End of Year Review- Minutes per Team Goal

I wanted to start writing end-of-year reviews looking at many of the stats that I have kept track of over the past year. In part one I take a look at what is probably my favorite stat to keep, minutes per team goal (MpTG). Although it is not a perfect stat, it does show trends on how well the team plays when a particular player is on the field compared to when he is not.

Last week's Chivas match was a perfect example of why I created this stat. No one can deny the effect that Javier Morales had on the team when he came on in the second half. It wasn't too long after that RSL scored not one but two goals. But if you look at the official stat sheet, Morales' name is no where to be found. According to official stats he had no affect on either goal. But that is not correct. He might not have scored a goal or got an assist but his positive play did help others to score those goals.

This is where MpTG comes in. It gives Morales credit for being on the field when the team scores the goals. When you look at this stat over the course of the whole year you can really see trends of which players affected the offense in a positive way and on the flip side which players caused the offense to struggle.

As a whole, the team played 3060 minutes over the course of the season scoring 57 goals. This comes out to scoring a goal every 53.68 minutes. Here is how each player did while they were on the field. Since this is an offensive stat I did not include any players that played on the back line or in goal. I also did not calculate stats for Grossman or Stertzer due to their limited minutes played.

Player	Min	Goals	MpTG
Morales	2282	51	44.75
Garcia	995	22	45.23
Velasquez	892	18	49.56
Plata	1645	32	51.41
Grabavoy	2688	52	51.69
Sandoval	885	17	52.06
Beckerman	2281	42	54.31
Stephenson	790	14	56.43
Gil	2061	35	58.89
Saborio	1346	22	61.18
Findley	1260	19	66.32
Alvarez	981	13	75.46

There are a lot of interesting things to take note of when looking at these numbers. Garcia had been leading the team in MpTG for most of the season but at the end he started to slump and Morales' numbers dropped enough for him to lead the team. It is even more impressive that Morales led the team as a starter. Due to the nature of more goals being scored later in matches, many times players that are substitutes tend to have lower MpTG. 

I also find it very interesting that Saborio and Findley have higher MpTG. Statistically speaking the team as a whole scored better when they were off the field  than when they were on the field. 

Now lets take a look how the team did when each player was not on the field. 

Player	Min not played	Goals	MpTG
Gil	1003	22	45.59
Findley	1800	38	47.37
Alvarez	2138	44	48.59
Saborio	1709	35	48.83
Beckerman	779	15	51.93
Stephenson	2180	41	53.17
Plata	1416	25	56.64
Velasquez	2078	35	59.37
Sandoval	2086	35	59.6
Garcia	1971	33	59.73
Grabavoy	372	5	74.4
Morales	778	6	129.67

In many ways this number is more eye opening than the first set of numbers above. I was really surprised to see that the team had the highest scoring rate when Gil was not on the field. Again Findley and Saborio does not show as well as expected in these numbers. The number that sticks out the most to me is the bottom one. RSL played 778 minutes without Morales and only scored 6 times. 

Finally here is the difference between the two numbers above. The higher the number, the longer it took the team to score when they player was not on the field compared to when he was. 

Player	Difference
Morales	84.92
Grabavoy	22.71
Garcia	14.5
Velasquez	9.82
Sandoval	7.54
Plata	5.23
Beckerman	-2.38
Stephenson	-3.26
Saborio	-12.35
Gil	-13.29
Findley	-18.95
Alvarez	-26.87

I can't believe that it took RSL 84 minutes longer to score a goal when Morales was not on the field. There is no doubt in my mind that Morales was the team MVP this year and this stat really shows why.