2021 - Team Ratings After Round 20

The Dees finally ran down the Dogs this week on both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, leaving both Systems with a Top 3 of Dees, Dogs, and Cats.

In fact, the two Systems now agree about the Top 9 teams after both of them re-ranked 12 teams. The big moves on MoSSBODS were St Kilda up two spots into 10th, and GWS down three spots into 12th. On MoSHBODS we had Melbourne up two spots into 1st, and Carlton up two spots into 9th.

The correlation between MoSSBODS’ and MoSHBODS’ Combined Ratings now stands at +0.998, while the Rating gap between 1st and 8th has widened slightly to 6.4 Scoring Shots on MoSSBODS and to 21.6 Points on MoSHBODS. Eight teams are still rated as above-average on MoSSBODS and on MoSHBODS.

On the Component Ratings, on Offence MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now have Top 3s of Dogs, Lions, and Dees (with the Cats being shunted to 4th on both Systems), while on Defence their shared Top 3s remain as Dees, Cats, and Dogs. MoSSBODS now has six teams rated as above-average on offence, and 11 teams rated as above-average on defence, while MoSHBODS also has six teams rated as above-average on offence, but 12 teams rated as above-average on defence

On MoSSBODS, 6 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 7 are rated negatively on both (up 1), none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 5 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 2). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.741, which is up on last week’s number.

In the animation below, we can see the path that each team has taken to arrive at its current Rating.

And, in the chart below, we can see how the current crop of teams compares with the Premiers and Runners Up across V/AFL history at the same point in their respective home-and-away seasons. Bear in mind that we’ve lost any teams whose home-and-away season didn’t extend as far as 20 rounds.

Team Ratings After R20 - with Quantiles and Annotations.png

We can see from this chart that the Dogs and the Dees are the only teams with Combined Ratings that puts them above the median for all previous Grand Finalists at this point in their respective seasons.

And, finally, as always, to MARS.

Here we find the Cats still comfortably 1st on the Leaderboard, now with a lead of more than 5 Rating Points ahead of the Dogs, who grabbed 2nd from the Lions this week.

The only move of more than a single spot was St Kilda’s three spot slide into 12th.

MARS has now only seven teams rated as better-than-average, but six more Rated 990 or above.

The Rating gap between first and last stands at just under 66 Rating Points, and that between 1st and 8th at just over 37 Rating Points. 1st and 3rd are separated by less than 10 Rating Points, however, and 8th and 14th by less than nine Rating Points.

The biggest gaps in the Ratings are between 14th and 15th (11.7) Rating Points), 5th and 6th (8.7 Rating points), and between 7th and 8th (8.6 Rating Points).

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find the highest difference for West Coast and Fremantle, where Rating System rankings are relatively lower than Ladder position, and for Richmond, where Rating System rankings are relatively higher than Ladder position.

MARS continues to provide the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most extreme ranking for 13 teams now.

By comparison, MoSSBODS has the outright most extreme ranking for three teams, and MoSHBODS has it for none at all.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS agree about the ranking of 15 teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about the ranking of four teams, and MoSHBODS and MARS also about the ranking of five teams.

Lastly, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that West Coast, still, has the widest range of rankings (six spots), while 14 teams have rankings that differ by no more than two spots, including Adelaide, Richmond, North Melbourne, and Western Bulldogs, about whom all three Systems agree on a ranking.