Season in Review- Minutes Per Conceded Goal

By Charles Barnard

In part one of my look at the end of year statistics for RSL I took a look at my Minutes per Team Goal (MpTG) stat. In part 2 I want to take a look at the defensive side of the ball. To do this, I look at Minutes per Conceded Goal (MpCG). This is basically the opposite of MpTG. I am looking at how many goals the team gives up while a particular player is on the field and then compare that against how many goals were given up when that player was not on the field.

For a point of reference, RSL as a team gave up a goal every 71 minutes this past season. Here is a look at the RSL defensive players.

Player	Min	Goals	MpCG	Min not played	Goals	MpCG	Difference
Wingert	2537	33	76.88	523	6	87.17	-10.29
Beltran	2393	34	70.38	667	5	133.4	-63.02
Schuler	2154	27	79.78	906	12	75.5	4.28
Borchers	2856	36	79.33	204	3	68	11.33
Salcedo	800	8	100	2260	31	72.9	27.1
Mansally	655	9	72.78	2405	30	80.17	-7.39
Balchan	233	1	233	2827	38	74.39	158.61
Maund	432	7	61.71	2628	32	82.13	-20.41

The number that really jumps out out to me was how well Carlos Salcedo played this past season. Now remember, the first match that he played was when he had to come in off the bench cold in San Jose. The Earthquakes went on to score two times late to get the draw. I think everyone would say Salcedo was put into a difficult position in that match. If you only look at the last 779 minutes that he has played (throwing out that SJ match) his numbers look even better. At that point the team would only be giving up a goal every 130 minutes when he was in the match.

Rich Balchan’s numbers are also impressive. He had a nightmare of a match down in Chivas but besides that he had outstanding numbers during the limited time he played.

On the flip side I was somewhat surprised with Tony Beltran’s numbers. Statistically last year he was RSL’s best defender. This year the team played really well those few games that Beltran did not play.

This season I also kept track of MpCG for all field midfielders and forwards. Here are those numbers.

	MpCG	MpCG (not on field)
Saborio	76.5	79.6
Plata	80.2	75.5
Findley	84.8	76.53
Garcia	85	74.76
Sandoval	70.33	80.9
Jaime	130.5	75.6
Beckerman	86.9	54
Mulholland	70.9	97.55
Morales	82.6	59.29
Grabavoy	82.15	58.17
Gil	85.31	73.7
Velasquez	55.5	81.09
Stertzer	54.6	81.97
Grossman	59.11	84.27

I was very surprised to see how well the numbers were for Sebastian Jaime. He ended up playing 261 minutes and during that time RSL only gave up 2 goals. I am not sure how much of that can be attributed to Jaime, but it has been talked about how good he is on defending set pieces. Perhaps there is more to this number than meets the eye.

It really should come as no surprise that Kyle Beckerman comes out looking really good in these numbers. Also like when we looked at MpTG, this is another area that shows the value of Ned Grabavoy.

One number that did pop out to me was that of Luke Mulholland. The RSL defense was much poorer when Mulholland was on the field compared to when he was off.