Orlando City’s Hot and Cold Streaks Tell the Story of the 2024 Season

There is a story — maybe real, maybe apocryphal — of a college statistics professor who asked his students to go home and flip a coin 100 times, and then then to write down on each flip whether it was heads (H) or tails (T). He would then walk around the classroom during the next class and would correctly call out whether a student had actually done the exercise or they had made up the results, just by looking at their Hs and Ts.

His reasoning was that while over the long haul the ratio of heads to tails will be approximately 50:50, in small samples it does not work like that. Those who made up their homework would not put a run of 5,6, 7 or more heads in a row, for example, but those who actually flipped would see the occasional long run.

A similar idea is shown on the recent numbers board above roulette wheels in every casino, where it’s often jarring to see many red or black numbers on display consecutively because the mind is trained to assume that it should be even between the colors since there are 18 red numbers and 18 black numbers on the wheel. I may have played a lot of roulette in my life. We need not go into more detail.

Is there going to be a point to this? Yes. Coins, roulette wheels, rock/paper/scissors, they all generally fall out to similar ratios overall, but in short numbers, they are streaky. Athletes and teams are no different, it happens to them as well.

Baseball is the sport most associated with statistics, and in particular people talk most frequently about a batting average, which is calculated by the number of hits divided by the number of at bats. Three hits out of 10 at bats is a .300 batting average, but hitters who bat around that number rarely get three hits out of every ten at bats if you look at a list of 10 at bat chunks during a season. I could really torture this with examples, but you came here to read about soccer. My point is that players and teams run hot and cold far more often than data would indicate when you are looking at aggregated stats, and Orlando City is no exception.

Thus far this season, Orlando City has had two streaks of three losses and one draw in four matches, and also one streak of four straight wins in four matches. Ramiro Enrique scored a goal in six straight matches, and Pedro Gallese and the defense went a little more than 2.5 straight games without giving up a goal. The offense scored five goals in five MLS games during March and then 14 goals in five MLS games during July. It is not quite to the level of Will Ferrell in Old School, but there has definitely been some streaking going on during the 2024 Orlando City season.

Enrique’s streak was particularly hard to fathom, because according to fbref.com’s tracking prior to the initial goal against D.C. United that started his streak, his career average in games for Banfield of Argentina and Orlando City had been 0.24 goals per 90 minutes, and then all of a sudden he accelerated to 1.34 goals per 90 minutes during his six-match run. Subsequent to that, he has now gone consecutive games without a goal, which feels like a major letdown, when in fact, if you look across his career, it is actually not that surprising. Including his recent run of form, Enrique is now right around 0.33 goals per 90 minutes for his career, or about one goal per every three games…exactly what he has produced in his last three matches.

Was the streak a new normal? Probably not. Were the last two scoreless games a new normal? Probably not, but such is the nature of a streak. On the whole, it washes out in the numbers, but in the moment it felt amazing as a fan in July and felt particularly vexing as a fan more recently. How dare Enrique not continue to score like Messi in his prime for more than six matches!

On a broader scale, as I mentioned earlier, Orlando City as a team was scorching hot in July, scoring 14 goals in five MLS matches and 18 goals in all competitions (six matches), for a nice tidy three-goals-per-game average during the full month. This has been followed by a freezing cold (thus far) August, and looking at the data around the Lions’ performance provides a great view of the statistical concept of regression to the mean.

The averages through the first 24 matches (Concacaf Champions Cup and MLS) of the season are in the first row below. Then there was a big improvement during July (MLS and Leagues Cup), the second row. Finally, August (MLS and Leagues Cup), the third row, has been well below the initial averages, meaning that the full season averages in the fourth row are basically the same as they were in the first row, despite an outstanding July and a thus far not-so-outstanding August. (Note: own goals are not included in the data):

There are always many factors than can lead to success or struggle on the field, but over the long haul of a season, all teams have highs and lows, and the target is really to minimize the lows and to build toward having the highs towards the end of the season, when the playoffs start. This was certainly the case for the 2023 Orlando City team, which went 11-2-2 during its final 15 matches of the MLS regular season after going 7-7-5 during the first 19 matches.

With eight matches remaining in the season, the 2024 version of Orlando City could still come close to that 2023 team’s season-ending run of form, as even with the loss last week the Lions are still 4-1-2 in their last seven matches and one of only three Eastern Conference teams with 10 or more points in their last five matches. Losing at Sporting Kansas City hurt, as that was a winnable game against a bottom-of-the-table team, but the Lions can get back on the right foot (yes, even you, Facundo Torres, can get on the right foot) at home on Saturday against Nashville. When your opponent comes into the match having lost its last seven games in a row in MLS play by a combined score of 18-3, that is a game you need to win, especially when you are playing at home and coming off a frustrating loss.

To do so the Lions will need to blow up the idea that their July form was just a hot streak that will be immediately offset by an August cold streak, netting them out in the middle. The 2023 season is a blueprint follow to avoid regression to the mean and to find sustained success. And with three straight home games coming up, we will quickly see whether the game in Kansas City was an aberration, or another flashing indicator that this season will continue to be one of hot and cold streaks.