Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Scariness For Jun 5 (and a little twist)

Well, I got an 0-fer on my last set of picks, which is so depressing I won’t even bother to go over them (though, RSL did pull out a tie that I’m pretty happy about). Instead, I thought I’d spend some extra time on my scariness ratings. This time I present the older style along with a new (improved?) version.

Traditional Scariness

Team Scariness Rating
DC United 2.2 1 (+1)
Kansas City 2.06 2 (+2)
Toronto 1.96 3 (+4)
Colorado 1.92 4 (-3)
New England 1.86 5 (0)
Dallas 1.62 6 (0)
New York 1.42 7 (-4)
Houston 1.2 8 (+4)
Chivas 1.14 9 (-1)
Chicago 0.94 10 (+3)
Los Angeles 0.92 11 (-1)
Salt Lake 0.8 12 (-1)
Columbus 0.4 13 (-4)

Adjusted Scariness

Team Adj Scariness Rating Diff from Scariness Rating
Kansas City 2.74 1 +1
New York 2.62 2 +5
DC United 2.35 3 -2
Chivas 2.18 4 +5
Toronto 2.15 5 -2
Houston 1.65 6 +2
Colorado 1.61 7 -3
New England 1.61 7 -2
Salt Lake 1.46 9 +3
Los Angeles 1.16 10 +1
Chicago 1 11 +1
Dallas 0.8 12 -6
Columbus -0.12 13 0
The Adjusted Scariness probably deserves a bit of explanation:
  • For each game, I add up the team’s points from a game, the opponents PPG average for the last five games, and add a bonus point for playing on the road, then divide by two to create a value for the game.
  • I add the goal differential to the value for each game, to create a modified value.
  • Finally, I take a weighted average of the last five modified values (using weightings of .5, .7, .9, 1.1, and 1.3).

This takes a little bit longer, but gives a clearer picture (I think). There are still some surprises there (how did Chivas and RSL climb so high?), but I think I’m getting closer. I’m still looking for feedback, so please let me know what you think. (Oh, this is getting hairy enough that I don’t expect to do it for any other leauges.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Toronto isn't good enough to get an adjusted scariness?

gnupate said...

Anonymous,
I missed them on my cut and paste from the spreadsheet, then proceeded to be an idiot and not notice that there were only twelve teams. I've corrected the table aboe.