2023 - Team Ratings After Round 15

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There were yet more big moves on the MoS Rating Systems this week, but no changes in the agreed Top and Bottom 3, which remain Power, Dees, and Lions for the apex, and Hawks, Roos, and Eagles fro the nadir.

The biggest movers on MoSSBODS were Sydney (up 5 into 4th), Gold Coast (up 3 into 8th), and Collingwood (down 3 into 7th, despite winning), and on MoSHBODS was Sydney (up 5 into 5th). No other teams moved by more than 2 places on either System. In total, nine teams changed places on MoSSBODS, and 10 changed places on MoSHBODS.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9919 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 3.6 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Power, Lions, and Swans, and MoSHBODS with a Top 3 of Power, Lions, and Crows. On defence MoSSBODS has a Top 3 of Dees, Power, and Lions, while MoSHBODS still has it as Dees, Pies, and Saints.

MoSSBODS now has 10 teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS still has 12. MoSSBODS also still has 12 teams rated as above average on defence, while MoSHBODS now has 12 also.

To put the latest MoSSBODS Ratings in some historical context, here are the Ratings of all teams after Round 15 across V/AFL history.

Port Adelaide and Melbourne remain the only teams with a Combined Rating in the top 50% of teams that eventually went on to make the Grand Final. West Coast are now the lowest-ever rated team after Round 15 of a home-and-away season.

We can also review the trajectory that each team has followed to arrive at its current Rating.

On MoSSBODS, 9 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 1), 5 are rated negatively on both (no change), 1 is rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 3 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 1).

The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.76, which is a little higher than last week.

One of the, perhaps, surprising features of the current Ratings is how relatively lowly ranked are Collingwood, given that they sit 1st on the competition ladder with a 12 and 2 record, So, let’s have a look at the Pies’ 2023 performances relative to MoSSBODS’ and MoSHBODS’ expectations.

The key takeout from this table is that the Pies have, from Round 3 onwards, tended to score fewer points that both Systems have expected, which is why they’re ranked 10th on offence by MoSSBODS and 9th on offence by MoSHBODS. They’ve also been able to constrain opponents to scoring fewer points than expected, which is why they’re ranked 5th on defence by MoSSBODS and 2nd on defence by MoSHBODS.

Overall, especially across their last four games, they’ve not been winning by enough to sustain their overall rating and have, accordingly, dropped from 3rd to 7th on MoSSBODS, and from 3rd to 6th on MoSHBODS.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked nine teams this week, which included promoting Geelong from 4th into 2nd and dropping Collingwood to 4th from 2nd.

The only other multi-spot movers were Gold Coast (up 3 into 11th) and Essendon (down 2 into 13th).

There are now 12 teams rated better-than-average by MARS with the Gold Coast and Fremantle rising above the necessary mark this week, and Essendon falling below it.

The Rating gap between first and last now stands at about 88 Rating Points, while that between first and eighth stands at only just over 18 Rating Points. The gap between first and fifth is now under 4 Rating Points, which highlights well the general evenness amongst the best teams in the competition and the chasm between the bottom three teams and the rest.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find relatively large differences between the teams’ ladder positions and their rating system ordering for:

HIGHER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: St Kilda and Essendon (and possibly Collingwood)

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Geelong and Sydney (and possibly Carlton)

MARS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 10, ahead of MoSSBODS on nine and MoSHBODS on five. MARS is particularly different in terms of its ranking of Richmond and Carlton.

MoSHBODS and MARS now agree about the ranking of only five teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about only four teams, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now only about six teams (which is six fewer than last week).

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that Carlton (5 spots) still has the widest range of rankings, but that there are now eight other teams for whom the rankings span a range of more than two spots.

There are still also three teams that the Systems unanimously rank the same way: Hawthorn, North Melbourne and West Coast.