Crew Final Player Rating

Below will be how I see things regarding final Crew player Ratings on the 2012 Season. If you look on the right of this blog you will see that I've spent some time with different player rating systems and their take on this past year's Crew team.

You'll notice the headers. "HBR" is my player rating. "Castrol" is the Castrol Index that MLS employs. "Guldan" is the rating SB Nation's Crew blog gave. "HBS Top H" is a score I track. It's a players Points Earned Per Game + Goal Difference. "Diff" is the difficulty of opponents each player faced when on the field.

First up will be the players finishing outside the top 18 in average rating.

Players "19-30" on any Major League Soccer team can be both the most important - and the most meaningless. Over the past few years the Columbus Crew have done a fairly good job in populating the senior team roster with good talent. You'll notice that this list includes young and/or injured players. Big call out: Julius James shouldn't be here and Francis is gone already.

I like the rest on this list. I think Schoenfeld and Heinemann are healthy target players to have in MLS. Arrieta came on strong, but players like him get eaten up by the physical nature of this league. Crew need goals from big men in the box. Gehrig, Anor, Finlay, and Speas are the kind of players you want working to get in the top 18.

Next up is the middle group.

This is the most critical group and here is where you'll probably see the most change. These guys saw significant minutes but received mixed reviews. Call Outs: Mirosevic was picked to be an important leader of the club and for the most part he was. Problem might be that (and this includes my own system) he showed better due to level of competition. He somehow managed to participate in a nearly full season yet rank towards the bottom in playing against top clubs.

Another call out is Olman Vargas. He played against quality competition but struggled. Same with Federico Higuain, in a way. Higuain really benefited from being in the right place at the right time this year but he did outstandingly during his short time. Next year should be interesting.

The polar opposite of Mirosevic is Cole Grossman. He received tepid reviews from me, Castrol and Guldan but over-performed against good competition when evaluating actual results. The reason I include performance against teams in the Top Half is because of Cole (being honest, but you can't ignore the results).

Of this list of players I think Nemanja Vukovic, Emilio Renteria and Tony Tchani are in danger of moving on. Renteria is worth hanging on to, but we'll see.

THE TOP 2012 PLAYERS

Up to the final list now, the top guys. One of the things I looked for in regards to player rating over different systems and metrics was variance. I liked low numbers and little difference between them. I saw that with Josh Williams and Chris Birchall. Andy Gruenebaum and Sebastian Miranda also fall in there.

Unfortunately, I think Dilly Duka is on the 'fringe' along with Carlos Mendes. Both these guys probably out performed what most of us saw but circumstance might bite them in the end. For the record, I think both Dilly Duka and Carlos Mendes are players I think the Crew should work to retain. At the very least, both are MLS ready and had great metrics. That alone should keep them on the Crew's list of 2013 roster players.

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There is a melancholic feeling to this post for me now that I'm done reviewing the Crew players. It by no means covers everything or every feeling I have about each player. November is generally a big month of change for a lot of Crew players. My thoughts and prayers are with those most affected by the changes.