Past Melog Rankings: 2014

During this tennis season, I'll be updating the Melog ratings roughly every other week. In the off weeks, I'll generally try to put up at least one tennis-related post - and since I now have 19 complete years' worth of backward-looking data, a good number of those posts will be rankings from past seasons.

I've posted 2014 rankings before, so there's some old ground being covered here. The differences will be in the matches that weren't counted before (Davis Cup Group 1 and World Group Playoff matches), and the change in the baseline to the median player rather than player #75. (The median player of 2014 was Go Soeda, a veteran Japanese player who's among the all-time leaders in Challenger titles won and who has spent only a brief time in the top 50 in his career.)

Let's get to the numbers.

2014 Melog 75 Tennis Rankings

The last decade-plus of men’s professional tennis has been dominated by four players: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray. These men combined to win every Grand Slam but one from the 2005 French Open through the end of 2013.

This remarkable stretch of hegemony was always going to end eventually; time always wins, after all. 2014 saw the forming of the initial cracks in the Big Four’s dominance, with the season producing multiple first-time Grand Slam winners (Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic) for the first time since 2003. Throw in breakout years from youngsters like US Open finalist Kei Nishikori and Wimbledon semifinalists Milos Raonic and Grigor Dimitrov, and you’ve got a worthy set of challengers to the once-impregnable upper echelon.

Meanwhile, some members of the Big Four started to show seams. Nadal lost in Barcelona for the first time in over a decade, absorbed a similarly early exit in Monte Carlo, and narrowly squeezed out clay titles in Rio (facing down multiple match points in the semifinals) and Madrid (falling behind by a set and a break until an injury to Nishikori allowed Nadal to rally, and eventually forced his opponent to withdraw); he then missed the North American hard court swing (including the US Open) due to injury, and accomplished little after returning to the court in September. But at least Rafa won the French Open again, and made the Australian Open final. Murray didn’t make a single final at any level of the tour between his historic Wimbledon triumph in 2013 and the 250-point event in Shenzen in September of this year, a 14-month gap.

The group’s other two members fared rather better; Federer rallied from an injury-dampened 2013 to win a quintet of titles and lead Switzerland to its first-ever Davis Cup crown, while Djokovic bested Federer in a classic Wimbledon final and took seven total titles in securing the ATP’s #1 spot for the third time. Even these two, however, had their moments of frailty; Djokovic’s streak of 14 Grand Slam semifinals was broken by Wawrinka in Melbourne, while Federer lost to the mercurial Ernests Gulbis in the round of 16 at Roland Garros. Both men would also absorb the occasional puzzling defeat in Masters events, with Djokovic’s loss to Tommy Robredo in Cincinnati and Federer's defeat by Jeremy Chardy in Rome serving as particular standouts. Great as they were, neither was quite as ironclad as they’d once been.

So with that in mind, let’s dust off the Melog 75 tennis ranking system (the initial form of which was laid out in these three posts; I have since made a couple of modifications that don’t really affect the top players at all, though I still think they’re fairly important and can go into further detail if there’s any interest), and see who it thinks were the best players of 2014:

The Best and Worst Players of the 2014 Postseason

The 2014 postseason was a strange one. It started off with one of the greatest single games in playoff history, and contained a number of other exceptional contests, including one that tied the record for most innings in a playoff game – but the series in which those games occurred were predominantly brief. Through the LCS round, none of the six multi-game matchups included more than one win by the team that lost the series. The World Series broke that trend, lasting the full seven, but it did so while having the average game become far duller than those involved in the briefer clashes that preceded it.

On the other hand, the individual performances seen in October 2014 were often quite memorable. And this space has previously explored Championship Probability Added (CPA), which is designed to analyze just those sorts of performances. So… let’s do that!

Game of the Day (9/28/14)

Nationals 1, Marlins 0. Washington's Jordan Zimmermann took on Miami's Henderson Alvarez.

Game of the Day (9/27/14)

Reds 10, Pirates 6 (10). Pittsburgh's Francisco Liriano was brilliant in half a season in 2006, then got injured and was up-and-down (largely down) for the next several years before joining the Pirates last season and pitching quite well. Cincinnati's Alfredo Simon is 33 years old, and is finishing off his first complete season in a major league starting rotation.

Two years ago, this pitching matchup would have been a throw-away game. Now, it's a September faceoff with pennant race implications.

Game of the Day (9/26/14)

Cardinals 7, Diamondbacks 6 (10). St. Louis started Michael Wacha, who is quite young and promising. Arizona sent Trevor Cahill, who at 26 is still reasonably young, but whose over-5 ERA this year has eaten away much of his once-substantial promise.

Game of the Day (9/25/14)

Mets 7, Nationals 4. New York sent Dillon Gee to the mound, taking on Washington's Blake Treinen...

No, wait, you know what? I'm going to the manual override on this one. It's not an option I activate on anything like a regular basis (outside of no-hitters, at least), But Yankees 6, Orioles 5 (started by the young Kevin Gausman and the old Hiroki Kuroda) is a game that people are going to REMEMBER, and I sincerely doubt that the matchup between the Mets and Nationals, fine game though it was, will meet that standard.

Game of the Day (9/24/14)

Phillies 2, Marlins 1. Miami's Brad Hand took on Philly's Kyle Kendrick. Hand is roughly the left-handed version of what Kendrick was six years ago - a young starter who's not yet proven that he's above average. Kendrick is now a recently-turned-30-year-old starter who is still trying to prove that he's above average.

Game of the Day (9/23/14)

Cubs 4, Cardinals 3 (10). A couple of promising youngsters started this one, with Chicago's Kyle Hendricks facing St. Louis's Shelby Miller.

Game of the Day (9/22/14)

Giants 5, Dodgers 2 (13). San Francisco's Jake Peavy faced LA's Dan Haren in a matchup of well-traveled right-handers. How well-traveled? Between them, they've pitched in all six of MLB's divisions, and have pitched for every NL West team except the Rockies.

Game of the Day (9/21/14)

A's 8, Phillies 6 (10). Philly's AJ Burnett took on Oakland's Scott Kazmir. Three or four years ago, I would not have guessed that either of them would be putting in full seasons in MLB rotations this year - yet here we are.

Game of the Day (9/20/14)

Nationals 3, Marlins 2. Washington's Jordan Zimmermann, who has pitched roughly like an ace for the last 3 or 4 years, took on Miami's Jarred Cosart, who has pitched roughly like an ace since being acquired from the Astros at the trade deadline.

Game of the Day (9/19/14)

Twins 5, Indians 4 (10). Cleveland's Trevor Bauer and Minnesota's Phil Hughes are both former top pitching prospects who have been cut loose by their original organizations, but are making credible careers for themselves - Hughes is doing better in this respect, but has also had more time to work on it.

Game of the Day (9/18/14)

Cardinals 3, Brewers 2 (13). Milwaukee's Kyle Lohse used to pitch for the Cardinals; he was in the rotation for the 2011 World Series winning team. After the 2012 season, he signed with the Brewers as a free agent - and St. Louis replaced him with youngster Shelby Miller, who opposed Lohse in this game.

Game of the Day (9/17/14)

Giants 4, Diamondbacks 2. San Francisco ace Madison Bumgarner took on Arizona's Andrew Chafin, a 24-year-old lefty making his second major league start.

Game of the Day (9/16/14)

Brewers 3, Cardinals 2 (12). Milwaukee's Willy Peralta took on St. Louis's Lance Lynn in a matchup of reasonably young, reasonably anonymous NL Central pitchers who are better than you'd probably think (or at least better than I would have thought).

Game of the Day (9/15/14)

Royals 4, White Sox 3. KC ace James Shields took on Chicago's John Danks, who was once a borderline ace himself, but hasn't held that status in at least four years.

Game of the Day (9/14/14)

Marlins 5, Phillies 4. Miami's Tom Koehler faced off with Philly's David Buchanan. Koehler, making his 54th career start, was easily the more experienced of the two.

Game of the Day (9/13/14)

White Sox 7, Twins 6. Minnesota's Logan Darnell, a 25-year-old rookie making his fourth major league start, faced Chicago's Scott Carroll, who will turn 30 later this month and is also in his first big league season.

Yes, it's a September game between non-contenders; how could you tell?

Game of the Day (9/12/14)

Orioles 2, Yankees 1 (11). New York's Brandon McCarthy and Baltimore's Kevin Gausman are both midseason additions to their respective rotations - but joined them in very different ways. McCarthy, a 30-year-old veteran, was acquired by trade, while Gausman, aged 23, was summoned from the minors.