Cost per League Point to Salary Cap Number

That's sort of a confusing post title but It'll make sense in a second.

Dr. Howard Hamilton, who has a B.A.E. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University (whew), took a look at "Front-office Efficiency" by taking the number of league points a team earned and dividing it into total payroll. Seems simple enough. You can read that post here.

However, the game to be played in Major League Soccer isn't total payroll. That's a rich man's game. The true chess match for the grunts in the trenches is how well you do with payroll against the salary cap. Also of note, with respect to Dr. Hamilton; the Major League Soccer season doesn't end with the regular season.

Here is how that same thing looks if you take the team's 2012 year end salary to cap and divide it into total points earned with playoff points earned. On the left is how much each point cost the club to cap and on the right is how many points the club earned including the playoffs.

35,690 : San Jose 69
38,267 : Sporting KC 66
41,434 : Houston 63
43,563 : D.C. 65
44,938 : Seattle 63
46,946 : Los Angeles 66
50,151 : Real Salt Lake 58
51,425 : Columbus 52
54,123 : Chicago 57
57,181 : New England 35
59,211 : Montreal 42
60,585 : New York 57
68,293 : Philadelphia 36
68,320 : FC Dallas 39
69,120 : Portland 34
73,326 : Colorado 37
74,227 : Vancouver 43
85,783 : Chivas USA 30
121,453 : Toronto FC 23

Here is how each team looked as far as Salary to Cap as per MLS Player's Union last reported numbers. Teams in bold ended the year under the cap.

2,001,338 : New England
2,350,091 : Portland
2,458,556 : Philadelphia
2,462,598 : San Jose
2,486,845 : Montreal
2,525,601 : Sporting KC
2,573,478 : Chivas USA
2,610,316 : Houston
2,664,487 : FC Dallas
2,674,084 : Columbus
2,713,058 : Colorado
2,793,413 : Toronto FC

2,831,099 : Seattle
2,831,604 : D.C.
2,908,785 : Real Salt Lake
3,085,014 : Chicago
3,098,430 : Los Angeles
3,191,750 : Vancouver
3,453,370 : New York

You can find MLS salary cap rules here.

Please note; All teams exceed the MLS salary cap at the end of the year were in the playoffs.

I used Base Salary for this exercise as that seems to be what MLS uses as the cap number. Salaries can be found on the MLS Player's Union website.