Is MLS becoming the "League of Ties"?

Draw percentages for the top level in the top countries in 2013-2014:
France: 28.4%
Portugal: Exactly 25%
Italy: 23.7%
Spain: 22.6%
Germany: 20.9%
England: 20.5%

MLS has the clubs more equal than in those leagues.

 

Didn't we do this thread like 2 seasons ago?

 

Man, I remember the scoreless tie panic like 3 seasons ago. That went away, just like this will, the sample size is even smaller here compared to back then.

 

Meh, its early in the seasons. Teams are having trouble scoring goals but the goals will come.

 

Yes we did … it seems like it's always like this early in the season. Rough pitches, rough weather sometimes and teams still rusty from offseason. Once season progresses the bad teams lose confidence and good teams start to gain confidence which leads to more blowouts ...

 

It's not a hard decision. You should quit imposing your own judgments, because you do a bad job of it.

 

Let me put it this way ... with six teams getting into the playoffs in each conference, what incentive does either team, especially the road team, especially a bad team, or even just a middling team, have for trying to go forward and try to score goals? The best strategy is to pack it in and squeak out enough road ties to stay close, because if you do that, then basically nobody is going to be eliminated until the end.

Let me put it this way, if Garber announced tomorrow that only three teams from each conference are going to the playoffs, then you would see goalscoring jump in a week.

 

Yeah, because clearly what the Rapids are missing is the desire to score goals, not the talent to do so.

 

A couple quick numbers:
Highest season-long draw rate: 2011, 34.6%
Total years with draw rate >30%: 2011, 2009, 2004
Draw rate, 2000 - 2003: 19.5%
Overall draw rate, 2000 - present (including 2015 so far): 26.0%
Overall draw rate, 2004 - present (including 2015 so far): 27.5%
Overall draw rate, 2010 - present (including 2015 so far): 27.4%

A quick statement about general large-number statistics about soccer games:
A good, simple, back of envelope number to assume for teams of roughly equal quality is as follows:
50% home win
25% tie
25% away win
That ratio tends to roughly hold across leagues. It obviously varies, but in large numbers, it doesn't vary by more than a few percentage points. MLS tends to fall within that general rule. Although it does trend a little on the high end, it is not hugely so.

 

The Quakes Jean Baptiste Pierazzi did his part to avoid a tie with the Revolution by missing that sitter at the death.

 

Yes, and I was drawn to this thread precisely because some people who I think should know better have been arguing that. I think it becomes pretty dumb once you submit it to a modicum of inspection.

Last year, 10/19 teams made the playoffs. This year, 12/20. That's about a 7% difference all told or only a 1 in 13.5 chance of making any difference for your team. Now, split that effect up over 34 games, and the 'meaning factor' of each game is about 0.2% different, almost infinitesimal, and nowhere near enough incentive to change how we look at games.

Or look at it another way. Sportsclubstats.com keeps track of every team's playoff odds every week assuming all the rest of the results were random (except for home field advantage). Let's look at the teams that got road draws this week and see what it did for their odds:

Saturday P G W - D - L GD % Change
Red Bulls T DC United 2-2 8 3 2 - 2 - 0 3 90.2% +1.0
Real Salt Lake T Sporting KC 0-0 9 2 2 - 3 - 0 2 75.8 +0.4
Crew T Revolution 0-0 5 2 1 - 2 - 2 0 63.2 +4.2​

Only one of the three benefited in any significant way from the draw, even though all three were playing intra-conference games. And to put that one, the Crew, in perspective, the Crew gained by virtue of their draw only about what the Rapids by virtue of being idle that day. What that means is these early season results should be magnified by the formula, since we're assuming that the rest of the season is random. For perspective, the Houston Dynamo's result enhanced their playoff odds by 32%.

Compare to the three home teams that drew:

DC United T Red Bulls 2-2 10 2 3 - 1 - 1 1 86.9 -1.1
Sporting KC T Real Salt Lake 0-0 9 1 2 - 3 - 1 0 49.7 -9.9
Revolution T Crew 0-0 8 1 2 - 2 - 2 -2 56.6 -3.9​

If we add up the percentages, the road teams gained 5.6/3 or 1.8% on average. The home teams lost 14.9/3 or 5.0% on average. Meaning the draws did a lot more damage to the home team than anything the road team gained, and on net, all the teams that drew hurt their playoff odds 9.3/3 or 3.1% on average. This makes sense in a 3/1/0.

And we haven't even addressed the fact that seeding matters in the playoffs. Even if we assume (sadly, so far this seems not to be far from true) that the two-leg aggregate with away goals is a perfect coin flip, then the odds of representing your conference in the Cup Final by seed, back when 8 teams made the playoffs would look like this:

1 -- 25%
2-- 25%
3-- 25%
4-- 25%​

And remember that the additional teams were added only for the play-in rounds, so the chance that they have comes entirely at the expense of their play-in opponent. When we go to five teams, that gives us:

1-- 25%
2-- 25%
3-- 25%
4-- 12.5%
5-- 12.5%​

and with 6 teams:

1-- 25%
2-- 25%
3-- 12.5%
4-- 12.5%
5-- 12.5%
6-- 12.5%​

. . . but wait, I said assume the H&H w/AG is a coin-flip. The play-in round isn't played that way. HFA is worth about 0.4-0.5 gpg, or in other words it tends to create about a 70/30 split for the home team when someone has to advance. That creates odds that look more like this:

1-- 25%
2-- 25%
3-- 17.5%
4-- 17.5%
5-- 7.5%
6-- 7.5%​

So in addition to a tiny likelihood that a drawn game helps you squeak into the playoffs with that one extra seed, there is also a pretty small likelihood that you'll do anything with that 6 seed even if you get it. Remember too, those are not the odds of winning MLS Cup, they are the odds of getting to the Cup Final. The odds of winning the Final then are swayed by the tiny odds that the 6 seed would ever host it. And remember, all these numbers assume no underlying difference in the quality of teams. They all stand only to get worse if we assume that you are what your record says you are.

So your road draw gives you a little less than a 2% bump in your odds of making the playoffs, which if you get that 6 seed gives you a 7.5% chance of making the Final and we will say charitably a 30% chance of winning that game. So that draw aimed at the 6 seed was worth about 0.04% in terms of your title aspirations. Congratulations, road drawer: you now have 1 more chance in 2,470 to win MLS Cup. And you're telling me that affects how you approach every game in some tangible way, when there are obviously much bigger factors at play?