Power Ranking Averages - Week 4.5 (3/31/22)

It’s a half-week with only 3 games last week and only 8 sites publishing.

Only 8 sites published this week - all of them were the analytic sites. That makes for some interesting changes. It may be interesting at the end of the year to do a breakdown of analytic rankings vs non to see how they compare. Some late additions have changed the week 4 averages and positions.

Sites Used

• Jeff Sagarin
• Five Thirty Eight (Proj. points)
• Who Scored
• ESPN - No ranking wk. 4.5
• Massey
• Sonny Moore Rankings
• MLS - No ranking wk. 4.5
• MLS Fantasy Boss - (always publishes after I do).
• Sports Club Stats - No ranking for 2 wks.
• Broadway Sports - No ranking since preseason (drop notice).
• Coach & Crew - No ranking wk. 4.5
• Betting Odds
• Waking the Red - No ranking wk. 4.5
• Gamblingsites.com - No ranking since preseason (drop notice).
• Verses Sports Simulator
• Simmons Ratings
• US Soccer Players (monthly) - No ranking wk 2-4.5
• Boston Sports Wave (NER discord) - No ranking wk. 4.5
• Soccer By Ives - No ranking since wk 2.

You may notice the inclusion of ‘analytic’ sites; they serve to function as a ‘control group’ to the rest which are based on personal opinions. There are also sites included that some will argue are ‘prediction rankings’ - but that also is a form of Power Ranking is (see the quote at the top) since it uses algorithms to calculate a team’s likely final position.

Bias for or against certain teams are sometimes an unfortunate feature of power rankings. It can be based on their analytic formula, or the raters preference. In some cases the bias can become extreme - If you feel a site got the ratings wrong for your team I invite you to contact them regarding it.

I will typically only remove sites for two reasons.

1. Duplicating / copying ratings from another source on the list.
2. Failure to update for 6 consecutive weeks. Previous ratings will not be removed, but new ones may or may not be added. I will still periodically check them to see if they have resumed.

All the averages use the Olympic method (I.E. Truncated Mean value) of dropping the highest and lowest scores, and then averaging the rest to reduce bias.

The full spreadsheeet is here.

• Highest Standard Deviation: New York City FC 7.59
• Lowest Standard Deviation: Inter Miami 0.74
• Biggest Rise: Sporting Kansas City up 4.
• Biggest Fall: Portland Timbers down 4.

Site Bias

All sites are going to have bias, whether conscious (blogs) or due to analytic calculation (based on past performance). This section lets you see the extent that sites are biased for/against teams. Negative totals (-) are bias FOR, positive numbers (+) are bias AGAINST.

• Most bias for: Coach and Crew - Austin FC 14.47 better than average.
• Most bias against: MLS Fantasy Boss - Los Angeles FC 14.22 worse than average (may change slightly after they publish rankings).