What Would Happen If We Switched the New York Breakers and London Roar?

Thanks to swimming’s best statistician Barry Revzin for running the numbers on this.

When looking at the first 2 matches of the 2020 International Swimming League season, the ultimate outcome so far has not been exactly what we expected.

But one thing was clear coming in: match 1 was a significantly stronger field than match 2, at least on paper. The Condors, Current, and Energy Standard were 3 of the 4 teams from last year’s final, and from what we can tell so far this year, could be 3 of the 4 teams in this year’s final.

The result for the New York Breakers, who were one of two winless teams in the 2019 ISL season (along with Aqua Centurions), was a thorough drubbing in the team scores. They had a swimmer in finals of the men’s skins, Joe Litchfield, but his points were Jacked, adding some insult to the injury.

On the flip side, the London Roar, who were 2nd last season, entered the season on troubled footing after losing a huge portion of their roster when Swimming Australia dissuaded most of their athletes from attending the 2020 ISL season.

But after day 1 of Meet 2, they look better than expected, handily ahead of a tight three-way battle for 2nd place.

We were wondering, though, looking at the scores, just how bad are the New York Breakers, and just how good are the London Roar, if we control for the competition?

Of course nothing happens in a vacuum. If you switch the teams, maybe London swims better or worse, and maybe the Breakers swim better or worse. Maybe they tweak their strategy a little and alter a few races here and there.

But, still, in broad strokes, we wanted to find out if the Breakers were as bad as their score indicates, or if the Roar were as good as their score indicates.

It turns out that, in both cases, it’s not quite true, when the level of competition is controlled for.

If we switched the London Roar day 1 performances with the New York Breaker day 1 performances, the Breakers suddenly look much better, and the Roar suddenly look much worse.

First, here is what the team scoring through day 1 of each meet looks like in the real world, with the meets that were actually swum:

Real Life Team Scores:

Real Life MVP Scores:

But, let’s take a hypothetical scenario, with all of the same times, and swap the Breakers and London Roar: In real life, the Breakers have the lowest day 1 score of any team, and London the highest, and for the Breakers, they’re not all that close to the DC Trident.

Swap Team Scores:

Swap MVP Scores:

Or, Split By Meet:

This swap would put the London Roar in last place in Meet 1, and the New York Breakers in first place in Meet 2.

Among the examples of why this would be the case is Abbie Wood. If you move her to Meet 2, Abbie Wood gets the 19 points thanks to jackpot scoring, instead of the 7 she actually scored.

In real life, no Breakers wound up in the top 20 in MVP standings based on day 1 points. In the hypothetical world, they have 2 in the top 9 and 3 in the top 13.

A meet 2 between DC, Breakers, Aqua, and Iron would be very, very close. In this hypothetical world, DC women and Aqua men get to pick skins strokes, which gives them a leg up.

So, the conclusions here are this:

1. The Cali Condors and Energy Standard, and LA Current, in that order, are clearly the 2 best teams that we’ve seen so far;
2. The London Roar and LA Current in some order are probably the 3rd and 4th best teams that we’ve seen so far; and
3. The Breakers, Trident, Iron, and Aqua Centurions are in basically a dead heat.

That point 3 is where this league gets exciting, as it means there’s going to be some real battling for the last spots in the semi-finals, which is what makes this format exciting. We didn’t get that battle for positioning last season – by the Derby meets, we essentially knew who would be in the final.

The bad news for the Breakers: they have to face the Cali Condors, who so far are the league’s best team, 3 times. They have to face Energy Standard, who so far are the league’s 2nd best time, twice. The Breakers got what turns out to be the toughest schedule in the league, be that by design or by choice (we don’t know how the schedule was developed).

That puts the Breakers on the outside looking in for a spot in the semi-final, but it doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily the worst team in the league.

Next week, the two new franchises, the Tokyo Frog Kings and Toronto Titans, will join the fray. The Frog Kings have a ton of momentum from Japanese Nationals and it looks like they’ll be in the top 8, while the Titans are harder to peg, but on paper look closer to that grouping of 4 mentioned above.

So it will probably be 5 teams fighting for 3 spots.

Let the fun begin.