MLS Week 20 Recap

Good News and bad news for me over the weekend.  The good news is that I had a perfect weekend with my MLS predictions.  The bad news is that I was perfect the wrong way going 0 for 8.  This is actually pretty hard to do, but that is small consolation.  Here is a recap of the results:



Predicted Score				Actual Score				Points
Philadelphia	2	Colorado	1	Philadelphia	1	Colorado	2	-10
Vancouver	1	Los Angeles	1	Vancouver	0	Los Angeles	4	-10
Kansas City	2	New England	1	Kansas City	1	New England	1	-10
Houston	1	Seattle	1	Houston	3	Seattle	1	-10
Real Salt Lake	2	Columbus	0	Real Salt Lake	0	Columbus	2	-10
San Jose	1	D.C. United	1	San Jose	0	D.C. United	2	-10
Portland	3	Toronto FC	2	Portland	2	Toronto FC	2	-10
FC Dallas	1	Chivas USA	1	FC Dallas	1	Chivas USA	0	-10

It was an unusually bad weekend for home teams with three teams getting shut out and only two teams, Dallas and Houston winning.  Perhaps that Texas heat gave them an advantage.  Let's see how these results impacted the SRS ratings:



Team	MOV	SOS	SRS	Change
Real Salt Lake	0.684	-0.014	0.670	-0.148
Los Angeles	0.696	-0.042	0.653	0.131
FC Dallas	0.391	-0.017	0.374	0.045
Philadelphia	0.350	-0.014	0.336	-0.079
New York	0.304	-0.011	0.293	0.009
Seattle	0.304	-0.021	0.284	-0.094
Columbus	0.182	0.024	0.205	0.121
Chivas USA	0.136	0.010	0.146	-0.044
Colorado	0.083	0.027	0.111	0.070
Houston	0.000	0.019	0.019	0.121
Kansas City	0.048	-0.127	-0.080	-0.033
D.C. United	-0.200	0.056	-0.144	0.130
San Jose	-0.227	0.043	-0.185	-0.122
Chicago	-0.250	0.031	-0.219	-0.002
New England	-0.455	0.033	-0.421	0.019
Portland	-0.500	0.026	-0.474	-0.024
Vancouver	-0.591	-0.018	-0.609	-0.146
Toronto FC	-0.917	-0.003	-0.920	0.020

Real Salt Lake holds on to the top spot despite their upset loss to Columbus.  LA's big win over Vancouver puts them right behind the Claret-and-Cobalt.  They actually have the highest average margin of victory (MOV), but RSL's better strength of schedule (SOS) keeps them ahead of the Galaxy overall.

MLS Week 14 Wrapup and SRS Rankings

Another low-scoring weekend for the MLS with only 22 goals in 9 matches or 2.44/match.  That's including the 6-goal outburst in the Portland/New York match.  Thankfully there were no 0-0 draws. 

I had a so-so week for my predictions as you can see below:



Predicted Score				Actual Score				Points
Kansas City	0	San Jose	0	Kansas City	1	San Jose	0	-10
Toronto FC	1	Seattle	2	Toronto FC	0	Seattle	1	15
New England	1	Chicago	1	New England	1	Chicago	1	30
Houston	2	Columbus	0	Houston	0	Columbus	2	-10
Real Salt Lake	2	D.C. United	1	Real Salt Lake	1	D.C. United	1	-10
Colorado	1	Los Angeles	1	Colorado	1	Los Angeles	3	-10
Vancouver	1	Philadelphia	2	Vancouver	1	Philadelphia	0	-10
Chivas USA	1	FC Dallas	1	Chivas USA	1	FC Dallas	2	-10
Portland	1	New York	1	Portland	3	New York	3	20
							Total	5

Correctly picked 3 of 9 outcomes and 1 score.  For the year my accuracy is 37.1% for outcomes and 9.0% for scores.

There are three midweek games.  here are my predictions for those:

Predicted Score
Philadelphia	2	Kansas City	1
Chicago	1	Real Salt Lake	1
Seattle	1	New York	2

My SRS predictions are after the jump:

MLS SRS Rankings and Weekend Predictions

Here are the latest MLS rankings through the 5/11 matches.  Change is versus my last rankings posted on 5/3:

Team	MOV	SOS	SRS	Change
Real Salt Lake	1.167	0.009	1.176	0.075
New York	1.000	0.084	1.084	-0.236
Philadelphia	0.250	0.144	0.394	-0.484
Los Angeles	0.182	0.122	0.304	0.171
Houston	0.333	-0.034	0.299	-0.500
Colorado	0.222	0.074	0.296	0.100
Seattle	0.200	0.048	0.248	-0.331
Columbus	0.250	-0.035	0.215	0.054
Chivas USA	0.125	-0.093	0.032	0.088
FC Dallas	0.111	-0.244	-0.132	0.070
Portland	-0.250	0.081	-0.169	0.296
San Jose	-0.500	0.207	-0.293	-0.087
Chicago	-0.375	-0.043	-0.418	-0.015
New England	-0.444	-0.012	-0.456	0.095
D.C. United	-0.556	0.080	-0.476	0.318
Vancouver	-0.300	-0.199	-0.499	-0.060
Kansas City	-0.500	-0.017	-0.517	-0.021
Toronto FC	-0.600	-0.111	-0.711	0.305

RSL returns to the top after their victory over Chivas.  New York was predicted to beat LA so their draw penalized them enough to drop into second.  Houston's rating dropped half a point due to two losses including one to bottom-of-the-table Toronto.  D.C. United's improvement was driven by their performance against Seattle (win) and FC Dallas (draw), two matches they were projected to lose.

My predictions for the weekend after the jump