Crew Player Rankings

One of the things I like to keep up with throughout the season is MLS player rankings (and ratings). I started tracking with my own model three years ago because there wasn't really anything out there for MLS players. It was more for me and only used as a tool to help me look at a players performance objectively.

Now, three years later, we have both a WhoScored.com and Castrol rating to play around with as well. All year long you can see these updated rankings on the right hand column of this site (you have to view the desktop version of the site).

What I've done today is take the three player rankings for Columbus Crew players and put them into one table. On the far left is the median rank (middle number) of all of them. I figured with only three the middle number was fine.

MEDIAN	NAME	WHOSCORED	CASTROL	HELLTOWN
20	Federico Higuaín	43	20	9
62	Wil Trapp	44	108	62
87	Michael Parkhurst	78	97	87
99	Steve Clark	146	23	99
100	Giancarlo Gonzalez	24	147	100
133	Waylon Francis	86	194	133
159	Tony Tchani	135	161	159
160	Josh Williams	160	188	135
160	Bernardo Anor	184	77	160
161	Jairo Arrieta	230	93	161
168	Héctor Jiménez	168	177	43
213	Justin Meram	213	295	212
241	Dominic Oduro	308	241	163
312	Ethan Finlay	323	286	312
339	Chad Barson	325	366	339
346	Tyson Wahl	355	346	332
359	Adam Bedell	359	375	334

You can sort of figure out what the colors mean. The darker blue represents players how fall in the top quarter of all players that have seen minutes this season, so far. Light blue represents players in the top half and gray is all in the bottom half.

My first observation was that 11 of the 17 players here fall above average, which is good for the Crew. Their place on the overall table reflects that. It's something I haven't seen in year's past. Thing are changing, however. Players are slipping down the list and it won't be long until we see some of the regular starters dropping below the league median.

If you look closely you'll see a couple rankings that stick out. I have Jimenez much higher than the other two (I value players who earn minutes on good teams), Trapp's Castrol is way out there (they tend to reward goal scorers / on the ball activity disproportionately), WhoScored isn't a big fan of Steve Clark, and so on. 

Overall, it gives me a great idea of where things are with the team. Which is to say that they are above average at the moment.

One of the things I'm learning after a few years of monitoring this is teams are only as good as their weakest link (meaning DPs are great but not most important). Later this week hoping to take a look at more teams.