MLS 2014-15 Combined Standings, Cost per Point

There are many ways to measure success in Major League Soccer. Outside of performance in the playoffs (which, by the nature of it, can be influenced by loads of outside factors), perhaps the cleanest was is to look a regular season table points total of the last two years.

Pts	Team	GD
115	Seattle Sounders FC	23
114	FC Dallas	23
112	LA Galaxy	42
110	D.C. United	13
110	New York Red Bulls	24
105	Columbus Crew SC	15
105	New England Revolution	6
103	Vancouver Whitecaps FC	11
102	Portland Timbers	11
100	Sporting Kansas City	10
97	Real Salt Lake	5
90	Toronto FC	-10
81	Houston Dynamo	-26
79	Philadelphia Union	-13
79	Montreal Impact	-16
77	San Jose Earthquakes	-13
69	Colorado Rapids	-29
66	Chicago Fire	-25

Next up is a look at the point differences, 2014 to 2015.

Team	Up/Down
Montreal Impact	23
San Jose Earthquakes	17
New York Red Bulls	10
Toronto FC	8
FC Dallas	6
Colorado Rapids	5
Portland Timbers	4
Vancouver Whitecaps FC	3
Houston Dynamo	3
Sporting Kansas City	2
Columbus Crew SC	1
New England Revolution	-5
Philadelphia Union	-5
Chicago Fire	-6
D.C. United	-8
LA Galaxy	-10
Seattle Sounders FC	-13
Real Salt Lake	-15

Going to have a little bit of fun here and whip up a little metric. We'll call it POWER POINTS. Consistency (repeatability) is extremely important in sports, so what I'm going to to is take the absolute value of the year to your point total difference and subtract it from the total of the two years.

Example: New York Red Bulls. 110 pts - 10 point, year to year difference = 100 POWER POINTS.

Power Pts	Team
108	FC Dallas
104	Columbus Crew SC
102	D.C. United
102	LA Galaxy
102	Seattle Sounders FC
100	New England Revolution
100	New York Red Bulls
100	Vancouver Whitecaps FC
98	Portland Timbers
98	Sporting Kansas City
82	Real Salt Lake
82	Toronto FC
78	Houston Dynamo
74	Philadelphia Union
64	Colorado Rapids
60	Chicago Fire
60	San Jose Earthquakes
56	Montreal Impact

Crew SC get a gold star here. Their point totals year to year were 52 in 2014 and 53 this year. That's about as consistent as you can be. In fact, best in the league. I love results like that. For me, it's the first place I look when trying to figure out if something is going well or not. One year improvements like Montreal, San Jose or the New York Red Bulls suggest instability just as much as teams that dropped points like a rock in Real Salt Lake, Seattle or the LA Galaxy.

COST PER POINT

Another clean way to look at success in the regular season is to take the aggregate (year end) salaries of both years and divide them by total points earned in the regular season.

$ p Pt	Team
$75,547	D.C. United
$76,057	FC Dallas
$79,456	Columbus Crew SC
$85,879	Real Salt Lake
$100,091	Sporting Kansas City
$100,185	Chivas USA
$105,319	Portland Timbers
$109,892	Vancouver Whitecaps FC
$116,918	Houston Dynamo
$118,635	San Jose Earthquakes
$122,525	Colorado Rapids
$126,126	Philadelphia Union
$131,657	New England Revolution
$138,175	Montreal Impact
$138,249	New York Red Bulls
$153,226	Chicago Fire
$198,897	Seattle Sounders FC
$291,386	LA Galaxy
$429,503	Orlando City SC
$438,746	Toronto FC
$495,258	New York City FC

You can see that there are basically three tiers of teams in MLS, in regards to spending on the competitive nature of the regular season (versus jersey sales, or ticket sales or what have you). DC, Dallas, Columbus and Salt Lake are clearly smart spenders. NYCFC, TFC and Orlando are wasteful.

The measure of success of any season is based upon goals each team sets forth (failing to set goals is a fail, of course), so it's impossible to know who achieved what on a team by team basis. What the above can do is give you a read on which teams are healthy and which are not.