2022 - Team Ratings After Round 18

/

Geelong retained top spot on both Systems this week, while Sydney took second away from Melbourne.

Further down the ladder there were nine more moves on MoSSBODS and eight more on MoSHBODS, leaving the two Systems agreeing about the ranking of only the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 9th. 11th, and 14th through 18th. There are only two teams, however, where they differ in their rankings by more than two places: Carlton and Richmond.

Eleven teams are rated as above-average on MoSSBODS and on MoSHBODS,.

There was only one multiple-spot mover on MoSSBODS, Brisbane Lions climbing 4 spots into 5th, while three teams moved multiple spots on MoSHBODS: Brisbane Lions up 3 into 5th, Essendon up 2 into 11th, and Gold Coast down 2 into 13th.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings remains very high, and now stands at +0.9941. The correlation on defence alone is +0.991 and on offence alone +0.990.

To provide some historical context to the teams’ current Ratings, the chart below shows the Ratings of selected teams from V/AFL history after 18 rounds of their respective seasons. Bear in mind that any season with fewer than 18 home-and-away rounds will have no teams in this chart.

Melbourne and Geelong have now been joined by Sydney as the only teams rated higher at this point in the season than 50% of the teams in history that subsequently made the Grand Final, while North Melbourne continues to have one of the lowest-ever offensive ratings.

The animation below maps the path that each 2022 team has followed to reach its current Rating.

Or, if you prefer a static view of the teams’ combined MoSSBODS Ratings, here’s a new chart (with reasonable colours for most of the teams, but ultimately thwarted in the attempt to provide them for all the teams by the sheer number of blues, blacks and reds in team colour schemes)

And, to facilitate a more direct comparison of the two Systems, here’s the MoSHBODS version.

On the Component Ratings, on offence, we find both Systems now with a Top 3 of Cats, Swans, and Tigers, and, on defence, we find both with a Top 3 of Cats, Dees, and Dockers.

On MoSSBODS, 7 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 1), 6 are rated negatively on both (down 1), one is rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (down 1), and 4 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (up 1). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.76.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked 11 teams this week, but only one by multiple spots, with Gold Coast slipping 2 and into 12th.

Two of those 11 moves were slipping Geelong into 1st spot ahead of Melbourne.

MARS is now most different in its thinking compared to the MoS twins about only Port Adelaide, which it ranks 6th compared to the twins’ ranking of 9th. For every other team, MARS’ ranking is no more than two spots different to at least on of the twins’.

In terms of groupings, we now have, according to MARS, roughly:

  • Geelong and Melbourne

  • Brisbane Lions and Sydney

  • Western Bulldogs, Port Adelaide, Richmond, and Fremantle

  • Carlton

  • Collingwood, St Kilda, Gold Coast, and Essendon

  • GWS and Hawthorn

  • Adelaide

  • West Coast

  • North Melbourne

Only nine teams are now rated as better-than-average by MARS, which is three fewer than was the case last week.

The Rating gap between first and last currently stands at about 85.5 Rating Points, which is down about 2 Rating Points on last week..

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we still find relatively large differences for a few teams, the largest being for Collingwood where the team’s ladder position is well above its System Ranking, and for Western Bulldogs where the team’s ladder position is well below its System Rankings.

MARS currently has the outright most-extreme ranking for 10 of the teams, MoSSBODS for five, and MoSHBODS for four.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS agree about the ranking of 11 teams, MoSHBODS and MARS about four teams, and MoSSBODS and MARS about five teams.

While the number of disagreements might seem high, the magnitude of those differences, in most cases, turns out to be small.

In fact, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Carlton (5 spots) has the widest range of rankings, but that the range is just two spots or less for 15 teams.

The three Systems have the same ranking for Geelong, North Melbourne, and West Coast.