Preseason power rankings are always a toss-up. Rankers really only have a handful of games to go on, so it’s mostly just last year’s finish raised or lowered by off-season trade action. But since sites will put rankings out there, I’ll run the numbers!

A reminder of what Power Rankings should be (not that every site does of course...): ”If two teams played tomorrow, given their current injury concerns, form, and other considerations, who is likely to win on a neutral field? All things being equal, who is the best team going forward, based on what we know now?” -Richard Farley, NBC Sports ProSoccerTalk. 3/11/14

On to the rankings. As always, if you come across a site that I’ve not included please send me their link! Particularly in these early days, I’m on the search for sites to add. Many of these below will continue for Wk 1 and beyond, others may not.

Sites Used

You may notice the list includes several ‘analytic’ sites; they serve to function as a stable counterbalance to the rest which are based more on personal opinions, and those done by ‘team’ blogs’. There are also included sites that some will argue are really ‘prediction rankings’ - but in reality isn’t that what a Power Ranking is (see the quote at the top).

All the averages use the Olympic method (I.E. Truncated Mean value) of dropping the highest and lowest scores, and then averaging the rest to reduce bias. 2018 is the total average for the year to date (will be changed to 2019 next week).

The 7 year weighted average is the averages that decrease in value over time. Thus 2019 will be worth 100%, 2018 = 90%, 2017 = 80% and so on down. Thus a bad year 4 years ago won’t drag down positive recent years. For expansion teams that don’t have long histories, they are given the overall league average for that year.

2020 MLS Power Ranking Averages Wk 9 Wk 8 Team Wk 9 Avg Wk 8 Avg St. Dev Best Worst 2020 Wk 9 Wk 8 Team Wk 9 Avg Wk 8 Avg St. Dev Best Worst 2020 21 17 Atlanta United FC 20.86 15.91 2.18 18 25 11.56 24 25 Chicago Fire 22.86 23.73 2.19 18 25 21.16 17 22 Colorado Rapids 17 21.91 3.94 8 20 16.36 2 1 Columbus Crew SC 2.29 2.45 2.06 1 7 5.43 23 20 D.C. United 22.71 20.36 2.12 19 26 18.96 25 26 FC Cincinnati 25 23.91 0.87 24 26 22.88 10 13 FC Dallas 9.71 12.91 3.74 7 18 12.86 12 10 Houston Dynamo 11.43 9.73 3.28 6 17 18.1 20 23 Inter Miami CF 19.71 22.55 3.4 14 24 21.65 7 7 Los Angeles FC 7.43 7.55 4.5 2 15 4.05 4 3 Los Angeles Galaxy 5.57 4.18 2.4 1 10 13.85 8 9 Minnesota United FC 8.86 9.18 3.69 4 14 5.56 14 14 Montreal Impact 13 13.18 3.67 8 18 14.96 19 21 Nashville SC 17.43 21.45 2.65 13 22 22.52 15 15 New England Revolution 15.57 14 2.07 12 19 14.09 10 11 New York City FC 9.71 9.82 4.03 2 16 11.31 17 19 New York RB 17 20.27 3 13 21 14.22 4 8 Orlando City SC 5.57 7.91 3.87 3 15 12.59 1 2 Philadelphia Union 2 2.73 1.58 1 6 6.34 13 6 Portland Timbers 12 7.09 6.41 2 23 10.13 16 16 Real Salt Lake 16.43 15.45 3.38 10 21 14.12 22 18 San Jose Earthquakes 21.86 18.64 2.29 19 26 16.58 3 4 Seattle Sounders FC 4.14 5.36 3.43 1 10 4.97 9 12 Sporting Kansas City 9.43 10.36 2.01 7 13 7.61 6 5 Toronto FC 6.29 7 3.59 4 14 5.11 26 24 Vancouver Whitecaps FC 25.29 22.64 1.32 22 26 22.8

Highest Standard Deviation: FC Cincinnati at 5.24

Lowest Standard Deviation: Atlanta United at 0.0

Biggest Rise: None

Biggest Fall: None

Site bias and rankings will begin with Wk 1.