2019 - Team Ratings After Round 11
/GWS opened up a gap to Collingwood on both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS this week after its 73-point and 18 Scoring Shot victory over the Suns, and the Pies’ 4-point and 4 Scoring Shot loss to Fremantle.
Just below them, Port Adelaide climbed into 3rd on MoSSBODS, while Geelong retained 3rd on MoSHBODS.
In general, it was quite the round for team re-rankings, with MoSSBODS moving 11 teams, including 5 by more than two spots, and MoSHBODS moving 10 teams, including 3 by more than two spots.
Those moves left the Systems now differing in their rankings of seven teams by more than two spots:
Port Adelaide, ranked 3rd on MoSSBODS and 6th on MoSHBODS
Melbourne, ranked 7th and 13th
Brisbane Lions, ranked 8th and 12th
Western Bulldogs, ranked 9th and 14th
Adelaide, ranked 12th and 8th
Hawthorn, ranked 13th and 10th
West Coast, ranked 14th and 7th
That’s an extremely high number of significant differences, especially 11 rounds into the season. It’ll be interesting to see if the performances of MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS as forecasters materially diverge over coming weeks since, to date, their performances have been very similar. MoSSBODS has tipped 63 winners to MoSHBODS 60, MoSSBODS has a mean absolute error (MAE) of 26.4 compared to MoSHBODS’ 26.6, and the pair lie 1st and 2nd on the Head-to-Head Probability Predictor Leaderboard.
Six teams - the Top 6 under both Systems - now have a positive Combined Rating, while
Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions have a positive Combined Rating on MoSSBODS but not on MoSHBODS
Fremantle, Adelaide and West Coast have a positive Combined Rating on MoSHBODS but not on MoSSBODS
The gap between 1st and 8th on MoSSBODS now stands at 5.7 Scoring Shots (up 0.4), and between 1st and 8th on MoSHBODS at 22.0 points (up 2.0).
On the component ratings, GWS has now assumed 1st on offence and defence under both Systems. Collingwood sits 2nd on both Systems on defence, and 2nd on offence on MoSHBODS, while the Brisbane Lions rank 2nd on offence according to MoSSBODS.
On MoSSBODS, 5 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (down 2), 4 are rated negatively on both (up 1), 3 are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (unchanged), and 6 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (up 1).
Only two team are now in different quadrants under the two Systems:
Adelaide (positive offence and defence on MoSHBODS, negative offence and defence on MoSSBODS)
St Kilda (negative offence and defence on MoSHBODS, negative offence and positive defence on MoSSBODS)
Looking across all 18 teams we find that:
on offence, only three teams are ranked more than 2 spots differently by the two Systems (Port Adelaide, Richmond, and Western Bulldogs)
on defence, only three teams are ranked more than 2 spots differently by the two Systems (Port Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney).
Next, let’s compare each team’s current ratings with those of teams from the past at the same point in their respective seasons (ie after 11 rounds of the home-and-away season).
Teams shown as red points are teams that eventually finished premiers, and those shown in orange finished as runners up.
GWS is now the only team with a Combined Rating above the median for all previous Grand Finalists at this point in the season, and Collingwood, Port Adelaide, Geelong, and Richmond the only other teams with Combined Ratings above the lowest decile for all previous Grand Finalists. St Kilda, Sydney, Carlton, and Gold Coast all have Combined Ratings lower than that of any previous Grand Finalist at this point in the season.
If we focus purely on those seasons from 2000 on, we obtain a similar picture although Geelong now falls into the lowest decile of previous Grand Finalists during this period.
The following animation shows the path that each team has followed, at the end of each round, to get to its current rating, and highlights the gap that GWS established for itself this week.
ChiPS and MARS left Geelong in 1st place this week, and both elevated GWS into 2nd, leaving Collingwood in 3rd under both Systems.
Across the two Systems, only MARS moved any team by more than 2 places, elevating North Melbourne into 10th.
That’s left the two of them disagreeing about the ranking of only Hawthorn, Adelaide and Sydney by more than two places, and about no team by more than three places. Both now have their Top 9 teams rated as better-than-average teams (ie rated over 1,000), and ChiPS also has its 10th-placed team, Sydney, in that same category.
Looking across the rankings of all four Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find that:
West Coast has by far the widest range of rankings (4th on MARS and 14th on MoSSBODS)
Hawthorn and Melbourne have the next-widest range of rankings (Hawthorn is 6th on ChiPS and 13th on MoSSBODS, Melbourne is 7th on MoSSBODS and 14th on ChiPS and MARS)
Adelaide, the Western Bulldogs, and Sydney come next (Adelaide is 6th on MARS and 12th on MoSSBODS, Western Bulldogs is 9th on MoSSBODS and 15th on ChiPS and MARS, Sydney is 10th on ChiPS and 16th on MoSSBODS)
Port Adelaide is 3rd on MoSSBODS and 8th on ChiPS
No other team is ranked more than four places differently across the four Systems.
Gold Coast and Carlton are still the only teams ranked identically by all four Systems, but five other teams’ rankings cover only two values.
The Rating Systems disagree then in fairly major ways about the ranking of at least 7 of the teams. As I alluded to earlier, these are historically high levels of disagreement, especially at such an advanced stage of the season.
We now see fairly large positive differences between ladder position and Rating System rankings (ie three red dots, where Rating System ranking is much lower than ladder position) for only the Lions and Saints, and large negative differences (ie two green dots) for, still, only the Dons.
