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UPDATE to my Playoff Predictability Post

Assessment Time

On June 1 I posted a statistical analysis from the last few years on the predictability of MLS playoffs. Under the hypothesis that the playoff teams were actually quite predictable from team records early in the season. Now that are the playoff teams are decided; it is time to revisit that post and see how the analysis and predictions performed.

The predictions were:
East:

  1. Sporting Kansas City
  2. New England Revolution
  3. Toronto FC
  4. D.C. United
  5. Houston Dynamo

West:

  1. Seattle Sounders
  2. Real Salt Lake
  3. FC Dallas
  4. Vancouver Whitecaps
  5. LA Galaxy

The Actual playoff teams are:

East*:

  1. DC UNITED
  2. New England
  3. Sporting Kansas City
  4. New York Red Bulls
  5. Columbus Crew

West:

  1. Seattle sounders FC
  2. LA Galaxy
  3. Real Salt Lake
  4. FC Dallas
  5. Vancouver Whitecaps

8 of 10. I did alright. I nailed the entire Western Conference but only got 3 of 5 from the Eastern conference. I make no excuses, but I did write at the time "New York is tied on points with Houston but loses out on tie breakers" and Toronto was in a playoff position until they fired Nelsen. TFC being TFC ruined their statistically valid chances of making the playoffs for the first time and Kinnear's team failed to make its characteristic late season push. Oh well. Read more about the analysis here.

*Eastern conference rankings not finalized at the time of this post

Looking to the future

Now, the analysis was not looking at the predictability of the final rankings. And given the unpredictability of the MLS Cup participants by ranking since 2008 I'm not sure predicting ranking would be useful but maybe in the future.

MLS Cup Participants






Conference Ranking

1

2

3

4

5


3

3

2

3

1

MLS Cup Winner






Conference Ranking

1

2

3

4

5


2

1

1

2

0



Once again the next season will be an opportunity to see if Olsen & Co. can become consist at winning. Will they sell Hamid? Will Deleon ever be consistently effective? Will the old men Boswell, Arnaud, and Rolfe crater? Are Korb and Kemp really MLS starting quality? Did the expansion draft ravage the team? Did the new acquisitions work? We should be able to tell early in the season if they made the right decisions and if Olsen can for the first time put together back-to-back winning seasons.

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