Season in Review- Minute Per Team Goal

By Charles Barnard

It has been a little while since posting on here but I am back. Life has somewhat gotten in my way and I have not had the chance to write as much as I would like of late. With the regular season now concluded for RSL it is the perfect time to start really looking at the season ending stats for the team. I also have one more poll to run asking the question “Who should RSL protect in the expansion draft”. Before we start thinking about the expansion draft lets first look at the stats from this season.

The first thing I want to look at is Minutes per Team Goal (MpTG). For those that are unfamiliar with this stat (I came up with it myself) I look at how many goals were scored while a particular player was on the field. The thinking behind this stat is that even though a player might not have scored the goal or got the assist, they still can have a positive effect on goals being scored. After I see how many goals were scored while the player was on the field I then look at how many goals were scored while the player was not on the field. This gives me a general sense on how much a player affected the overall team on the offensive side of the ball.

Here are the complete 2014 MpTG stats for RSL. For comparison sake, RSL as a whole averaged scoring a goal every 56.6 minutes.

Player	Min	Goals	MpTG
Saborio	1148	23	49.91
Findley	764	8	95.5
Plata	1927	40	48.18
Sandoval	633	8	79.13
Garcia	1191	20	59.55
Gil	1365	17	80.29
Grabavoy	2711	51	53.16
Morales	2645	45	58.78
Velasquez	222	8	27.75
Stertzer	273	3	91
Mulholland	1987	38	52.29
Jaime	261	8	32.63
Grossman	532	7	76
Beckerman	2520	50	50.4

Now here are the stats from when the player was not on the field. The final column is the difference between the two.

Player	Min not played	Goals	MpTG	Difference
Saborio	1912	31	61.68	11.76
Findley	2296	46	49.91	-45.59
Plata	1133	14	80.93	32.75
Sandoval	2427	46	52.76	-26.36
Garcia	1869	34	54.97	-4.58
Gil	1695	37	45.81	-34.48
Grabavoy	349	3	116.33	63.18
Morales	415	9	46.11	-12.67
Velasquez	2838	46	61.7	33.95
Stertzer	2787	51	54.65	-36.35
Mulholland	1073	16	67.06	14.77
Jaime	2799	44	63.61	30.99
Grossman	2528	47	53.79	-22.21
Beckerman	540	4	135	84.6

You will see that Sebastian Velasquez came out on top with the best MpTG. One thing to consider is that Velasquez mostly played in a substitute role. RSL scored 20% of their goals in the final 15 minutes of matches. Because of this, most players that are primarily substitutes could have inflated numbers.

Sebastian Jaime is a perfect example of why I like to look at this stat. Some people are concerned that he did not score one goal this season. But this shows that he did have a very positive effect on the team.

We can gain more information by looking at how well the team played when particular players were not on the field. RSL really struggled offensively when Kyle Beckerman and Ned Grabavoy do not play. Again this shows that players that do not have a lot of traditional offensive stats (goals/assists) still should get credit for the role that they play in the offense.

On the flip side of the coin we have Robbie Findley and Luis Gil. There was a negative effect on the offensive output of the team when these players were on the field. Findley had his struggles on the field (and we will see more of them as I go along with my review) but the player that really concerns me is Gil. The team scored at a much higher rate when Gil did not play. The worrisome thing is that this was the case last year as well.

What are you seeing from these numbers? Is there something that stands out to you?