As a lifelong baseball fan, one of the highlights of my season is the day my Baseball Prospectus arrives in the mail. Baseball Prospectus is the analytic version of the lost almanac from the future that helps Biff Tannen build his Pleasure Paradise and Casino Hotel in Back to the Future II. It uses rigorous application of statistics to give you an intelligent but blurry, incomplete vision of the future. Baseball is essentially an individual sport, so it easily lends itself to the kind of exacting and distilled analysis that in certain situations can all but predict outcomes.
Statistical analysis for soccer, on the other hand, is certainly a developing field. I don't know a whole lot about soccermetrics, but definitely read what I could find during the World Cup when Alex Beam covered it for the Boston Globe, and Prospectus founder Nate Silver wrote about the metric he developed for ESPN's coverage of the World Cup, the Soccer Power Index. I feel borderline embarrassed to be discussing macrotrends when I'm using little to no rational analysis, but, well, this is all out of homerism anyway and for fun. Our culture's ranking obsessions as a whole are borderline absurd, even if sports whizzes like Silver and John Hollinger makes it seem downright sensible. And a brief note on the folly of predicting MLS standings in March: with the international transfer window not due to open until late in the summer, and at least a few big names bound to change sides during that time, supposed glaring weaknesses for deep-pocketed teams (such as Seattle's apparent newfound striker paucity) will almost surely turn into strengths. Anyway, rankings are dumb and pointless but I thoroughly enjoy participating in dumb and pointless opportunity to speculate on soccer, so shall we?
1. Real Salt Lake. When an American side starts to dominate the CONCACAF Champions League the Supporters Shield is in grasp. As we saw last night in Seattle with the excellent play of Josh Saunders subbing for an injured Donovan Ricketts, depth is the key. Salt Lake has that depth. Paolo Junior blows me away every time Kreis puts him on the field in the seventy-fifth minute. There's not a team as deep, well-rounded and well-coached in the league, and this is an easy call. I'm looking forward to seeing them come to Portland next month.
2. Red Bull New Jersey. My sentimental favorite for the Shield. A deep and compelling team that's had a year to gel after putting together some fascinating pieces in Rafa Marquez, Thierry Henry, Tim Ream and Juan Agudelo. (The fact that most of those players weren't in uniform for RBNY last year when the team opened its arena shows what an exercise in futility these rankings are.) I'm rooting for them to succeed, if only because a league full of half-empty risers in cities like Columbus, Ohio may have been the original MLS plan, but it's not any fun.
3. Colorado Rapids. What does it say about the MLS Cup that with the addition of Sannya Nyassi and more Omar Cummings/ Conor Casey, Rapids are almost sure to be a better team this year, and still most analysts are placing them in the league's second tier? (Silence.) That these rankings are dumb and pointless, obviously!
4. LA Galaxy. Full of depth and well-coached, but their reliance on two of the game's elder statesmen to push the attack, not to mention the collection of guys born in the 1970s on the roster makes me bearish on LA's chances of avoiding the injury bug. Looking forward to a great year out of Landycakes.
5. FC Frisco. It takes an hour to get from FC Dallas's stadium to Oklahoma. With no traffic, it takes forty minutes(!) to get there from Dallas proper. As a name, FC Dallas sounds prettier, but the Dallas (Fuel) Burn was probably more accurate.
Note: if Dallas had even competent roster management around the time of the Expansion draft, they could easily be ranked second or third. By the way, thanks for Rodney Wallace via new DC United captain Dax McCarty, guys.
6. Seattle Sounders. To quote Silky Johnston, "I hope all the bad things in life happen to you, and only you." They're deep, they're going to buy someone big this summer, and... yep... they're fun to watch. Especially when they play Monterrey.
POSTED WITH MINIMAL COMMENT FOR BREVITY:
7. Kansas City. But third with Chad Johnson (kidding!). I love their attack, and Teal Bunbury is going to be my early, contrarian pick for Golden Boot award winner. I have July 2nd circled on my calendar.
8. Houston. Spencer's old side does good with new additions.
9. Chivas LA. I'm a big fan of Heath Pearce and Robin Fraser, and if any two guys could will this punchless bunch to the playoffs, it's them.
10. San Jose. This is much lower than most other places have them, but what of it? Baseball Prospectus's skepticism of late-career bloomers has me doubting a Wondo reprise. They're good, as evidenced by the team I picked to finish directly below them...
11. Portland Timbers. What did you expect from me? This is the highest I could realistically put the boys in green. God, depth is a concern, but with Kenny Cooper, Jorge Perlaza-Drexler and Darlington Nagbe up front, we're going to be more fun to watch than almost any team besides Kansas City and possibly New Jersey.
12. Philadelphia. Le Toux can't be as good as the fanboys say, can he?
13. DC United. They'll make strides, and Dax McCarty will be fun to watch, but I was always skeptical of Cronin as an MLS starter, and overhaul or no, they were terrible last year. I'm over the Charlie Davies sentimentality crap- he skipped team curfew to get in a car with two drunk girls, the car wrecked, with his co-passenger dying and the driver going to prison. A year later he was cited in France for driving over a hundred and twenty miles an hour, but claimed he lied to the police about being the driver. No thanks. Score some goals and do the stanky leg, but you're no Ron Burgundy, buddy.
14. Columbus. Robbie Rogers and what army? This is a hobbyhorse of mine, but the fact that one of the most widely used international club ranking metrics has Columbus ranked as the top side in North America shows what antiquated jokes these methods are. Some rigorous analysis, please.
15. New England. I anticipate them signing someone decent from abroad during the transfer window as a magnanamious gesture of the Most Beneficent Robert Kraft. Otherwise, they'd be down at the bottom.
16. Vancouver. What the hell are they doing? This roster is a legit, top-North American tier soccer side? Color me perplexed, but I do hope for big things for the team playing at a glorified set of risers on East Hastings.
17 (tie) Chicago and Toronto. Willing to substantially revise if Timbers cough up three points in either early match to these teams.
(Photo: this year's 2011 Prospectus and a pint of the good stuff)
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