PDO: Week 22 Rankings

I dropped the ball a bit last week not updating the tables. Here is how they look as of this past weekend's results.

Team	Shots Against	GA	Sv%	SoT	GF	SH%	TSR	Points	Games	PPG	PDO
Portland Timbers	89	20	77.53%	101	30	29.70%	0.532	34	21	1.62	1072
New England Rev.	85	19	77.65%	84	22	26.19%	0.497	30	21	1.43	1038
New York Red Bulls	92	27	70.65%	88	29	32.95%	0.489	35	22	1.59	1036
Houston Dynamo	83	20	75.90%	81	22	27.16%	0.494	30	20	1.5	1031
Salt Lake	102	24	76.47%	121	32	26.45%	0.543	37	22	1.68	1029
Dallas	109	27	75.23%	98	27	27.55%	0.473	32	21	1.52	1028
Vancouver Whitecaps	92	29	68.48%	98	32	32.65%	0.516	32	21	1.52	1011
Philadelphia Union	97	30	69.07%	102	32	31.37%	0.513	34	22	1.55	1004
Seattle Sounders FC	80	22	72.50%	76	21	27.63%	0.487	28	19	1.47	1001
Colorado Rapids	92	24	73.91%	91	23	25.27%	0.497	34	23	1.48	992
Montreal Impact	92	29	68.48%	105	31	29.52%	0.533	35	20	1.75	980
Columbus Crew	99	27	72.73%	94	23	24.47%	0.487	23	21	1.1	972
Kansas City	63	21	66.67%	103	29	28.16%	0.620	36	22	1.64	948
San Jose Earthquakes	109	33	69.72%	87	21	24.14%	0.444	27	22	1.23	939
CD Chivas USA	118	37	68.64%	69	17	24.64%	0.369	17	21	0.81	933
L.A. Galaxy	76	27	64.47%	108	30	27.78%	0.587	33	22	1.5	923
Toronto FC	77	29	62.34%	69	17	24.64%	0.473	17	21	0.81	870
Chicago Fire	85	30	64.71%	103	20	19.42%	0.548	25	20	1.25	841
DC	93	35	62.37%	62	8	12.90%	0.400	10	21	0.48	753

Again, Portland, even with their loss, retains their title as the luckiest club in MLS by PDO*. Meanwhile, New England continues to mystify as they pretty much pulled that win together with duct tape, spit and some wood glue. Is Jay Heaps really Macgyver? I'm going to guess no, though as we talked about on the podcast, home field advantage not only helps to place pressure on the ref, but it may also encourage more aggression from the home side. One can only wonder if Jay Heaps is able to simulate this effect with a stirring pep talk prior to the match against a terrible team on the road.

However, just like how Chivas and Toronto have been largely unaffected this season, likely due to some terrible play and a limited talent base, you have to wonder if we are seeing many of these clubs performing at their true rates. I don't think you can completely attribute RSL's finishing success to luck when defensively they have some great pieces and offensively they, again, have some great pieces.

As we watch the year unfold it's going to be rather interesting to see where these clubs end up with playoff spots at seasons end.

*PDO here is based on shots on target, not total attempts. 

ASA Podcast XII: The one where we talk PDO

I hope you all have enjoyed the build up to this week's podcast concerning PDO. In today's episode we review the Gold Cup situation with the Mens National Team, talk a bit about PDO, and then preview Real Salt Lake and Dallas FC (so that you can see how grossly wrong we were). Enjoy! [audio http://americansocceranalysis.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/asa-episode-xii.mp3]

PDO: Major League Soccer Table 7/12/13

We had a light introduction of the statistic of PDO last evening, and as promised, here is the corresponding table as it exists for Major League Soccer.

Team	Games	PPG	TSR	PDO
New England Rev.	17	1.41	0.497	1101
Portland Timbers	18	1.67	0.530	1100
Seattle Sounders FC	16	1.50	0.469	1071
FC Dallas	19	1.63	0.474	1060
Real Salt Lake	19	1.79	0.569	1049
Montreal Impact	17	1.82	0.522	1039
New York Red Bulls	19	1.47	0.480	1039
Houston Dynamo	18	1.44	0.493	1034
Vancouver Whitecaps	18	1.61	0.525	1016
Colorado Rapids	20	1.35	0.497	1016
Columbus Crew	19	1.21	0.489	1012
Philadelphia Union	19	1.42	0.520	975
L.A. Galaxy	19	1.58	0.594	967
Sporting Kansas City	19	1.58	0.603	965
San Jose Earthquakes	20	1.05	0.432	945
Toronto FC	17	0.76	0.460	940
CD Chivas USA	18	0.78	0.384	937
Chicago Fire	17	1.24	0.551	864
DC United	19	0.53	0.382	802

If you're trying to figure out what to look at, there are a couple of things that may, possibly, jump out at you. The first being the New England Revolution sandwiched between the two best teams in MLS, Portland and Montreal. Admittedly, the club has been on a sort of hot streak but it a large percentage of their PDO comes from the lack of goals they've conceded. Opposing clubs have the worst conversion rate of Goals/Shots against New England.

Similarly, you see Sporting Kansas City sitting 15th in PDO and can't help but be a little bit scared of what could come in the second half should there be positive regression. Considering all the head scratching that the media and supporters have concerning Seattle's early exploits, Sporting has gone largely unnoticed with an underwhelming start. Yet, the TSR (explanation linked--we'll get into this more down the road) is very much there and so are the points. An interesting out come for a club that (deservedly) had the hype machine cranked to full.

Oh, and DC United is definitely still a combination bad and unlucky. Sorry, Drew.

A little information on: PDO

With the holiday behind us we can once again start to return to the business at hand. The half-way mark is upon us and MLS has given us an exciting and very tight race across both the Western and Eastern conferences. With that comes another week of podcasts. #AnalysisEvolved. This week we plan on talking a bit about a statistic by the name PDO. Unlike how you might imagine most statistic names coming about, or things with three random letters, this is not an acronym. It's pronounced how it's sounds.

Originally a hockey metric, PDO is simply the sum of save percentage and scoring percentage, then multiplied times 1000. The rest of the history as it applies to soccer isn't necessarily important.

A great introduction to the idea and how it applies to the sport is given by Tyler Dellow of mc79hockey.com, and there is another introduction on the site Pension Plan Puppet by one "Skinny Fish."

Both sites give examples of how PDO can potentially isolate a team's performance over the course of a season and compare those to past performances, various incarnations of the team, and of course, other teams.

I can't directly attribute who was the first to apply the team analysis to the sport of soccer(Grayson confirmed he was the first...). But the oldest article I can find referencing its usage within the sport comes from the ever-smart and sophisticated Canuck, James Grayson. His series of introductions to the metric is linked below.

A Premier: PDO

PDO – part I

PDO – part II

Along with an explanation of the stat and some information about how it regresses to the mean---because it's fantastic at doing that---there is also a bit of information about how it can be used to compare different clubs to one another.

Basically, it comes down to being one of the best methods to determine the barometer of a team. While we can look at point totals and standings in the table, PDO can reasonably tell us if a team is over performing or under performing.

I'm not in any way an expert on this stat. There are of course some occasions were you may run into issues with trying to apply it to a specific scenario, and I could point anyone in search of more answers on the subject in better directions than toward myself. I could easily name about a dozen or so people that are much more versed in this metric than I am.

However, since we were going to take about it on our podcast this weekend, I wanted to give the reader/listener an opportunity to find some quick and easy references to the material before hearing us talk about it this weekend.

I'll have an updated PDO standings for you all tomorrow which will lead into our discussions on Saturday.