The 2011 Table - Magic Numbers, Tragic Numbers & Other Calculated Distortions [R]

While waiting around for a repairman to show up, I went back to the scenarios from GreatGonzo and ThreeApples that I had (wisely) earlier walked away from.

They look right, and I think I have a decent way to explain them. In fact, I think they're a tiny bit more simple than made out above.

---

SEA and RSL clinch if 2 additional teams see their MPPs drop below 51.

HOU and POR must both win out to remain above 51. HOU plays POR. One must drop below 51.

If POR draws HOU, then the MPP numbers drop to:

Code:

[B]		DRAW
POR	52	[COLOR="Red"]50[/COLOR]
HOU	51	[COLOR="Red"]49[/COLOR][/B]

That eliminates two teams from attaining 51 points, and SEA and RSL are in.

If POR beats HOU, the MPP numbers drop to:

Code:

[B][B]Step 1.

		POR
POR	52	52
HOU	51	[COLOR="Red"]48[/COLOR]

Step 2. 

          POR  NYR  DRAW
POR  52   52   [COLOR="Red"]49[/COLOR]   [COLOR="Red"]50[/COLOR]
NYR  51   [COLOR="Red"]48[/COLOR]   51   [COLOR="Red"]48[/COLOR]
[/B][/B]

If POR beats HOU, then two things must happen. First, HOU's MPP drops below 51. Second, one or both of POR and NYR is guaranteed to drop below 51. That eliminates at least two teams from attaining 51 points, and SEA and RSL are in.

If HOU beats POR, then the following would take place.

Code:

[B]           HOU  NYR  SKC
POR   52   [COLOR="Red"]49[/COLOR]   --   --
HOU   51   51   51   51
PHI   57   57   54   51
SKC   55   55   52   52
DCU   56   56   56   53
NYR   51   51   51   51[/B]

First, given the HOU win POR drops below 51 points. That's one additional team below 51.

Second NYR must also win out. If they don't, NYR would be the second team below 51. Assuming NYR wins out, you get the MPP numbers in the NYR column.

Assuming the above, SKC must win all their games except the one against NYR. If they do not, SKC would be the second team below 51. Assuming SKC wins out, you get the MPP numbers in the SKC column.

Assuming the above, PHI must win all their games except those against SKC and NYR. If they do not, PHI would be the second team below 51. PHI plays DCU:

Code:

[B]           PHI  DCU  Draw
PHI   51   51   [COLOR="Red"]48[/COLOR]   [COLOR="Red"]50[/COLOR]
DCU   53   [COLOR="Red"]50[/COLOR]   53   51[/B]

One or both of PHI and DCU will necessarily also drop below 51, guaranteeing a second team below 51. Hence, RSL and SEA have clinched.

Right?

(This stuff is maddening!)

 

Oops! Fixed.

 

... in which I revise and extend my remarks ...

I'm going to revise an earlier assertion, which I think was overstated. I said in my last update that "amazingly, despite all those crazy games, despite all those blown leads, once again almost nothing happened." Well, that's been gnawing at me a bit.

There's one reason in particular: the HD#s for DCU, HOU, NYR and POR, which had all been tightly clustered before this week, actually diverged quite a bit. They all went up yesterday (except for HOU because they did not play), but they did not all go up by the same amount. Some teams weathered those terrible results much better than others.

The chart below has all the info. HD#1 are the HD#s from before Wednesday's games. HD#2 are the HD#s after those games. The win, draw, loss columns show what the team's HD#s would be after their next game according to the different results. So DCU had an HD# of 1.38 before Wednesday. After drawing CHV, the HD# bumped up to 1.43. If they beat RSL, it goes down to 1.17. If they draw, then 1.50, and if they lose, 1.67.

Code:

[B][U]     HD#1  HD#2  Win   Draw  Loss[/U]
DCU  1.38  1.43  1.17  1.50  1.67
HOU  1.50  1.50  1.00  1.67  2.00
POR  1.50  1.60  1.25  1.75  2.00
NYR  1.50  1.80  1.50  2.00  2.25[/B]

DCU still has a good deal of leeway here. They can still blow a game or two (oh, how I know DCU excels at that!), and still -- maybe -- squeak into the playoffs. But the other teams don't have the same luxury. I've long held that once a team's HD# surpasses 2.00, that team's playoff prospects are in extreme peril. If HOU or POR lose, they'll be at 2.00. But they're not in the worst situation. NYR is. NYR must win. A draw against POR would hurt both NYR and POR, but it would hurt NYR a whole hell of a lot more. That 1 point POR got against SJE gave them just enough strength to maybe weather a draw this weekend.

All that said, I am talking about the HD#s here and the assumption of those numbers is that it's going to take about 1.33 PPG over the whole season to make the playoffs this year. The way things have been going, that prediction has been looking pretty good. The actual performance of the 10th place team since Week 23 when this thread began has been just about 1.30 PPG (which is why the HD#s and the AD#s have been almost identical).

The question is whether the bottom is about to fall out of the PPG averages for the middle of the table. It might. These teams are not winning, and when you don't win, your PPG average goes down. To me it's remarkable that the 10th place teams are still doing as well as they are.

If the PPG averages plummet, the fact that a team's HD# goes over 2.00 may not spell doom in the way I usually think it does. But that'd be because the HD# would no longer reflect the realities of the actual table. For now, however, because the AD#s and HD#s are so close, it does.

And because it does, I think you can look at those numbers and see that Wednesday's games actually did have pretty big consequences even if, at first glance, it didn't seem that way last night.

 

... Union of The Sporks Update ...

Code:

[B][U]         GP  GR  W   D   L   PTS PPG   PRJ MPP SE# T#  M#  WS# HD#   AD#   CNF[/U]
[COLOR="Blue"]01  LAG  29  05  16  10  03  58  2.00  68  73  16  --  --  --  ----  ----  W
02  RSL  28  06  15  06  07  51  1.82  62  69  12  --  01‡ --  ----  ----  W
03  SEA  29  05  14  09  06  51  1.76  60  66  09  --  01‡ --  ----  ----  W[/COLOR]
04  FCD  29  05  13  07  09  46  1.59  54  61  04  25  06  --  ----  ----  W
05  CMB  29  05  11  08  10  41  1.41  48  56  --  20  11  00  0.80  0.81  E
06  PHI  29  05  09  13  07  40  1.38  47  55  --  19  12  01  1.00  1.01  E
07  COL  30  04  10  11  09  41  1.37  46  53  --  17  11  00  1.00  1.02  E
08  SKC  30  04  10  11  09  41  1.37  46  53  --  17  11  00  1.00  1.02  W
09  HOU  30  04  09  12  09  39  1.30  44  51  --  15  13  02  1.50  1.52  E
10  DCU  27  07  08  11  08  35  1.30  44  56  --  20  17  06  1.43  1.44  E
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11  POR  29  05  10  07  12  37  1.28  43  52  --  16  15  04  1.60  1.61  W
12  NYR  29  05  07  15  07  36  1.24  42  51  --  15  16  05  1.80  1.81  E
13  CHI  28  06  05  15  08  30  1.07  36  48  --  12  22  11  2.50  2.51  E
14  CHV  30  04  07  11  12  32  1.07  36  44  --  08  20  09  ----  ----  W
15  SJE  29  05  06  12  11  30  1.03  35  45  --  09  22  11  ----  ----  W
16  TFC  30  04  06  12  12  30  1.00  34  42  --  06  22  11  ----  ----  E
17  NER  29  05  05  12  12  27  0.93  32  42  --  06  25  14  ----  ----  E
18  VAN  28  06  04  10  14  22  0.79  27  40  --  04  30  19  ----  ----  W

Current AD-Baseline: 45^ (Unchanged since the last update.) [/B]

Code:

[B]GP = Games Played | GR = Games Remaining | PPG = Points Per Game
MPP = Max Points Possible = PTS + (3 x GR)
SE# = SS Elimination Number = MPP - (1st Place PTS) + 1 
M# = Magic Number = (11th Highest MPP) – PTS + 1
T# = Tragic Number = MPP – (10th Highest PTS) + 1
WS# = Wooden Spoon # = (18th Highest MPP) - PTS +1
HD# = Historical Despair Number = [URL="https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24203471&postcount=1"]Full explanation[/URL]
AD# = Actual Despair Number = [URL="https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24203471&postcount=1"]Full explanation[/URL]

- Sorted by PPG, then most GR, then alphabetical.
- Teams in [COLOR="SlateGray"]gray[/COLOR] have been eliminated from the playoffs.
- Teams in [COLOR="Blue"]blue[/COLOR] have clinched a playoff spot.
- Teams in [COLOR="SeaGreen"]green[/COLOR] are conference seeds.
- Team in [COLOR="Brown"]brown[/COLOR] has won the Wooden Spoon.
- Teams in [I]italics[/I] are conference champions.[/B]

Asterisks

^ Set by DCU’s current 44 point (1.30 PPG) pace.

‡ You won't see it anywhere else, but RSL and SEA have clinched. All credit to GreatGonzo for seeing this first, and to ThreeApples for confirming it. Here's my rundown of GreatGonzo's proof if you'd like to see how the conclusion was reached.

Notes

I've got zippy. So here's a puppy.



That's either a very large puppy, or a very small soccer ball.

 

"Due to tonight's 1-1 PHI @ KC result"

What?

This makes no sense to me. I mean, for the the reasons stated in this thread, I believe RSL and SEA are in.

But tonight's result between PHI and SKC had zippy to do with that. No idea what MLS is thinking here. This result wasn't even relevant to the RSL or SEA clinching.

Somebody explain to me why this tweet isn't total nonsense. Or is MLS (as they sometimes have been) full of crap?

 

I see. But in essence they did do what was done in this thread, which is play out the scenarios. It's just that tonight that's easier since NYR-SKC has now become a game in which somebody is walking away with an MPP of less than 51.

I wasn't even thinking along those lines. I was trying to figure out what MLS was seeing in the numbers, because there nothing changed. Technically, SEA and RSL each still have M#s of +1.

Well, good. Hopefully, now that everyone agrees they've clinched, RSL slacks off tomorrow. 'Cuz DCU needs some points!

 

When they announced that RSL (and by implication SEA) had clinched, and yet the standard numbers hadn't changed, the thought crossed my mind.

 

I'd like to think the folks at MLS care about this stuff as much as we do.

I've been thinking that the various sports analysis companies probably have computer programs that can work out all these permutations instantly. Or so you'd think! Right?

 

Serious movement on the table today!

 

Very little separates NYR from CMB. It's all basically within a couple of points.

It's not crazy. Unless you simply think NYR doesn't have the quality of HOU, SKC, DCU, CMB and PHI.