Welcome to From The Upper Deck, my blog about RSL and soccer in general. I have a lot of passion for the beautiful game. I am just a fan that likes to sit in the upper deck and take it all in.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Season in Review- Plus/Minus

By Charles Barnard

As the emotion starts to die down from the shellacking that RSL received at the hands of the Galaxy, I can return to my look at the end of year stats. This off-season could be one of the most important in club history. Because of this it is even more important to look at these stats as we as a fan base try to figure out what changes we would like to be made.


Today I want to look at the plus/minus stat. This is a stat that has been popular in hockey for years. Recently it has also become a very popular stat to analyze in basketball as well. This stat has also started to make its way into soccer circles. Basically you take the amount of goals scored while a particular player is on the field and subtract the amount of goals given up. With this stat you can get a sense of how well the team played overall while a particular player was on the field.


I feel it is important to include minutes when looking at this stat. It is much more impressive if a player is +5 while playing 500 minutes than if they played 1,000 minutes. To better show this I calculate how much a player’s plus/minus number went up (or down) every 90 minutes played. I also find it interesting to look at the goal differential of the team when the player was off the field which I show in the +/- w/o category. As you will see below, this is also a vital piece of information.


At a point of reference, RSL as a team had a goal differential of +15 this past season. This is the third best goal differential in club history.


I broke the table up between the forwards/midfielders and the defenders to make it a little bit easier to compare and contrast.


Min. Played
+/-
Plus/Minus per 90
+/- w/o
Beckerman
2520
21
0.75
-6
Grabavoy
2711
18
0.60
-3
Plata
1927
16
0.75
-1
Morales
2645
13
0.44
2
Mulholland
1987
10
0.45
5
Saborio
1148
8
0.63
7
Garcia
1191
6
0.45
9
Jaime
261
6
2.07
9
Velasquez
222
4
1.62
11
Gil
1365
1
0.07
14
Findley
764
-1
-0.12
16
Sandoval
633
-1
-0.14
16
Stertzer
273
-2
-0.66
17
Grossman
532
-2
-0.34
17





Beltran
2393
14
0.53
1
Schuler
2154
11
0.46
4
Wingert
2537
10
0.35
5
Borchers
2856
10
0.32
5
Salcedo
800
6
0.68
9
Maund
432
4
0.83
11
Mansally
655
2
0.27
13
Balchan
233
0
N/A
15

Kyle Beckerman is easily the one player that jumps out the most. The team was +21 when he was on the field. On the other hand, the team was -6 in the time that he did not play. The difference between those two numbers are incredible!


Another player that really stands out to me is Sebastian Jaime. The team was a +6 in the 261 minutes that he played. Even though he did not score a goal, the team was extremely effective when he played.


On the flip side of things is Luis Gil. RSL was only a +1 in the 1365 minutes that he played. That means in the 1695 minutes that he didn't play this season RSL was a +14.


Among the defensive players, I was surprised to see Aaron Maund was a +4 in the limited amount of playing time that he played. Carlos Salcedo also had impressive numbers when you think he was a -2 after the first 30 minutes he played this season.

What stats stand out to you when looking at the table above?