The Curious Case of the Decreasing Turnover: MLS Edition

Through my continuous updating of the TFS Rankings I began to notice an interesting trend.  At the beginning of the year I had thought it normal for a team to have between 120 and 140 turnovers a game.  There would hardly ever be a case where a team dipped below 100 turnovers in a game.  Around the last month or so, though, an interesting trend began to emerge.  Teams started consistently registering sub-100 turnover games.  And the games did not appear to be any less full of goals either.  If you are interested in my definition of a turnover I would refer you to my Methodology post, which goes into my definition at length.

The below chart shows how the occurrence of sub-100 turnover games has drastically increased in the past month or so. 

Here are some notable team examples of this trend:





This is an interesting trend, and there is certainly more to explore. I have put together a deeper analysis which should appear in The Shin Guardian (http://theshinguardian.com/) in the next week or so.