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?
