Crunching the Numbers- Rocky Mountain Cup Edition

The Rocky Mountain Cup has been lost for the first time in seven years. I wonder if I were to re-conduct the poll that I did last week if the results would change. But that is a blog post for another time. Now lets take a look at the numbers coming out of the Colorado match.

• RSL has now scored 38 goals on the season. This averages out to scoring a goal every 54.47 minutes. This is far and away a club record with the previous best being a goal every 60.00 minutes. It is also the highest scoring rate in the league.
• The last time RSL was shut out was a home loss against LA on April 27th. Since that time, they have scored 31 times in 14 matches or a goal every 40.64 minutes.
• RSL has given up 26 goals on the season or a goal every 79.62 minutes. There have been three seasons in the past with a better defensive rate than this.
• RSL midfielders have now scored 17 goals this season. Last season the midfield only contributed 13 goals. 
• Coming into this season Ned Grabavoy had 8 career goals in his 10 year career. He has scored 5 goals already this year alone.
• Grabavoy has only taken 16 shots so far on the season. With the 5 goals he is scoring on 31.25% of all shots that he is taking.
• With Grabavoy's goal, RSL now has five players that have scored 5 or more goals. In club history, RSL has never had more than four players with 5 or more goals.
• Alvaro Saborio has scored 8 goals in 835 minutes of play. That comes out to .86 goals for every 90 minutes he is playing. Not only is that much higher than his scoring rate last year (.64), it is the highest scoring rate in club history. 
• Javier Morales now leads RSL with a +/- (RSL goals minus opponents goals) of +15 when he is on the field.
• This season when Tony Beltran and Chris Wingert have played together, RSL is 6-0-1. When they are not playing together RSL is 5-7-4.

So what can we learn from these numbers? The offense has been on fire for a while now. I was worried about if the offense would continue to roll when Saborio came back. But 5 goals in two road matches shows me that I had nothing to worry about. The great thing about the offensive side of the ball is that so many players are contributing to the goal scoring this year. Opposing defenses can not just concentrate on Saborio to shut down our attack. 

If I could pick out one thing that I would like to see from the attack would be some goals scored by our defenders. Over the past five years, RSL has averaged 4.6 goals scored by members of the defense. This year the defense has yet to score a goal in MLS play.

The biggest problem right now for RSL is coming on the defensive side of the ball. This was somewhat to be expected with the amount of players that were lost on the back line due to international call ups, injury, and suspensions. With that said, the stat above with Beltran and Wingert playing together blew me away. It is so important for those two guys to be playing with the team. 

I took a closer look at the time Beltran and Wingert have played together. They have played 598 minutes together. During that time, RSL has given up 4 goals or a goal every 149.50 minutes. The team has played 1472 minutes when those two have not played together. During that time they have given up 22 goals or a goal every 66.90 minutes. That is a difference of 82.60 minutes per goal!

As the team moves into the busiest stretch of games this year, they should be confident that the defense is back together.