2023 - Team Ratings After Round 24

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We finish the home-and-away season with MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS agreeing on the Top 6 teams, but with the Top 4 in very different orders.

  • Adelaide, with only a relatively modest +1 Scoring Shot increase in its Combined Rating, moved back into top spot on MoSSBODS. They also moved up on MoSHBODS, but only into 4th.

  • Brisbane Lions gained Rating on both Systems to finish in 2nd on MoSSBODS and 3rd on MoSHBODS

  • Melbourne also gained Rating on both Systems to finish in 3rd on MoSSBODS and 2nd on MoSHBODS

  • GWS also gained Rating on both Systems, but in particular on MoSHBODS, to finish in 4th on MoSSBODS and 1st on MoSHBODS

  • Port Adelaide lost Rating on both Systems to finish in 5th on both Systems

  • Carlton lost Rating on both Systems to finish in 6th on both Systems

Both of those 1st place rankings seem a little curious, but the underlying story is, I think, that there are no standout teams this season, so a week or two of unexpectedly strong performances can catapult a team well up the rankings. To illustrate that point, note that the gap between Adelaide and Carlton on MoSSBODS is only 1.7 Scoring Shots (or about 6 points at average conversion rates), and between Adelaide and Carlton on MoSHBODS is only 5.1 points.

By way of comparison, the gaps between 1st and 6th at the end of the 2022 home and away season were 6.4 Scoring Shots on MoSSBODS, and 25.1 points on MoSHBODS, which are about 4 to 5 times the size.

Altogether, there were 13 teams that changed places on MoSSBODS, and 13 that changed places on MoSHBODS. The biggest movers were:

On MoSSBODS

  • Adelaide (up 4 to 1st)

  • Fremantle (up 4 to 7th)

  • Port Adelaide (down 4 to 5th)

  • Gold Coast (down 3 to 6th)

On MoSHBODS

  • GWS (up 5 to 1st)

  • Carlton (down 5 to 6th)

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9939 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 3.62 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

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

MoSSBODS still has 10 teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS still has 11 teams so rated. As well, MoSSBODS has 12 teams rated as above average on defence, as does MoSHBODS.

To put the latest MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Ratings in some historical context, here are the final average home and away season Ratings of all Finalists from 2000 to 2023.

In both cases we can see that the crop of 2023 Finalists is, on average, comfortably in the bottom half of Finalists in terms of offensive and defensive Ratings.

We can also see that no individual team stands out in terms of its Rating compared to previous Finalists, especially compared to previous Premiers. Roughly speaking, the average Premier has finished the home and away season with a MoSSBODS Rating of +2.5 Off / +3.9 Def and a MoSHBODS Rating of +11.8 Off / +12.5 Def.

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

On MoSSBODS, 8 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 4 are rated negatively on both (up 1), two are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 4 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 1).

The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.55, which is down again this week.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked 11 teams this week, but only the Cats and Swans (down 2), and the Dogs (up 2) by more than a single spot.

The Top 3 are now Dees, Lions, and Pies, and the bottom 5 teams are unchanged.

As we saw in the MoS Rating Systems, there is considerable Rating compression on MARS, with under 7 Rating Points separating 1st from 4th, and only just over 17 Rating Points separating 1st from 9th. Previous analyses have suggested that a MARS Rating Point is equivalent to roughly 0.75 points, so these gaps equate to about 5 and 13 points respectively.

Again by way of comparison, the same gaps at the end of the 2022 home and away season were about 19.5 Rating Points (15 actual points) and 40 Rating Points (30 actual points).

There are now 11 teams rated better-than-average by MARS.

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

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Adelaide and Fremantle

MARS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 11, ahead of MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS with four each.

MARS’ rankings are particularly different for Collingwood, GWS, Adelaide, and Geelong.

MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of only five teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about seven, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS about 10 teams.

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that GWS (9 spots) now has the widest range of rankings, and that there are six teams for whom the rankings span a range of more than two spots.

There are also five teams that the Systems unanimously rank the same way: Carlton, Gold Coast, North Melbourne, Richmond, and West Coast.