MLS Week 2 Collective Power Rankings

The real pisser about the Major League Soccer (MLS) schedule is the fact that, by the time I get around to posting these on Thursday, some of these calls look silly. I’m thinking here of that #1 ranking for the Kansas City Wizards; I’m guessing that the 8 of 11 pundits who placed KC on top would reconsider after last night’s loss at home to the New England Revolution. Hardly matters, as this is just meant to be a snapshot in time – e.g. how 11 pundits (or more, given that some sites involved take a collective approach to ranking) stack(ed) up MLS’s 14 teams in the week of the prior week’s action.

So…what to say, generally, about how said 11 pundits stacked up these teams? It’s fair to say they’re not all speaking with one voice. In some cases, they’re barely harmonizing. Teams like DC United, the Houston Dynamo, the Colorado Rapids…well, suffice to say the list goes on. It’s not all muddy water: for instance, 8 of 11 pegged KC at #1 – however dubious that looks after last night – and everyone agrees that the league’s worst team is either Toronto FC or the San Jose Earthquakes.

And who were these 11 pundits? Here ya go (and, again, feel free to post your rankings in the comments after mine, to email me rankings, etc.):

Center Holds It (me)
Goal.com (Kyle McCarthy)
Orlando Sentinel (Brant Parsons)
Fullback Files (um…Fullback?)
Sideline Views (Luis Bueno)
AYL Soccer (Jacob Hart writes, but it looks collective)
WVHooligan (Drew Epperley)
Blue Blooded Journo (a collective)
3rd Degree (Parrish Glover)
ESPN.com (collective)
Fox Soccer Channel (Keith Costigan)

For those wondering what happened with Soccer By Ives rankings, he’s part of ESPN.com’s collective; that’s also why Andrea Canales’ rankings don’t show. Don’t want to double-count anyone…

(UPDATE: My apologies to On Soccer’s pate.  He forwarded his Week 2 “scariness rankings” for inclusion this post; I had to put it in an update because I couldn’t figure out how to work it into the text.  Anyway, it’s a pretty nifty concept pate has; it’s another way of looking at all this if nothing else.)

I’ll work into some details after the jump, but will start with the how I organized the data. Copy/pasting directions from previous entry: each team will be listed by rank and with their average, collective score following. To provide some perspective, the most common score(s) assigned to each team by the individual members of the collective will appear in parentheses after that, followed by the previous week’s ranking and average. Und, jetzt, der data:

MLS Week 2 Power Rankings: Breaking Hearts and Molding Clay

To the teams sending seriously mixed signals – I’m looking at you New England Revolution; you too Columbus Crew – shame on you! People devote large (if kinda irrational) chunks of their lives to the team of their choosing; you owe them honesty about exactly who you are at the very least.

OK, feeling like we all have a little more with which to work this week – even if things remain a little early and a lot misshapen. At the top and the bottom of the rankings, I’m feeling a little more confident about who goes where; the middle remains a lump of clay waiting to be caressed into coherence, set in the clarifying fires of the pitched battle, glazed in defeat or victory – by the Shield of Galadiel, huzzah! (Sorry…reading Lord of the Rings…please, Mr. Tolkein (and I know you’re long departed) do I have to read about each and every hill those little midgets climb?)

Where was I? Right. The one thing to keep in mind: teams are ranked on the assumption that those above will beat those below right now. Strength over the long haul, well, that’s something else again. When we get closer to the “real season” – i.e. the playoffs, the bit that counts – I’ll probably through an addendum to the rankings about who I think will or will not make the playoffs. But we’re a long way from that; for now, it’s who beat who.

Enough about baffled lovers, broken hearts…my geeky reading list; this week’s rankings follow, with last week’s rankings placed in parentheses right after. As always, feel free to post power rankings of your own in the comments and I’ll include them in the collective rankings I compile every Thursday. Here’s my take on the MLS Stack-Up:

MLS Week 1 Collective Power Rankings: One for the Circular File

Here’s the word from the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective (SDPC): we have no frankin’ clue what’s going on. Well, that’s not entirely accurate: New England impressed all observers in the survey but one (3rd Degree) and there’s general agreement as to who are the three worst teams in Major League Soccer (MLS) – Toronto FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and the San Jose Earthquakes, and in that order.

After that, however, it’s a fuck…ing….train…wreck. Calling views on the MLS’s, um, “middle 10 teams” a mash of opinions constitutes an insult to a mash of opinions. We’re way past that. Between the diversity of methods, the several pundit outfits involved still trying to figure this stuff out, this project comes closer at present to having 11 people with no shared languages among them attempting a re-write of The Bible – and with a flock of angry, holy-roller partisans barking in all 11 scribes’ ears throughout.

Tempting as it is to throw the results into the circular file, let’s just dub the mess itself an accurate reflection of where things are after Week 1 of MLS’s 2008 season. In other words, no one knows what’s going on and there’s nothing wrong with that. It just means I have eleven sets of data for this week’s survey and they all tell me different things. Let me list those before moving on (and, again, if you see rankings out there that don’t appear down here, due point them out to me):

Center Holds It (me)
Goal.com (Kyle McCarthy)
Orlando Sentinel (Brant Parsons)
Fullback Files (um…Fullback?)
Sideline Views (Luis Bueno)
Soccer By Ives (Ives Galarcep)
WVHooligan (Drew Epperley)
Blue Blooded Journo (a collective)
3rd Degree (Parrish Glover)
“Jason” (left his rankings in CHI comments; always welcome)
Fox Soccer Channel (Keith Costigan)

(UPDATE: Oh, the hat!  ESPN.com finally posted their Week 1 power rankings, so I thought I’d post ’em here, even if I’m not about to re-calculate (Bastards!  Do your homework on time!).  In case you’re not aware, ESPN.com also takes the collective approach to their rankings, so maybe that was the hold-up.  Anyway, a quick look at the numbers suggest that little, if anything, would have changed: maybe KC ties Chivas (you’ll see below), maybe DC and the Rapids flip-flop (again, very much doubt it), and maybe TFC would have wound up worse than LA…but with all of them pretty close, I don’t think the collective rankings would have moved.)

Now, onto the results: each team will be listed by rank and with their average score following the club’s name. To provide some perspective, the most common score(s) assigned to each team by the individual members of the collective will appear in parentheses after that, followed by the previous week’s ranking and average. The ranges we’re looking at for some teams are nothing short of absurd. I’ll close it all out by trying to squeeze some kind of sagacious observations out of the data-cluster-fuck.

Now, to the numbers:

MLS Week 1 Power Rankings – HA! (+ do post your own rankings)

I’m torn between two images for this first edition of the Major League Soccer power rankings. This one captures what rankings, oh, #2-14 look like to me:

This one, on the other hand, gets to how making each of those selections felt:

So, yeah, confidence is low, people, so low in fact that I put fairly little stock in what appears below; I blame the whole Week 1/too little information thing.

Rankings and jabbering aimed at justifying them appear after the jump. And, as always, the previous week’s ranking appears in parentheses after the current week’s rankings. This will go into the collective rankings – look for those Thursday – along with several others I have already found. Anyone is welcome to submit power rankings of their own into the comments (or to email them to me; jeffbull71[at]yahoo.com) and those will go into the collective mix as well.

Now….the rankings….accuracy, validity, hell, even intelligence, not guaranteed:

2008 MLS Pre-Season Collective Power Rankings: Featuring Collectives Within The Collective

Here comes another first for Center Holds It: Major League Soccer (MLS) Pre-Season Collective Power Rankings. All I do here is take every single posted power ranking of which I’m aware, add up all the numbers for each given team, and then post the average – plus some other data and commentary. The idea is to divine the collective wisdom on MLS’s 14 teams. Does it work? Don’t know. Never thought of it that way…I just find it interesting.

NOTE: If you compile power rankings yourself, or if you see a set of rankings out there that I’m not using in this poll, PLEASE forward word to me (comments or email – jeffbull71[at]yahoo.com – will do). If they get to me before I post the collective rankings on any given Thursday, I can include them. The guiding principle is, the more the merrier, the more the better, the more the smarter. It’s a cornucopia of wisdom we’re wanting.

OTHER NOTE: Last year, a couple readers joined in by posting rankings in the comments to my power rankings post (like this one, posted today) and that is welcome. I imagine, however, there is some kind of upper limit for what I can process without letting this hobby consume my life. I’ll let you know when I get there. For now, though, fire away…next week, that is…fire away for next week’s edition.

One last thing before getting to the rankings and commentary: the list of pundits. As with last year, some rankings come from individual’s (like me and Luis Bueno’s for Sideline Views), while others grow from on-site collectives (ESPN.com’s and Blue Blooded Journo’s); in other words, we’re dealing with collectives within collectives (and our solar system could be an atom contained in the thumbnail of some giant, etc. etc.).

It being early in the year, this is a small sample – only 7 pundits. But I have faith it will grow as the season progresses. Here’s the list for today (with links embedded, so you can check my math):

2008 MLS Pre-Season Power Rankings: Science!

I’ll begin by apologizing for the constant need to explain my posts and myself. Sorry.

Welcome to the first, and first-ever, Major League Soccer (MLS) pre-season power rankings I have ever compiled. In the past, too few teams playing meaningful games equaled too many unknowns, so I didn’t see the point. I don’t really now….good times, aside. Oh, how we’ll laugh when we look back. That confessed, I’m going to embrace this form wholeheartedly and dress it in the available trappings of science.

I’ll begin with methods, a problem I never resolved during 2007 (mainly because I caught the issue too late in the game). By judging teams on different criteria at different points in the season, I tarnished the results. I started, if memory serves, by ranking MLS clubs based on form – e.g. a broad-brush impression of which team would beat which on the Saturday ahead. By the end of the season, however, I altered the formula to address something that seemed more important: the teams I believed would make the playoffs took the top 8 spots and I placed the teams I thought would go deeper in the post-season nearer the top, regardless of form. I move that the last organizing principle be branded as stupid and relegated to the Hole of Non- and Never-Existence.

With that in mind, the methods employed in the season ahead will adhere closely and permanently to those that first guided me – that is, I expect the team above to beat the team below 6 games out of 10 at a minimum; a brief explanation of my thinking will follow each team listed and each post will close with a discussion of trends and points of interest – assuming any come to me. With consistent methods in place, sound results, analysis, and conclusions should follow – if only logically…and internal logic at that. And – voilà! – we have science…of a sort.

And, later today, I’m going to up the science a little more by roping in all the pre-season power rankings I have seen so far in order to revive the Collective Power Rankings from last season. But, after the jump, I’ll lay out how I see all 14 MLS teams entering this deeply fascinating 2008 season. It promises to be a wild one, (but, c’mon, we all know deep down it’s going to peter out into a dogfight involving the usual suspects…I mean, how many people are rating Red Bull New York…pssh).

Bueno Throws Down Gauntlet: Nostalgia and Questions

I think it was yesterday that Sideline Views’ Luis Bueno posted pre-season power rankings for Major League Soccer’s (MLS) 14 teams. Now, I’m missing the 2007 like a bitch, with its power rankings and the collective power rankings I ran on this site….and will soon run again.

Bueno took a fairly scientific approach, basing his rankings on the rankings he assigned to each position and you can find links to those through Laurie’s post on this subject for the MLS Offside. And, if you go to the comments, you can see that surprisingly deep and persistent love for Toronto FC, a team whose off-season moves (see the bottom) have 1) only just begun, and 2) haven’t been of an order to make me think they’ll rise super far above 2007’s on-field horror-show (again, people, the crowds are cool and nice, but they don’t but anything in the standings). That is to say, I don’t know why people think 11th is such a strange call for Toronto in 2008. Still, the comments – even those Toronto-philic ones (the Crew will beat you this year; the as-yet unnamed (meaningless) trophy will be ours!* You’ll see!) – are worth the gander.

Anyway, getting back to it, what Bueno put down for his rankings appears below (and I’m borrowing this from The Offside’s post, ’cause their copy is cleaner). I was tempted to try to compile rankings of my own, but, if I’m being honest, I can’t get my head around variables like the new players, tested or otherwise. I’ll just post the questions that come to me upon seeing Bueno’s rankings – e.g. a man who has actually gave this some thought. I will only say this: Bueno pulled together his rankings in a way that made each team the sum of its parts. Respectfully – and I say that ’cause he’s killer – I don’t think that’s the correct approach: teams can compensate for weak spots – e.g. a good defense can help a dodgy ‘keeper and route-one play can cover a sub-par midfield. Not every time, of course, but a team can get away with it if the replacement parts are strong enough. So, yeah, I’ll just pose some questions…

…and to show my respect for the difficulty of what Bueno did, I’m going to preserve the crack at power rankings I started, but failed to complete. You’ll see that all the way at the bottom…and – woo! – it’s just non-sensical.

(* Holy crap!  I think I’m pulling for the Crew!  How’d that happen?  No wait.  Why does that happen?)

(Late) Playoff Links & Rambling

With the Major League Soccer (MLS) playoffs kicking off today with DC United’s visit to the Chicago Fire’s Windy City, previews and predictions litter the soccer blogo-verse.  Let’s get to those up top before going into some barely-shaped ramblings after the jump.  Here’s the good, good stuff from around the soccer blogo-verse (posted far too late; holy shit, was today busy!)

Previews and predictions come in diverse forms.  There are the preview-pick variety, which answer the question of who will win and why: for that see ESPN’s Eastern and Western Conference previews (written by Ives Galarcep and Jeff Carlisle, respectively) and Martin Rogers’ column for Yahoo! News.  Luis Bueno put a little spin on his playoff preview for Sports Illustrated by opting to dub contenders and also-rans instead of picking winners for all the series.  MLSnet.com’s previews passed on calling winners and instead just broke down the Eastern and Western playoff teams by various categories – a decision, perhaps, to treat all their children as equal and maintain their independent brand viability (you all get trophies!!).

Good and sober as all the above are, Luis Arroyave wrote the single best prediction post on his Red Card blog.  He only calls one series – DC v. Chicago – but he pours enough angst into the effort that it feels like there’s a life in the balance.

Useful items that aren’t previews cropped up here and there as well.  USSoccerplayas.com (has so far) eschewed a “pan-MLS” approach for tidy features on individual teams heading into the series: for instance, are the Fire the favorites or can Red Bull New York beat their post-season jinx?  (My take: maybe and nope!).  Elsewhere, some power rankings survived the post-season: The Fullback Files compiled a set including only the playoff teams, while Dan Loney based his rankings on the number of injuries for each team (he ends the post with each club’s record for September and Octorber).  All y’all know this already, but, in case you’ve forgotten, du Nord’s round-up of any given day’s stories will keep you plenty current on injuries and tactical doings.

And now my thoughts – and these won’t be predictions because my powers of prognostication are such that I couldn’t pick the winner of a race after it was run (see the bottom of this and follow the links).  This didn’t stop me from making picks, of course (see the bottom of this), but those are short-term, game-to-game kinds of things and new details will inform each successive prediction; besides that, I’m a fiend for betting.

MLS: The Collective Rankings, Final Edition: Contenders and Makeweights

As alluded to in the preamble to my most recent power rankings (link below), I think the looming end of the 2007 regular season has pushed these things to the point of irrelevance.  As such, I’m putting the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective on ice till the 2008 season.  I’d like to thank all the participants – witting and otherwise – for compiling one version, at least, of conventional wisdom on how Major League Soccer’s (MLS) 13 franchises stack up against each other.  I found compiling these educational and hope people reading them did as well.

Moving to the practical, the early posting means I’m going to miss Sports Illustrated’s rankings altogether – and the earlier than usual posting could also screw over MLS Underground (who, I think, usually have their rankings posted by now) and Fire_Juve10.  With regard to those last two, sorry to jump the gun, but between struggling to see the relevance of these, the belief that the time has come for other projects (must start cranking out seasons-in-review, must make time…), and a couple circumstances best not gone into, getting this over with seems a good idea.  And, while you’re at it, put the general malaise down to my sense that the data below won’t tell us what we actually want/need to know about MLS right now.

Here are the participants for this final pool:

Center Holds It (Me)
My Soccer Blog
WVHooligan
Sideline Views (Luis Bueno)
Goal.com (Kyle McCarthy)
Fox Soccer (Keith Costigan)
ESPN (another collective)
Fullback Files
Tim (the Enchanter)

And…drumroll, please….here are the collective rankings, comments to follow:

1. DC United, 1.0 (#1 X 9; last week, #1, 1.0)
2. Houston Dynamo, 2.6 (#2 X 5; last week, #3, 3.5)
3. Chivas USA, 2.7 (#2 and 3 X 4; last week #2, 2.0)
4. New England Revolution, 4.1 (#4 X 6; last week, #4, 3.7)
5. Chicago Fire, 4.8 (#5 X 6; last week, #5, 4.9)
6. FC Dallas, 6.6 (#6 X 5; last week, #6, 6.4)
7. Red Bull New York, 6.9 (#7 X 5; last week, #7, 7.4)
8. Los Angeles Galaxy, 7.7 (#8 X 4; last week, #8, 8.1)
9. Kansas City Wizards, 9.3 (#10 X 5; last week, #9, 8.3)
10. Colorado Rapids, 9.8 (#9 and 10 X 4; last week, #10, 10.7)
11. Columbus Crew, 11.1 (#11 X 6; last week, #11, 11.0)
12. Real Salt Lake, 11.8 (#12 X 5; last week, #12, 11.1)
13. Toronto FC, 12.8 (#13 X 7; last week, #13, 13.0)

– DC’s #1, blah, blah, blah.  Seriously, who apart from DC’s fans actually want them to win the Cup?  It feels like 1997 all over again.  If, by some miracle, DC plays Colorado in the final, I’ll boycott the game.

– This isn’t to say DC hasn’t earned the top spot.  They have.

– I’d say the most interesting thing in this week’s rankings comes with the only – I mean, literally, only – change in the order from last week: Houston and Chivas flipped.  But note the numbers: 2.6 for Houston, 2.7 for Chivas.  Looks like the SDPC has high expectations for Saturday’s game (which will air on FSC).

– The last thing that bears commenting upon is the balance between contenders and makeweights.  I think the list of outright contenders ends with Chivas USA; New England has looked shaky down the stretch – and the rankings reflected as much – and Chicago is in the mix thanks in part to a couple wild-hair calls from clowns like me (I plugged ‘em in at #3).  Call those two “bubble contenders.”  No one expects much, I don’t think, from the teams south of Chicago in the rankings, albeit with LA standing as a possible “hot-team” exception.  I’d say the 1.8 gap in average between Chicago and Dallas speaks to a general perception that teams on the wrong side of that are mainly there to make up the numbers.

– Assuming LA doesn’t make it (and I think they won’t; who’s with me?!  CHARRGE!!), here’s my pick for the one team in the “makeweight” category I can see surprising anyone: FC Dallas.  Is that crazy?  Probably.  Did I just jinx them?  Again, probably.  No hard feelings, right guys?

MLS Week 28 Collective Rankings: Theories to Be Tested

There’s so much good, good stuff and so many angles to size in the data put out by the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective (SDPC) this week that I hardly know where to begin.  May as well start with the easy stuff: it’s an eleven-pundit pool thanks to Ryan Hunt making the deadline and the discovery that Goal.com’s weekly wraps end with power rankings (c’mon, people, I can’t find all this on my own).

Moving to the good, good stuff, I think the pundit pool has finally reached decent consensus on where each of the 13 teams belong; allowing for the exception of Houston and New England, each Major League Soccer (MLS) team was assigned the rank they hold in the standings by the most pundits.  To wrap all that up, DC remains undisputed #1, but no less significantly, Chivas stands as undisputed #2.  After that, you’ve got Houston virtually tied with New England, which proceeds to a middle passage that begins with Chicago before meandering past the twin make-weight, playoff-bound mediocrities known as Red Bull and FC Dallas; from there, we rubber-neck past the LA/KC tangle for last-playoff-place honors before running into the tight tangle of half-starved urchins – Colorado, Columbus, and RSL – with faces pressed hungrily and hopelessly against the playoff glass.  And, left out skulking in the cold sits Toronto FC at lonely #13.

But still another angle presents itself.  Anyone who compiles rankings makes a claim or claims of greater or lesser eccentricity, an outlier of a vote as to how a given team will stack up against another.  Each of the 11 pundits in this week’s pool took one of these wild stabs (well…more or less wild) and that’s what I’m going to look at after the rankings: each pundit’s “pet” theories and whether they will hold up against the cold, clear evidence of Week 28’s results.  Call these The Eleven Theories to Be Proved, each of which will face trial by soccer in one of this weekend’s tilts.  (NOTE: The individual authors may not see their text as I see it; just let it be known I’m parsing each author’s numbers without their input or guidance.)

If that doesn’t make sense, here’s to hoping it will below.  I’m a bit smitten by the numbers today.  As for the mechanics, the usual stuff applies: in parentheses after the current week’s ranking and average, you’ll see the most common ranking for each team (e.g. three #1 votes, which will show below as “#1 X 3”) and the previous week’s ranking and average.

Here are the participants for Week 27’s pool:

Center Holds It (Me)
MLS Underground/American Soccer Daily
My Soccer Blog
WVHooligan
Sports Illustrated (Ryan Hunt)
Goal.com (Kyle McCarthy)
Fox Soccer (Keith Costigan)
ESPN (another collective)
Fullback Files
Tim (the Enchanter) & Fire_Juve10

And…drumroll, please….here are the collective rankings, comments to follow: