Thursday, April 11, 2013

Kramb's Law (first look, Crew)


We are almost to a magical 2013 MLS season moment here for Helltown - That moment? One where all MLS teams have reached at least 5 games.

I like 5 games because it is 450 minutes, and from what I have been able to observe over the past three years in tracking MLS stats closely is that 450 is the first marker in identifying a trend. Be it good or bad. Player or club.

While there are still 3 teams sitting on four the other 16 are at 5 or six. So I am jumping the gun a little. Consider it a preview.

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KRAMB'S LAW(s) OF PERFORMANCE
The name comes from Ryan Kramb (M.S., PhD, Chemical Engineering / Crew fan), who asked a few questions of me towards the end of last year about tracking team performance while players were on the field. Let's take a look at the ingredients.

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1. Goal Difference:
We'll call this the 1st of 3 Kramb laws. GD while on the pitch is right up there with points earned per start in my book. Critical performance indicators that can lead to a better understanding of the team.

Goal Difference alone whilst on the pitch is a good indicator but Goal Diff vs how well the team does gives us a performance metric.

GOAL DIFF vs TEAM AVG : NAME
+0.73 : Eddie Gaven

0.00 : Chad Marshall
0.00 : Danny O´Rourke
0.00 : Dominic Oduro
0.00 : Joshua Williams
0.00 : Gláuber Berti
0.00 : Tyson Wahl
0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum

-0.20 : Agustín Viana
-0.40 : Federico Higuaín
-0.60 : Jairo Obando Arrieta
-0.60 : Ben Speas

2. Opponent Difficulty:
Another major influencer to consider in monitoring player performance is quality of opponent. For this I use current place on the overall MLS table. Right now the Crew's avg opponent place on the table is 9.6 or, about the middle of the table. You can turn this into a metric by taking each individual player's Opponent Diff vs. Team Avg.

OPPONENT DIFF VS. TEAM AVG : NAME
+2.27 : Jairo Obando Arrieta

0.00 : Chad Marshall
0.00 : Danny O´Rourke
0.00 : Dominic Oduro
0.00 : Joshua Williams
0.00 : Gláuber Berti
0.00 : Tyson Wahl
0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum
0.00 : Agustín Viana
0.00 : Federico Higuaín

-0.40 : Eddie Gaven
-1.40 : Ben Speas

3. Points Earned per Start:
Now we are on to points earned when an individual player starts vs team average (1.60 PPG right now).

PPG vs TEAM : NAME
+0.73 : Eddie Gaven

0.00 : Chad Marshall
0.00 : Danny O´Rourke
0.00 : Dominic Oduro
0.00 : Joshua Williams
0.00 : Gláuber Berti
0.00 : Tyson Wahl
0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum
0.00 : Agustín Viana
0.00 : Federico Higuaín

-0.27 : Jairo Obando Arrieta
-0.35 : Ben Speas

Now that we have three useful, actionable metrics I'm going to simply add them up and see what happens.

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KRAMB SCORE : NAME
+1.40 : Jairo Obando Arrieta
+1.07 : Eddie Gaven

0.00 : Chad Marshall
0.00 : Danny O´Rourke
0.00 : Joshua Williams
0.00 : Gláuber Berti
0.00 : Tyson Wahl
0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum
0.00 : Dominic Oduro

-0.20 : Agustín Viana
-0.40 : Federico Higuaín
-2.35 : Ben Speas

What this should tell us is which players have contributed the most while playing. This isn't a measure of individual player quality but more a indication of which players are getting results while playing.

Some early thoughts (and it is very early):

• Arrieta missed the DC win but benefits because of United's poor place on the table. He was also part of the big win week one vs. Chivas USA.

• Speas is the only player that missed the Chivas USA win. With out that win the Crew are achingly average and Speas score suffers from that. Would the Crew have won that Vancouver game away were Gaven playing?

• Higuain was down the list at the end of last year as well. I've written A LOT about why this happens (see my Massive Report piece on it). Summed up? Better teams figured out fast how the Crew coaching staff was using him last year and all teams have figured it out this year.

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Stay tuned to Massive Report by around Week 10. I'll post up the same there but with more data to support 2013 results.

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