Minutes per Team Goal- Review

I love stats. That should be no surprise to anyone that reads my blog on a regular basis. One of my favorite stats to analyse is Minutes per Team Goal (MpTG). This is a stat that I created on my own to get a basic understanding of how individual players are contributing to the team. I thought it would be a good time to review the numbers again for each offensive player on the team.

For those that are unfamiliar with MpTG let me explain what it is. First, I take a look at how many goals were scored by the team while a player was on the field.  Some simple math gets me a number showing how many minutes on average it takes for the team to score while the player is playing. Next I look at how many goals were scored while that player was not on the field. From that I can see how many goals per minute are scored when that player is not playing. This gives a basic look at how well the team plays with and without each player.

First lets take a look at the forwards. I have kept an update of the MpTG for the forwards on the side of my blog all season, but it is nice to take a closer look at all the numbers. As a point of reference, the team as a whole is scoring at a rate of a goal every 48.46 minutes.

Player	Min	Team Goals	MpTG	Min not played	Team Goals	MpTG	Difference
Saborio	1081	19	56.89	1439	33	43.61	-13.29
Findley	1070	19	56.32	1450	33	43.94	-12.38
Plata	1397	29	48.17	1124	23	48.87	0.7
Sandoval	704	15	46.93	1727	31	55.71	8.78
Garcia	831	21	39.57	1595	27	59.07	19.5

There are a lot of interesting things to take away from the numbers above. One thing that I find very interesting is the distribution of minutes among our forwards. It is pretty crazy that out of our five main forwards (not counting Benji Lopez) the one that has played the least still has played over 700 hundred minutes! The depth we have on the front line is incredible. It has to be a planning nightmare for opposing coaches as we have so many different combinations that we can use.

Garcia's numbers continue to blow me away every time that I look at them. Not only does he have the best MpTG among the forwards, the difference between when he plays and when he doesn't play is also the highest. 

Now lets look at the midfielders. I didn't include Cole Grossman or John Stertzer due to the limited amount of minutes they have played so far this year.

Player	Min	Team Goals	MpTG	Min not played	Team Goals	MpTG	Difference
Gil	1625	31	52.42	899	21	42.81	-9.61
Grabavoy	2220	48	46.25	300	4	75	28.75
Morales	1976	47	42.04	544	5	108.8	66.76
Velasquez	802	18	44.56	1718	34	50.53	5.97
Stephenson	717	13	55.15	1713	35	48.94	-6.21
Beckerman	1831	38	48.18	689	14	49.21	1.03
Alvarez	747	12	62.25	1742	40	45.80	-16.45

There are a lot of interesting pieces of data coming out of the numbers above. Beckerman's numbers somewhat surprised me. The difference in the offense when he plays compared to when he doesn't play is almost non-existent. I would have expected the offense to score much more when he is on the field as he seems so vital to our passing attack out of the midfield. 

If you need proof of how valuable Javier Morales is to this team all you have to do is look at the "difference" column. It takes us 66 minutes longer to score a goal when Morales is not playing. Until writing this article, this is something that I didn't realize and it is something that I want to take a closer look at. Watch for an article early next week on this subject. 

This is one of the reasons that I love stats so much. They allow you to make comparisons among the players. They also allow you to see things that you might have missed otherwise. Do they tell the whole story? No, they don't do that. But they tell a story that your eyes might have missed the first time.