RSL Development Team Squad Forecast

By Pat Eyler

Some of the most interesting news coming out of this off season was the many teams that announced information about their plans for USL Pro teams. The question for the RSL fan base has been when will the team announce final plans for their USL Pro team?

News on this front has started to trickle out the past few weeks. From information given at some of the town hall meetings to discussions taking place on the latest On Frame show as well as some comments by Garth Lagerwey to the Salt Lake Tribune,  it is sounding like they are trying to get a team ready for the 2015 season (the deadline set by MLS). If everything is to be believed that team will play in San Diego. To go along with this news were some comments made on On Frame (and in other places) about creating a PDL team as well.

This is exciting news and I thought it might be interesting to look at who might be on those teams.  I’m going to model both squads on a 23 man roster with 3 goalkeepers, 8 defenders, 8 midfielders, and 4 forwards.  

Until there is more definition around USL Pro/MLS loans/player movement for these reserve sides, it’s hard to know how many players would be moved down to get minutes versus being available for top level gameday rosters.  I’m going to mark 4 players as “loaned” from the MLS club on the USL Pro roster.  I’ll also mark home grown players, who should be protected from being signed by other MLS clubs.

I’m also thinking about this a year or two in the future. Some of the players who are currently in the academy or playing NCAA ball might be playing professionally by that point, so forgive a little fuzziness there. Other MLS clubs are using assistant coaches to help with their developmental teams so I am placing our assistant coaches with our teams as well.

USL Pro coach: Andy Williams (or Daryl Shore)

Goalkeepers: Lalo Fernandez (on loan), Matt Bersano (HG)

Defenders: Rich Balchan (on loan), Aaron Maund (on loan), Ive Burnett (HG)

Midfielders: John Stertzer (on loan), Ricardo Velasquez (HG), Andrew Brody (HG)

Forwards: Benji Lopez (on loan)

PDL coach: Paul Dalglish

Goalkeepers: Christian Herrera (HG), Luis Barraza (HG)

Defenders: Justen Glad (HG), Aaron Herrera (HG)

Midfielders: Miles Stray (HG) Corey Baird (HG), Jose Herandez (HG)

Forwards: Bofo Saucedo (HG), Niki Jackson (HG), Coco Navarro (HG), Sam Gleadle (HG)

The 2015 Expansion Draft Protection List- Prelude

By Charles Barnard

It is coming. It will be painful when it happens. We know it is coming and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. It is the expansion draft.

It is always fun when a new team comes into the league. But one of the downsides of new teams are the expansion drafts. On that day that you know you will be losing a player you probably didn't want to lose. With the dual arrivals of NYCFC and Orlando in 2015 there is a very good chance of losing two players instead of one. This expansion draft has another painful little twist to; we know that Coach Kreis will be one of the people involved in picking an RSL player.

What we don't currently know are all the rules that this draft will have. How many players can be protected? After a player is selected can an additional player be protected? Are Generation Adidas or Home Grown Players automatically protected? Many of these questions won't be answered until we get closer to the draft.

The thought of who RSL should protect is a fascinating one. I thought it would be fun to conduct a poll to see who the fans think we should protect. We will create our own protection list. I will then conduct the same poll at the halfway mark of the season and after the season has concluded. It will be interesting to see what changes (if any) will be made to the list between now and the draft itself.

Here are the rules that I am going to go by (I am just guessing on these). You can protect 11 players.  RSL doesn't currently have any GA players so we don't need to worry about that but I am going to guess that Home Grown players will be automatically protected. One quick note on this: Even though Carlos Salcedo did go through the RSL Academy, he did not sign as a Home Grown player so he is eligible for the draft.

Now this is where you come in. Please submit to me the 11 RSL players that you think should be protected. Remember this is for the 2015 season, not this upcoming season. Do take age into consideration but don't worry about things like contract lengths as that information for each player is not readily available.  You can email your protected list to charles@fromtheupperdeck.com or send me your list on Twitter (@ccb1212).
After compiling the results I will post the findings here on the blog as well as my own protected list and reasons behind each pick.

I am really interested in the results of this and think it will be fun to track over the course of the year. I hope that you will all respond so we can get a really good sense of who the fan base thinks the team should protect.

Thanks to Arthur for creating this Google survey. You can now just enter in your picks here.

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.

End of Year Review- Shooting Statistics

In today's end-of-year review I wanted to take a look at shooting statistics. I took at look at this stat a couple of times last year and found the information very interesting. You can get a sense of where the RSL attack was coming from by looking at who was taking the shots and how aggressive each player was in front of the net.

When I analyze shooting statistics I take a look at three different aspects. First is the ability to get a shot off. Second is the ability to keep the shot on frame. And finally, are the shots that players taking hitting the back of the net? Each of these aspects is a skill and just because a player is good at one doesn't mean he is good at the others.

Below are the shooting stats that I compiled for the forwards. These stats are only for MLS regular season matches. I feel that it is important not just to look at shots and shots on goal but to also average them over 90 minutes (Sp90 and SoGp90) so we can have a better comparison between players regardless of the total amount of time that they played over the season. I also look at the percentage of shots actually being on goal (SoG%) and the percentage of shots that result in goals (GpS%). As a point of reference, the team averaged taking 13.2 shots a game and had 4.9 shots on goal a game.

Player	Shots	Sp90	Shots on Goal	SoGp90	SoG %	GpS %
Saborio	52	3.48	21	1.4	40.38%	23.08%
Findley	37	2.64	15	1.07	40.54%	16.22%
Plata	50	2.74	19	1.04	38.00%	8.00%
Sandoval	18	1.83	9	0.92	50.00%	16.67%
Garcia	33	2.98	14	1.27	42.42%	15.15%

What do these numbers tell us? First, that when he played, Saborio was by far RSL's most aggressive player. He led the team in every shooting category except shot on goal percentage. Granted, his numbers are a little inflated due to him scoring 4 times due to penalty kicks.

Garcia was also very aggressive when he was in matches. For a player so young he was also very accurate with his shots. His shot on goal percentage of 42% is very impressive. What is even more impressive is that shots that hit either the post or crossbar is not considered a shot on goal. I believe Garcia had at least four shots that hit either the post or crossbar this past season. 

While he was very impressive in other parts of his game, Sandoval needs to work on taking more shots. Having less than one shot on goal per 90 minutes played is a little disappointing. Now as I said above, these stats include regular season matches only. It was good to see that he was much more aggressive in the playoffs and in US Open Cup matches.  

Out of all the information above, the one number that stands out the most to me is Plata's goal per shot percentage. Only 8% of the shots he took hit the back of the net. That has to improve. Especially since his shooting rate is pretty high. 

Here is a look at the RSL midfield.

Player	Shots	Sp90	Shots on Goal	SoGp90	SoG %	GpS %
Gil	36	1.57	13	0.57	36.11%	13.89%
Grabavoy	28	0.94	10	0.33	35.71%	17.86%
Morales	47	1.85	18	0.71	38.30%	17.02%
Velasquez	20	2.02	8	0.81	40.00%	0.00%
Stephenson	21	2.39	7	0.8	33.33%	4.76%
Beckerman	44	1.74	17	0.67	38.64%	9.09%
Alvarez	9	0.83	5	0.46	55.56%	11.11%

It is interesting to look at the midfielders. I was surprised to see how often both Stephenson and Velasquez took shots. Grabavoy had a very good goals per shot percentage. Morales also had some very good shooting statistics but his numbers are also slightly inflated due to 2 penalty kicks that he took over the course of the season. Beckerman also seems to take a higher amount of shots than would be expected from his defensive midfield position.

There are a lot of interesting pieces of information that can be gleaned from the above stats. I would love to hear anything you picked out.