Thread by @OffsideModeling

2020 MLS Schedule Analysis

Alright, I know that the schedule has been out for a while, but took me a bit to get this finished, but here are some attributes of the MLS 2020 schedule.

First off, short rest - how many games do teams have with 3 days rest and with 3/4 days rest?

Teams which share stadiums seem to do worse off here, which makes sense.

Note: these are for the MLS schedule only, disregarding all other competitions.

Another measure of short rest is what the minimum number of days every team has to play any given X number of games.

Here again Atlanta has it hard, playing 8 games in almost as many days as DC plays 6

What if we took travel into the mix? Here are views of how far a team will travel over a 3 or 5 game stretch. First column is per day, taking into account quick turnarounds, and the second column is the aggregate.

And here is the total distance traveled throughout the season, for good measure.

MLS is infamous for playing through international breaks, but not every team has it the same.

It seems to me that the teams who benefited from not having too much congestion did so at the expense of playing on FIFA dates.

Extended road trips can be burdensome on a team, and Nashville has a road trip of 7 games this season.

Anyone know what is going on in that stretch for Nashville? Because usually we see this when a stadium is being worked on, but that's not the case here.

Counts of home stand lengths - I probably find the columns for 1/2 to be the most interesting here... high numbers there mean that teams are doing a H, A, H, A pattern (or closer to it).

So, for season ticket holders, what days of the week will you be at the stadium?

Combined: Nothing on Monday or Tuesday and < 3% combined on Thursday/Friday. 66% on Saturday, 19% on Sunday and 13% on Wednesday

If you also are not going to be missing a game, when will you be watching from home?

Seattle w/ only 6 Saturday away games, 7 for LAFC and Miami.

When do home games start?

Three charts provided, one for all home games, one for Weekend (Sat/Sun) games and one for weekday games.

Fortunately, no crazy start times for weekday games.

Same thing with away games. These are in the context of the away team's time zone, so it is when will you be watching an away game on TV.

That's it for now, any other thoughts about how to analyze the schedule?

I will say that strength of schedule/etc. is much better done after we get an idea of how strong each team is for the season.