A Look Forward to 2014

I am back! After taking some time off of writing during the off season I am back and am ready for RSL's 10th season to start. During the course of this week I will be looking back at some end-of-season stats from last year to go along with the ones that I have already completed. But, with the start of the new year, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little about the blog itself and what I am hoping to accomplish with it.

I started From the Upper Deck early in the season last year. I had been very active on Twitter for a long time (@ccb1212) and one of my favorite topics of discussion was RSL.  I wanted some place that I could talk about RSL in more than the 140 characters that Twitter allowed; and thus, From the Upper Deck was born.

It really grew into something much bigger than I ever thought it would. I never thought I would have the opportunity to interview players, or coaches but I have now been fortunate enough to say I have done both. I never thought I would be in the position to hear such wonderful stories about the RSL Family and what it means to people. I am very happy with how those articles turned out and am looking to continue that feature this year. I never thought I would have other fans step up and write articles for my blog as well (thanks Alan and Pat!). I have loved all those things about the blog. But, first and foremost this blog is about stats.

I love stats. I have loved stats since the first time I bought a pack of baseball cards as a kid. The pictures were great and all, but what I loved most about baseball cards were the stats on the back. They fascinated me as a kid. My love of stats continue on to this day. But it took a little bit of time before my love of stats and my new love of soccer came together. I can thank "Dr. Goals" Kenny Deuchar for it all.

Deuchar came to RSL as a much hyped forward in the 2008 season. Everyone thought he was the answer to our scoring woes from the year before. He wasn't. He really struggled that season to put the ball in the back of the net. However, I noticed something that season. The team seemed to play better when he was on the field. Even though he wasn't scoring, the team was. So I sat down and did some math. I figured out how many goals the team scored while Deuchar was on the pitch. Then I went back and figured out how many goals they scored when he was not playing. My hypothesis was correct. The team scored more goals when he played compared to when he didn't. This is how my Minutes per Team Goal (MpTG) stat came into being. MpTG tells how many minutes it takes for the team to score a goal while a player is on the field. The lower the number, the better.

In the statistical analysis that I do, I look at MpTG more than any other stat. In my mind, the most import thing for an attacking player in soccer is for the team to score a goal. But who scores the goal or who gets the assist can be deceiving. It really doesn't matter who scores the goal as long as a goal is scored. Many times the most important part of a play that leads to a goal is something that happens seconds or even minutes before the ball hitting the back of net. Even though a player does not get credit for a goal or an assist does not mean that he did not have a positive effect on the play. MpTG gives credit to all the players on the field when a goal is scored.

What I find most interesting in looking at MpTG is not so much comparing one player to another. It is comparing the player when he is playing compared to when he is not. Let me give you a perfect example from last season: When Javier Morales was on the field, RSL scored a goal every 44 minutes. When he was not on the field, the team scored every 129 minutes. That is an incredible difference and really shows the value that Morales had on the team.

Next I came up with Minutes per Conceded Goal (MpCG) for the defenders. This is pretty much just the opposite of MpTG. It takes a look at how many minutes on average it took for the opposing team to score a goal when a particular defender was on the field. In this case, the higher the number the better.

I look at many other stats as well for my blog. Some more traditional stats like +/- and others that I have built on my own like the COR score. All of these stats tell a story about how a player is playing. While no stat can tell the whole story, they can point out things that people might miss in just watching the game. The main goal of this blog is to bring that information to you. I will post my conclusions but I still try to present the data in a way that lets the reader come to their own conclusions on the data.

I still find stats just as fascinating as that little kid that first looked at the back of a baseball card. I hope that I can share a little of that fascination with you.

End of Year Review- The Defense

When looking over the course of the whole year, the RSL's defense had a very up and down season. They started off the first few months with some of the best defensive rates in club history. Then about two-thirds through the season they were leaking goals at an alarming rate. But, by the end of the season they came back strong and have played fantastically so far through the playoffs.

What was the cause of the up and down season? Injuries played a huge role and National Team call ups were a factor as well. By the end of the year RSL had used 8 different center back pairings and 3 different keepers in MLS play. The team ended up giving up 41 goals on the season or a goal every 74.63 minutes. All things considered, it is really remarkable that RSL did not give up more goals than they did.

Here is a breakdown of how each player did over the course of the year. MpCG stands for "Minutes per Conceded Goal" or how long it took for a goal to be scored while they were playing. Unlike my Minutes per Team Goal stat that I use for offensive players, the higher the number the better with MpCG.

Player	Min	Goals	MpCG
Schuler	1440	15	96.00
Beltran	2230	26	85.77
Wingert	1742	22	79.18
Watson-Siriboe	630	8	78.75
Borchers	2520	35	72
Salcedo	1070	15	71.33
Palmer	1198	17	70.47
Mansally	774	11	70.36
McDonald	270	5	54.00
Maund	270	6	45.00

With how he has been playing in the playoffs, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Chris Schuler led the team in MpCG. He was the biggest reason that the team had the defensive turnaround towards the end of the season. In fact if you only look at the games he has played since coming back from injury (including playoffs), RSL is only giving up a goal every 150 minutes!

Next is a breakdown of how the team played when a particular player was not on the field. The "difference" column is the difference between when a player played compared to when he didn't play. 

Player	Min not played	Goals	MpCG	Difference
Beltran	830	15	55.33	30.44
Schuler	1620	26	62.31	33.69
Wingert	1318	19	69.37	9.81
Watson-Siriboe	2340	31	75.48	3.27
Mansally	2199	29	75.83	-5.46
McDonald	2700	35	77.14	-23.14
Palmer	1853	24	77.21	-6.74
Salcedo	1900	24	79.17	-7.83
Maund	2700	34	79.41	-34.41
Borchers	540	6	90	-18

It is pretty crazy to think that the team gave up a goal every 55 minutes when Beltran was not on the field. I decided to take a closer at this. Beltran missed 9 games on the season. In 6 of those 9 games the team gave up 2 or more goals. Although he did struggle in a couple games down the stretch, Beltran is a pretty vital piece of the defense.

The other thing that I found interesting in looking at this is that the team actually played pretty well when Borchers was not in the match. This somewhat surprised me.

Finally, here is a look at the centerback combinations that played this season.

Player	Min	Goals	MpCG
Borchers/Schuler	900	8	112.5
Schuler/Salcedo	90	1	90.00
Borchers/Watson-Siriboe	270	3	90.00
Schuler/McDondald	90	0	90.00
Schuler/Watson-Siriboe	360	5	72.00
Borchers/Salcedo	979	14	69.93
Borchers/Maund	270	6	45.00
Borchers/McDonald	180	5	36.00

It should come as no surprise that Schuler and Borchers were RSL's best centerback duo. They have wonderful chemistry and have been playing great together in the playoffs. It is a bit surprising that the team gave up so many goals when Borchers was paired up with almost anyone else.

Eye on the Academy- What is USL PRO and the PDL?

By Pat Eyler

I’ve talked a bit about USL PRO teams and the PDL, but not everyone knows what these two leagues are and how they fit into the bigger picture of US Soccer (and maybe into player development). If I’m going to keep talking about this stuff (and believe me, I am), maybe I should take a little time to explain things.

The US Soccer system, sometimes called a pyramid, is divided into tiers.  This is further complicated by the (sometimes feuding) organizations that control these leagues.  

At the top is Major League Soccer (MLS), the US first division of soccer.  Beneath that is the North American Soccer League (NASL), made up of some of the teams that made up USL1 (a now-defunct league).  The third tier is USL PRO, which is made up of  the remainder of the teams from the old USL 1 and the surviving teams from the USL2.  Under that is the USL Premier Development League(PDL), along with the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) and parts of the Pacific Coast Soccer League (PCSL).  Beneath this there are a variety of club and amateur leagues.

All of these are a part of the US Open Cup tournament. This has historically been the way lower division clubs come the the attention of MLS fans For example the Amateur Cal FC who beat Portland before losing to Seattle in 2012, or the annual friendly between the (PDL) BYU Cougars and Real Salt Lake.  

MLS clubs have also loaned out players to USL PRO and NASL teams to give them playing time and extra development.  This is becoming more formal with an agreement that started this year entangling the USL PRO with MLS Reserves.  The stated intent is that by 2015 every MLS club will either affiliate with an existing USL PRO side, or start one of their own.

The big question now is what is RSL’s plans going forward in regards with this agreement? It is something that we will be following up here on the blog.

MLS Cup Preview- Findley and Sabo

After taking a little bit of a break from the blog I am hitting high gear this week getting ready for the MLS Cup. Watch for a new article each day this week. There has been a lot of talk about looking at who should start between Saborio and Sandoval (see here, here and here). But for this post I wanted to take a different look at things.

I have been of the mindset that Jason Kreis should start one of only two different forward combinations up top. He should either start Saborio and Plata or Sandoval and Findley. I think everyone would agree that you don't really want to play Sandoval and Saborio together. Our record without starting a target forward was not the best so that eliminates the Findley/Plata combo.

But what about Saborio and Findley?  At the beginning of the season those were the two that everyone thought would get the bulk of the starts this season.  They are RSL's two most experienced forwards. Saborio led the team in goals and Findley has been arguably RSL's best player in the playoffs. Why should they not play together in the MLS Cup Finals?  That is the question I set out to answer.

As I started tracking the stats this year, of the forward pairings one thing was plain to see. Findley and Saborio did not play well together. It was kind of shocking with how bad the stats were while they were on the field together. In regular season play, RSL played 519 minutes with the two on the field together. In that time, RSL only scored 5 goals or a goal every 103.8 minutes. When Findley and Saborio were not on the field together, the team scored at a rate of a goal every 48.8 minutes. That is a huge difference!

I thought I would break down those numbers even more to see how well Findley and Saborio played when they were playing with other forwards. The numbers were pretty staggering. In the regular season, Robbie Findley played 741 minutes when Saborio was not on the field. During that time RSL scored 14 times or a goal every 52.9 minutes. On the flip side Saborio played 827 minutes without Findley. In that time the team scored 17 times or a goal every 48.6 minutes.

Since I have started writing this blog and really diving into stats I have always claimed that statistics can give us very important information but they don't tell the whole story. Statistically, everything points that it is a bad idea for Findley and Saborio to start together. The numbers show that RSL plays much better when Findley plays with Sandoval or Sabo plays with Plata. But this might be the case where the stats don't tell the whole story.

As I started researching this article, I was of the opinion that there is no way in the world I would want Findley and Saborio to start together. Then I looked at RSL's record in matches that those two started up top. RSL has started them together 10 times across all competitions. In those ten matches RSL has lost only once back in March at DC United. They had an overall record of 5-1-4 in matches where Findley and Saborio stared.

So who do I think should start come Saturday. Well I had been leaning to staying with the Findley and Sandoval combination assuming that Sandoval was healthy (he has sat out the last few practices). But now I won't be as worried if Kreis decides to start Findley and Saborio together.