Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Final 25% of Season - East Playoff Race a Dud but Table Position Important

A tweak to the 2015 Major League Soccer MLS Cup playoff format is making for a somewhat interesting final quarter of the season that is otherwise falling flat.

Change is the norm for the MLS Cup. The way it works this year is the top two teams in each conference are going to get a bye and placed into the conference semi-finals - while the teams finishing 3rd to 6th (3rd vs 6th and 4th v 5th) will battle it out in a single-elimination round to meet them there.

Were the playoffs to start right now, the seeding would look like this:

1. NY RED BULLS
2. DC UNITED
3. COLUMBUS CREW SC
4. TORONTO FC
5. NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION
6. MONTREAL IMPACT

What this means is that both Columbus and Toronto would be awarded a home playoff game.

3. COLUMBUS v. 6. MONTREAL (at Mapfre Stadium)
4. TORONTO v. 5. NEW ENGLAND (at BMO field)

The lowest seed to advance in the above games will face NY RED BULLS and the other will face DC UNITED in a two-legged series. If Columbus were to win they would be guaranteed to face DC, regardless of what happens in the other game.

Competitively and financially you could argue that the best place to finish is in 3rd (which is where the Crew are). Why? Because you are playing the worst team in the group and you are getting a home playoff game.

EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF RACE IS A DUD

What isn't interesting about the MLS Cup is the qualifying format. Six of the ten teams in each conference renders large chunks of the early regular season about as intense as a Sunday rec league.

There's also a problem that the league is facing now in the Eastern Conference where the teams not making the playoffs are nearly locked in with 25% of the season to go. Projecting out the table based on current PPG shows a large 6 point gap between 6th place Montreal (proj. 43 pts) and 7th place NYCFC (37 proj. pts). Of course, it is possible for NYCFC and Orlando to make up the point difference but it would require them to finish out their final games at a 1.70 Point per Game rate. That's nearly 5 wins from the final 8 they have left.

Both have only 7 wins from their first 26 games.

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