End of Year Review- Offensive Ratings (The COR Score)

Through the course of my end of year reviews, I have taken a look at most of the stats that I tracked through out the year. I have looked at everything from my Minutes per Team Goal (MpTG) stat through strike partnerships, as well as looking at the defensive side of the ball. Last week I looked at players plus/minus ratings and their shooting statistics. In the final entry of my end of year review I wanted to revisit the offensive rating system that I created about midway through the season, the COR score.

When I set out to create the COR score I was looking for a way to incorporate many different statistics into one offensive rating number. The thought behind it was this one number would give a sense of how a player is playing overall. It starts with a player's MpTG as a base and then subtracts weighted points for things like goals, assists, and shots on goal. A player's COR score will show not only how well a player played, but how well the team played around that player.

Now that I have a season's worth of numbers, it will be interesting to see the results. As a reminder, the lower the number the better.

Player	COR
Garcia	-10.67
Saborio	-6.6
Morales	-5.43
Plata	6.51
Sandoval	18.05
Grabavoy	18.05
Findley	20.56
Velasquez	25
Gil	28.11
Beckerman	29.44
Stephenson	31.34
Alvarez	55.03

It might surprise some to see Garcia topping the chart. His offensive production for the first few months of the season was unbelievable. At one point in the season his COR was almost at -40. Although his offensive production cooled towards the second half of the season, his overall body of work was still very impressive for such a young player. 

As I was doing my research for this article I was curious to see where Saborio would end up. Saborio actually does not have a very good MpTG. Some wondered during the playoffs (me included) if RSL was actually a better team when Sabo didn't play. With a COR score being so low (low is good) it shows that his offensive production was so great that it might outweigh his lower MpTG. 

The very nature of the COR score will lead the forwards on the team to have a better rating than midfielders. Theoretically forwards should have more goals, shots on goal, and so forth. With that in mind, it is pretty amazing that Morales has such a low score. It really shows how awesome his season was last year all around.  Not only did he have the lowest MpTG on the team, he also had some incredible individual offensive stats. 

It was interesting to see Sandoval and Findley come out in the middle of the pack for completely different reasons. Sandoval had a very good MpTG rating but poor individual stats. Findley on the other hand had some decent individual stats but a poor MpTG rating. It would be nice to see both of their COR scores drop this coming year. 

It is also pretty interesting that the two players with the lowest COR score are no longer on the team. Granted that most defensive midfielders will have a lower COR score just based on the position that they play on the field. That is the reason I do not include defenders in with rest of the team. But, Alvarez's score was much higher than Kyle Beckerman's who shares the same position. It is somewhat telling that Stephenson had such a high score as he never really played well in MLS matches for the team.