There are two key principles that I live my life by. The first one is this: if you want to get a group of people excited, chuck free T-shirts into the stands. The second one is this: if you want to get a group of people riled up, rank MLS teams.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure the necessary resources to toss you, dear reader, a free shirt through whatever screen you're using to read this fine story. My apologies. What I was able to secure, however, was the gumption to rank teams ahead of the playoffs for one of the most un-rankable leagues in the world.

MLS, by design, is built on parity. Even as the postseason begins with a pair of wildcard contests on Wednesday, there's relatively little separating the best of the best from the "we barely snuck into playoffs" crowd.

But relatively little separation doesn't mean no separation. I'm ranking this year's MLS playoff teams from 18 all the way down to 1 based on how likely they are to win MLS Cup in December. Let's get to it.