Dolphin Ratings - Major League Soccer

Explanation: Each team is listed with its record, overall score differential, and its ratings. Brief explanations of the ratings follow.

Schedule The number in this column is the effective opponent strength of a team. In other words, they would be expected to have the same record had they played all games against an opponent of this predictive rating at a neutral site. Because this calculation depends on the strength of the team in question, it is not possible to rank schedules using these values.
Expected Losses For college teams, this number is the number of losses an average ranked (top 15 hockey; otherwise top 25) team would be expected to have against the team's schedule. For pro teams, this is the number of losses an average team would be expected to have against the team's schedule. Unlike the schedule ranking, this value can be used to rank schedules.
Standard Ranks teams in an order such that a team is "probably better" than all teams ranked lower than it. This calculation uses margin of victory only for computing a team's opponents strengths; the team's rating itself is computed using only wins, losses, and ties relative to its schedule
Median Likelihood Determines the likely ratings for each team, based on its wins, losses, and ties relative to its schedule. This generally produces the same or similar ratings as the standard ranking.
Predictive Both schedule strength and rating vs. schedule strength are determined considering both the wins and losses and the score differentials. This rating contains none of the biases in the standard rating, but does weight recent games slightly more than past games since those are a better indication of the team's current strength. This rating is the best of the first three for seeing how good teams are, and thus is the best for predicting future results.
Improved RPI Rating The improved RPI formula is similar to the standard RPI, except that the schedule strength is carried out to infinite depth instead of ending with opponents' opponents, thus allows for a better comparison of isolated groups of teams than is given by the standard RPI calculation. It is similar to the simple rating, except that all games are given equal weight.
Predictive-Scoring. This value indicates how many points a team would be expected to score if it played an identical team.
Predictive-Offense. This combines the predictive and scoring ratings to measure how many points a team scores. The number is the predictive rating of an opponent against whom the team would be expected to score the league average number of points. This does not necessarily rate a team's offensive abilities, as a fast pace in basketball or big-play defense in football can make a team score more points.
Predictive-Defense. This combines the predictive and scoring ratings to measure how many points a team allows. The number is the predictive rating of an opponent against whom the team would be expected to allow the league average number of points. The same caveat in the predictive-offense rating applies here.
Home Scoring. This is an adjustment to the scoring ranking applied at home. Values are nonzero only for baseball, where park effects can be significant.

In order to increase early-season stability, the three main rankings, the improved RPI, and the college pseudopoll include priors based on the previous season final predictive ratings and occasionally incorporating preseason predictions of various major publications. The other rankings for college sports do not include priors, and thus can be wildly unstable early in the year. A team whose rankings are affected by this prior is noted with a P following its rankings.

Full Ranking

                                           STANDARD   MED LIKELY  PREDICTIVE  IMPRVD RPI
TEAM         W  L  T PF PA  SCHED  ELOSS  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  P-SCR  P-OFF  P-DEF  H-SCR
LOS ANGELES 21 10  3 59 41 -0.013 16.697    1  0.085    1  0.057    1  0.069    1 0.5386  0.146 -0.100  0.239  0.000
DALLAS      13 11  7 49 48 -0.019 15.523    2  0.036    2  0.007    6 -0.019    3 0.5092  0.422  0.036 -0.075  0.000
COLORADO    15 14  4 48 58  0.037 17.327    3  0.035    3  0.007    8 -0.030    2 0.5096  0.499  0.093 -0.153  0.000
SAN JOSE    14 13  3 47 39  0.010 15.162    4  0.034    4  0.000    2  0.026    4 0.5064  0.293 -0.028  0.081  0.000
COLUMBUS    13 13  7 50 48 -0.008 16.535    5  0.028    5 -0.010    4  0.008    6 0.4949  0.362  0.011  0.005  0.000
KANSAS CITY 10 12  9 45 54  0.034 16.213    6  0.025    6 -0.012    7 -0.024    5 0.4989  0.560  0.156 -0.204  0.000
NEW ENGLAND 15 16  4 57 54 -0.042 17.040    7  0.021    7 -0.020    3  0.014    7 0.4905  0.535  0.170 -0.142  0.000
CHICAGO     12 15  4 45 43  0.015 15.900    8  0.013    8 -0.027    5 -0.009    8 0.4873  0.260 -0.090  0.072  0.000
METROSTARS  11 15  2 41 47  0.002 14.365    9  0.005    9 -0.032    9 -0.040    9 0.4822  0.505  0.089 -0.168  0.000
D.C. UNITED  9 14  5 31 40 -0.016 14.216   10  0.000   10 -0.037   10 -0.057   10 0.4757 -0.039 -0.360  0.246  0.000

WESTERN DIVISION
                                           STANDARD   MED LIKELY  PREDICTIVE  IMPRVD RPI
TEAM         W  L  T PF PA  SCHED  ELOSS  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  P-SCR  P-OFF  P-DEF  H-SCR
LOS ANGELES 21 10  3 59 41 -0.013 16.697    1  0.085    1  0.057    1  0.069    1 0.5386  0.146 -0.100  0.239  0.000
DALLAS      13 11  7 49 48 -0.019 15.523    2  0.036    2  0.007    6 -0.019    3 0.5092  0.422  0.036 -0.075  0.000
COLORADO    15 14  4 48 58  0.037 17.327    3  0.035    3  0.007    8 -0.030    2 0.5096  0.499  0.093 -0.153  0.000
SAN JOSE    14 13  3 47 39  0.010 15.162    4  0.034    4  0.000    2  0.026    4 0.5064  0.293 -0.028  0.081  0.000
KANSAS CITY 10 12  9 45 54  0.034 16.213    6  0.025    6 -0.012    7 -0.024    5 0.4989  0.560  0.156 -0.204  0.000

EASTERN DIVISION
                                           STANDARD   MED LIKELY  PREDICTIVE  IMPRVD RPI
TEAM         W  L  T PF PA  SCHED  ELOSS  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  RNK RATING  P-SCR  P-OFF  P-DEF  H-SCR
COLUMBUS    13 13  7 50 48 -0.008 16.535    5  0.028    5 -0.010    4  0.008    6 0.4949  0.362  0.011  0.005  0.000
NEW ENGLAND 15 16  4 57 54 -0.042 17.040    7  0.021    7 -0.020    3  0.014    7 0.4905  0.535  0.170 -0.142  0.000
CHICAGO     12 15  4 45 43  0.015 15.900    8  0.013    8 -0.027    5 -0.009    8 0.4873  0.260 -0.090  0.072  0.000
METROSTARS  11 15  2 41 47  0.002 14.365    9  0.005    9 -0.032    9 -0.040    9 0.4822  0.505  0.089 -0.168  0.000
D.C. UNITED  9 14  5 31 40 -0.016 14.216   10  0.000   10 -0.037   10 -0.057   10 0.4757 -0.039 -0.360  0.246  0.000

DIVISION          W  L  T   PCT  RNK RATING
WESTERN DIVISION 73 60 26 0.541    1  0.043
EASTERN DIVISION 60 73 22 0.458    2 -0.058

Home field advantage amounts to:
     0.326 points in main ratings (0.205 for semineutral)
     0.032 points in improved RPI (0.020 for semineutral)
Average of 1.00 points per score

Predict score:








Team Strength vs. Time Plot:






posted: Mon Dec 31 14:13:00 2007
games through: Sun Oct 20 2002

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