MLS Castrol Index and the New England Revolution

The MLS Castrol Index, which yearns to impose white-lab-coated objectivity on the statistics-resistant game of soccer, assigns a batting-average-like number to every MLS player. (Castrol also posts rankings of players from the top five European soccer leagues.) According to the MLS website, the Index “tracks [a player’s] every move on the field and assesses whether it has a positive or negative impact on a team’s ability to score or concede a goal.” The final results are in for the 2011 MLS season, and Chris Wondolowski tops the Index with a score of 9.13 out of a possible 10.

Those who would undercut the validity of the Castrol Index might point out that 2011 MLS MVP Dwayne De Rosario did not even crack the top ten. The Index has De Rosario as the league’s 31^st ranked player. Furthermore, De Ro’s fellow-MVP candidates Brek Shea and Brad Davis finished 29^th and 58^th, respectively. Each of those players finished below Aurélien Collin (5^th), Chance Myers (6^th), and Matt Besler (17^th), all of whom played for Sporting Kansas City. I doubt there’s a GM in the league that would choose the second, more highly ranked trio over the first, so there is probably a good argument to be made that the Index is so much hogwash.

Then again, in my opinion many of the rankings ring true, particularly with regard to the New England Revolution. I argued in my last post that Shalrie Joseph was New England’s most valuable player during the 2011 season, even though Matt Reis won the team MVP award and Benny Feilhaber won the fan (Midnight Riders) vote. Sure enough, the Castrol Index ranks Joseph as the Revs’ top player. According to the Index, the Revs’ next best performers in 2011 were, in order: A.J. Soares, Feilhaber, Chris Tierney, and Rajko Lekic. Personally, I might put Kevin Alston above Lekic, but it would be a close call. Interestingly, Alston’s and Lekic’s Index scores (7.03 and 7.02, respectively) and rankings (152 and 150) are virtually identical. In short, I mostly agree with how the Index ranks New England’s players relative to each other. (For evidence of this, note that I singled out much the same group of players in an October post, writing: “I feel like the Revolution have good players—Joseph, Feilhaber, Soares, Reis, Alston, and Tierney in particular.” I also wrote a statistical defense of Lekic, which can be found here.)

Since Reis’s name came up twice in the last paragraph, I should mention that the Index ranks him as the 2011 Revolution’s eighth-best player, just below Darrius Barnes. This is almost certainly too low a ranking for Reis, who had an excellent season, though Reis’s score and ranking seem to be in line with the rest of the Index as far as goalkeepers are concerned. Reis has an Index score of 6.74 and a player ranking of 182. To put those numbers in context, MLS 2011 Goalkeeper of the Year Kasey Keller has an Index score of 7.08 and ranks 145 on the list, very close to Reis’s numbers. Dallas’s Kevin Hartman and Philadelphia’s Faryd Mondragon—both of whom were in the running with Keller for Goalkeeper of the Year—rank below Reis on the Index.

It is perhaps more interesting to see where New England’s players rank in relation to the rest of the league. The Index ranks Joseph—who as you’ll recall is the Revolution’s top-ranked player—as only the 94^th best-performing player in MLS in 2011. The only other 2011 MLS team whose top-ranked player rated below Joseph is Toronto FC, which tied the Revolution for last place in the 2011 overall standings.

Infuriatingly, I’ve been unable import the full Index rankings into an Excel spreadsheet in any kind of easily sortable format. I’d like to see each team’s average player ranking and compare those numbers to how each team finished in the final standings. In lieu of entering all that information by hand into a spreadsheet, I thought it might be interesting for Revolution fans to see each team’s top player ranking and how many players each team had on its roster that were ranked above Joseph. Remember, Joseph was ranked the 94^th best performer in MLS for the 2011 season by the Castrol Index.

·      Chicago Fire: Best player ranked 15^th; 6 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Chivas USA: Best player ranked 25^th; 6 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Colorado Rapids: Best player ranked 7^th; 6 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Columbus Crew: Best player ranked 33^rd; 4 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      D.C. United: Best player ranked 31^st; 3 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      FC Dallas: Best player ranked 8^th; 9 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Houston Dynamo: Best player ranked 9^th; 5 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      L.A. Galaxy: Best player ranked 4^th; 8 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      New York Red Bulls: Best player ranked 3^rd; 6 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Portland Timbers: Best player ranked 39^th; 3 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Philadelphia Union: Best player ranked 20^th; 4 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Real Salt Lake: Best player ranked 10^th; 9 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      San Jose Earthquakes: Best player ranked 1^st; 4 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Seattle Sounders: Best player ranked 2^nd; 8 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Sporting KC: Best player ranked 5^th; 10 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Toronto FC: Best player ranked 141^st; 0 players ranked higher than Joseph

·      Vancouver Whitecaps: Best player ranked 59^th; 2 players ranked higher than Joseph

Whatever one thinks of the Castrol Index, the five teams that ended the 2011 season with the most points—L.A., Seattle, Salt Lake, Dallas, and Kansas City—were the only teams that each had at least eight players on their rosters that ranked higher than Joseph. The two teams that ended the 2011 season with the fewest points besides New England—Toronto and Vancouver—managed to have only two players between them that ranked above Joseph.

These statistics I think lend some credibility to the Index. One wonders, of course, how a player like Joseph would be ranked if he played on a better team. Presumably, the more goals a team scores and the fewer goals it concedes boost the rankings of all of that team’s players. Given this, the rankings might be more accurate at reflecting a player’s value vis-à-vis his own teammates, rather than the entire league. (If this is true, then Wondolowski’s number-one ranking is particularly impressive, since his team didn’t even make the playoffs.) Still, if the Index’s overall player rankings are remotely credible, then New England’s roster could be in need of an even more radical overhaul than many of us had assumed.