2016 - Team Ratings After Round 3

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All of MoS' Team Rating Systems are still significantly recalibrating based on each weekend's results, which this week has seen MARS re-rank 9 teams and ChiPS re-rank 10, though only four by more than a single place in the case of MARS and just three for ChiPS.

MARS dropped both Richmond and Collingwood by two spots, relegating the Tigers to 9th and the Pies to 13th, and also elevated the Gold Coast by two spots into 11th and Geelong by three spots into 6th. At the top of the ladder it left the first three as Hawthorn, Sydney and West Coast, and flipped Adelaide into 4th, relegating the Dogs to 5th.

ChiPS also punished the Pies, dropping them three places to 13th, and lifted the Saints two places into 14th and Adelaide two places into 5th. It left the top four teams unchanged as Hawthorn, Sydney, West Coast and the Western Bulldogs.

That leaves MARS and ChiPS disagreeing by more than a single place about the appropriate ranking of just three teams:

  • Geelong, ranked 6th by MARS and 8th by ChiPS
  • GWS, ranked 12th by MARS and 10th by ChiPS
  • Richmond, ranked 9th by MARS and 6th by ChiPS

Notwithstanding the slightly different interpretations of a single Rating Point for the two Systems (although both do define an "average" team as one having a 1,000 Rating), it also sees both defining four natural groupings of teams:

  • 1,010+ Rating: Hawthorn, Sydney, West Coast, Adelaide, Western Bulldogs
  • 1,000 < 1,010 Rating: Geelong, Kangaroos, Port Adelaide, Richmond
  • 990 < 1,000 Rating: Fremantle, Gold Coast, GWS, Collingwood
  • < 990 Rating: Melbourne, St Kilda, Essendon, Carlton, Brisbane Lions

MoSSBODS wouldn't disagree too much with those groups, though it would elevate GWS and the Gold Coast into the second group, slip Richmond down into the third, and move St Kilda and the Brisbane Lions up to join them. It'd probably also nudge Collingwood into the last group.

Those differences come about largely because of MoSSBODS' greater proclivity to move more teams, further at this point of the season, a tendency that saw it leave only four teams unmoved in terms of Combined ranking this week.

Richmond fell furthest, slipping three places into 11th, while Hawthorn, Collingwood and Carlton all fell two places into 3rd, 15th and 18th respectively. In thinking about the Hawthorn decline bear in mind that MoSSBODS works solely on Scoring Shots, on which basis the Hawks "lost" to the Dogs 25-23 on Sunday. That said, the difference between the Dogs, who remain 1st on MoSSBODS Combined Rating, and the Hawks, who lie 3rd, is less than one-tenth of a Scoring Shot.

Only two teams climbed multiple places on MoSSBODS this weekend, Melbourne up two into 16th, and St Kilda up three into 12th.

Looking, separately, at the Offensive and Defensive Rankings reveals that six teams had multi-spot moves on Offence (the Kangaroos up 3, St Kilda and Melbourne up 2, Port Adelaide and Collingwood down 2, and Sydney down 3) while seven had multi-spot moves on Defence (the Gold Coast up 5, St Kilda up 3, Port Adelaide and GWS up 2, Richmond down 2, Melbourne down 3, and the Kangaroos down 5).

When you consider, for example, that the Roos registered 31 Scoring Shots, St Kilda registered 29 and Melbourne 31, and that the Gold Coast allowed only 16 Scoring Shots, St Kilda 20, Port Adelaide 16, and GWS 23, those larger increases seem reasonable. Similarly, the fact that the Roos conceded 31 Scoring Shots to the Dees, seems justification for their precipitous fall on Defensive ranking.

Diagramatically, the MoSSBODS moves this week looked like this:

Each arrow in this diagram is labelled with its associated team name at or near its base. At some point I hope to find an automated way of handling overlapping arrows and team names in a way that makes arrow "ownership" a bit more obvious.