me that you've got plenty of table movement in your future (up or down).

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UPDATED April 5th: Other rankings are sprouting up for Round 4.

• WV Hooligan. Crew 13th, United 14th. Link

• Pro Soccer Talk. Crew 13th, United 10th. Link

• MLSsoccer.com, Crew 10th, United 13th. Link

• OregonLive.com, Crew 10th, United 13th. Link

• Sounder at Heart. Crew 15, United 12. Link.

• SB Nation / Jeremiah Oshan. Crowd = Good. Crew 13, United 14. Link. Beastie Boys.

• Jeff Sagarin / USA Today. Good all round. Crew 9, United 12. Link.

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