If you want to see how valuable something is, find someone good with a calculator who appreciates that thing’s value.
Whether picking teams in a sport or property for investment, an analyst or accountant, or at least a friend competent with numbers, is essential. That’s true for your 401(k) or your next home.
It’s even true for figuring out what Orlando City SC needs to do to get above – and stay above – the playoff line in the MLS East Conference.
Let’s look at the base numbers so far as teams have completed 20-21 games in this 34-match MLS regular season.
What would Orlando City SC have to do to match the No. 1 team in either conference?
In Orlando’s conference, the best team through their 21 games is Inter Miami 13-3-5. They’ve scored 48 goals, a 2.3 pace. And they’ve earned 44 points, for 2.1 per game.
Miami has done slightly better on the road, 7-1-2, than at home, 6-2-3.
Orlando and Los Angeles FC in the West Conference have played the same number of games, 20. LAFC is almost perfect at home, 9-0-2. But they relax a little on the road, with a mark of 3-4-2. That’s an overall record of 12-4-4.
Los Angeles so far has scored 41 goals – a 2.05 per game pace. And they’ve earned 40 points, 2.0 per match.
Now to compare Orlando City’s numbers. Through 20 games, they were just below the playoff line in 11th place in the East Conference. To get there, their record stands at 5-9-6. They’re slightly better on the road 3-4-3, than at home, 2-5-3.
Their 25 goals in 20 games run at a pace of 1.2. And their 21 points run 1.05 per game.
This means they are achieving points at a rate of almost exactly 52% of the two No. 1 teams in MLS. That production level has them two notches below the conference playoff line.
MLS calculates one other production statistic that requires the simplest mathematical calculation of any professional sport. And because the league updates this statistic every matchday and posts it in their standings list, you can track it without doing the math yourself.
This is the Goals Differential. It’s calculated by subtracting Goals Against from Goals For. That’s the simple method, yet it is the most profound way of determining a team’s overall production level.
The No. 1 teams in each MLS conference have played a different total of games at the time of this posting. Miami played 21 and LAFC 20. Yet, both teams have the same Goals Differential of 18. No team in either conference has as high a number.
Orlando City has a negative differential of -10. In fact, every team in either conference below their playoff lines has negative numbers.
Only two teams above the line have negative differentials and both are in the East Conference with Miami and Orlando. Those two teams are Nashville SC with -1, No. 7, and Toronto FC, No. 8,-8.
There are still plenty of games to play and plenty of drills to run. Plus, Orlando has matches set in July with Toronto and Nashville.
Given the differentials, those two matches will allow Orlando City SC to deepen opponents’ negative differentials and get Orlando’s closer to positive.