7 Options Declined

The Columbus Crew today announced they will be declining options on the following players contracts: William Hesmer, Rich Balchan, Julius James, Sebastian Miranda, Chris Birchall, Tony Tchani; and forward Tommy Heinemann.

Columbus is free to negotiate new contracts with these players but it is not likely that the club will pick any back up. Roster bullet points:

• All totaled the Crew dropped $ 854,825 in Guaranteed Salary ($ 710,950 Base) today.

• $ 1,899,900 worth of contracts remain on the 2013 payroll, $ 1,554,200 (Base Salary) left on the roster, according to MLS Salary Cap rules

• Only 9 players left from just 2 years ago. Of them, 2 were regular starters. Columbus very much in rebuilding mode despite reports out of team HQ stating otherwise.

Here is a list of 17 players that will be returning in 2013: Andy Gruenebaum, Matt Lampson, Eric Gehrig, Chad Marshall, Josh Williams, Bernardo Anor, Dilly Duka, Ethan Finlay, Eddie Gaven, Kevan George, Milovan Mirosevic, Jairo Arrieta, Federico Higuaín, Aaron Horton, Justin Meram, Aaron Schoenfeld, and Ben Speas.

According to reports, the Crew will be offering new contracts to Carlos Mendes, Emilio Renteria and Danny O'Rourke.

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SOME THOUGHTS

Sadly, a lot of what was cut strikes me as simply cutting injured players. I do not believe the Columbus Crew have the resources to care and feed players with injury (of any kind). Hesmer, Balchan, and Heinemann all had season injuries early on. James suffered a collapsed lung that sidelined him most of the year then battled a reoccurring shoulder injury. All were cut and all are probably casualty of a poorly financed and run fitness and training staff.

Sebastian Miranda and Chris Birchall are pure examples of unnecessary cuts in my book. They have MLS experience and earn a modest starting salary. Replacements will likely be, at best, similar quality. It's 'change for change sake' at it's best.

Tony Tchani seemed to come on a bit this year but ultimately it's probably his Generation Adidas contract that did him in.

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I WILL MISS TOMMY HEINEMANN

Having only been a casual fan over the years, Tommy probably responsible for me getting hooked on following the Crew as closely as I have since late 2010. I'm not even going to pretend to use data to justify keeping him (even though his win % as a starter remains one of the best in last 2 years). I favor him too much. He's a good dude and I wish him the best where ever he goes.

Tommy's time with the Crew inspired enough in me to make a couple videos... 1st is a video during a long road trip out west back in 2011.



Another was in defeat... but myths, legends and heroes are made in such times:



And here's a 3rd one I did.

The Crew Forward Market

Now that I've looked at Crew Defenders and Midfielders, it's time to take a look at the Crew's attacking group. Just as in the last post I'm going to touch on which players are a hit and which are a miss in regards to contract.

You'd figure that writing about the Forward position might be the most exciting, but it really isn't. Why this is probably has a lot to do with the Columbus Crew switching to a single forward attack over the two that they preferred all of last year and at the start of this year.

The rise of the 4-2-3-1 as Robert Warzycha's primary formation comes from the lack of any target man. The injury to Tommy Heinemann, impatience with Olman Vargas and generally 'rookie-ness' of Aaron Schoenfeld almost forced the oh so mighty hand of Warzycha to go with what was his secondary formation (the: 4-2-3-1) last year.

Since that formation change - the club rode the Jairo Arrieta train from summer on. What that means is that there isn't a whole lot to hang our hats on here at the "forward" position. All is not lost though. How about we look at it from a "attacking" position perspective.

CONTRACT HITS BASED ON VALUE

Federico Higuain
Value: $195k, Contract: $162k
Notes: Contract was cut in half to adjust for MLS rules regarding players starting half way through the season.

Emilio Renteria
Value: $163k, Contract: $134k
Notes: Renteria's Goal p90 rate tanked this year but most of that was due to the change in his role. Renteria took his positional change really well and actually earned three assists.

Jairo Arrieta
Value: $134k, Contract: $113k
Notes: Arrieta is another contract I cut in half due to MLS rules on players coming in halfway through the season.

CONTRACT MISS BASED ON VALUE

Olman Vargas (released)
Value: $79k, Contract: $175k
Notes: Olman contract option was not picked up by the Crew.

...AND ON VARGAS

Turns out that even my modest predictions for him back in February were too lofty. I predicted 3-5 goals, no assists and 1200 minutes of playing time with a scoring rate of 0.12. Turns out I was dead on the scoring rate. In MLS he got 0.13 but only half the 1200 minutes I foresaw. Also, he registered 0 (nowt) assists, just as I thought (mu-hahaha).

On other thing I tried to predict was his salary. I called it at $140k. Turns out it was slightly higher; $175k. What's frustrating to me is that armed with only public information I was able to predict what this player would do and the salary he would make.

Vargas was the only real loss the Crew took at the forward position. In fact, the forward position was the only group that was in the black.

It's surprising to me is that for all the fan discontent with the Crew attacking capabilities the players classified by Stats, Inc as Forwards actually did very well (in terms of value). Much better, in fact, then both Defenders and Midfielders.

-$196k: DEFENDERS
-$186k: MIDFIELD
+$127k: FORWARDS

THE UNDERPAID FORWARDS

Justin Meram and Aaron Schoenfeld are underpaid when comparing what they did to the rest of Major League Soccer. I value Meram at $169k and Schoenfeld at $80k. Both are clear values based on 2012 production. The earned well above their current salaries.

2013 SNEAK PEEK

Robert Warzycha will ride Higuain and Arrieta till the wheels come off. Problem will be - the wheels will inevitably come off. You can't win in this league with just one playmaker and one opportunistic forward. Banking an entire season on that combo is league table suicide. Aaron Schoenfeld and Tommy Heinemann will have to play a role in order for this team to make some noise in 2013. Look at the best teams in this league. Hell. Any league.

Simply put: You cannot survive on a poacher (Arrieta) and an advanced playmaking forward (Higuain) to create all your goals over a 34+ match season.

THE LAST TWO

Of the players that saw time, Ethan Finlay and Ben Speas are the only other players I haven't talked about. I like both of them. It appears that they will be spending time in unnatural spots. Speas seems to be destine for the Left Mid spot and Finlay? Anywhere else under King Warzycha. I like him anywhere that allows him to run.

Tommy Heinemann Surgery

Adam Jardy, Columbus Dispatch, reported today that Tommy Heinemann had arthroscopic surgery on his knee last week. Positive sign is that he will not need further surgery (according to Coach Warzycha).

Arthroscopic surgery isn't a serious procedure but for a soccer player it can take a bit longer to recover, I would imagine. Maybe expect 4-6 weeks out? Time will tell.

Anybody who happens to read along with Helltown knows that Tommy is a favored player. Hope he gets back out there soon.

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Adam Jardy's "Covering the Crew" blog for the Columbus Dispatch. Link.

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UPDATE 4-13-12: Reported that Tommy has a fracture in his knee and will be out for the year. Also reported that William Hesmer will be out for 6 months with a similar fracture in his hip. Frustrating news. Hope to see both of them back and healthy.

Not Just Lucky Anor, LJ Metric

Getting wins whilst starting and decisively beating opponents. Two important and easily measured metrics in the world of Major League Soccer.

Wins in soccer equates to points. 3 pts for a win, 1 for draw, 0 for loss. Divide the total number of games played into the total points earned by a team or player and you get Points per Game (PPG). Most leagues that play heavy cup and international league schedules use this metric because not all clubs are on the same number of games to associated league round. I use it on the upper right of this page for MLS. Sorting a league table in this way is sometimes called a True Table.

Decisively beating opponents can be acutely measured by goal difference. While it may not work on an individual game basis, it does work out over time. The bigger the positive number - the more convincing the victories are. These are high level generalities - but good enough to serve as an easy way to determine player importance to a club.

What I've done with Crew players over the past year or so is add each player's PPG and GD together to figure out who is contributing most to my beloved hometown club. It's a way for me to quantify performance.

Example: Will Hesmer. 11 wins, 8 draws, 14 loss. 1.24 PPG. In that same time frame the Crew has a GD of -0.18. Add the PPG and GD = 1.06. Pretty much an worthless number on its own but when put in relationship to the overall team performance of 1.27... you start getting a clearer picture. Hesmer is performing below the team average.

I'm going to take a quick conversational look at these two metrics as they stand from the start of the Columbus Crew's 2011 season to today (two games into 2012). 37 total Games.

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Last Saturday's game marked Bernardo Anor's 7th career start for Columbus. His record is now 4 Wins, 1 Draw, 2 Loss. That translates to 1.86 Points Per Game (PPG). Goal Difference (GD) with him starting is +0.71.

Anor PPG and GD are now tops on the Crew counting players with 7 or more starts.

If you compare that to Shaun Francis and his 7 career starts over that same time frame you get the second to last PPG of 1.00. 2 Wins, 1 Draw, 4 Loss. The Crew's GD with him starting is -0.43. Again, second to last on the team.

To put it another way; The difference between Anor and Francis' PPG (0.86) was the gap between the LA Galaxy and Chivas USA last year.

7 games isn't quite a large enough data set to make any major conclusions. Especially when comparing players of different position, but it is enough data to start asking questions.

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Floating up with Anor in PPG and GD is Tommy Heinemann, 1.50 PPG and +0.33 GD and Eddie Gaven, 1.48 PPG and +0.14 GD. No other active Crew player with over 7 starts has a positive GD besides Danny O'Rourke, +0.13 GD. But Danny's PPG is too low to be considered for this group.

I'm not the only one noticing Tommy's contributions and potential after his first year. LINK.

Justin Meram and Andy Gruenebaum are close to joining this 'winners club', need 3 more starts each though.

At the bottom with Francis is Dilly Duka, who deserves his own special spot with these two metrics. Duka only earns 0.89 PPG and has an astonishingly low -0.72 GD (18 games started, only 2 games short of the 20 I need in order to be 99% sure he needs to sit the bench or be traded).

Joining Duka is Rich Balchan with a 1.17 PPG and -0.33 GD (18 games started).

Below is the complete list sorted by the Metric I've described above (current players are in BOLD)

PPG+GD : Player : Games Started

2.57 : Bernardo Anor : 7
1.83 : Tom Heinemann : 12
1.62 : Eddie Gaven : 29
1.60 : Kevin Burns : 15
1.59 : Joshua Gardner : 22
1.38 : Emmanuel Ekpo : 29
1.38 : Julius James : 32
1.38 : Danny O´Rourke : 8
1.27 : Sebastian Miranda : 37
1.27 : Team Average : 15
1.26 : Chad Marshall : 35
1.23 : Dejan Rusmir : 13
1.08 : Andrés Mendoza : 26
1.06 : Will Hesmer : 33
0.96 : Robbie Rogers : 25
0.94 : Emilio Renteria : 16
0.83 : Rich Balchan : 18
0.57 : Shaun Francis : 7
0.17 : Dilly Duka : 18

These guys haven't reached the five games started yet but are contributing to the Team Average.

5.00 : Olman Vargas : 1
3.25 : Justin Meram : 4
3.00 : Andy Gruenebaum : 4
2.00 : Andy Iro : 2
1.50 : Kirk Urso : 2
1.50 : Milovan Mirosevic : 2
1.27 : Team Average : 15
1.25 : Jeff Cunningham : 4
0.75 : Eric Gehrig : 4
-1.50 : Tony Tchani : 2

Like I mentioned above, the number by itself doesn't mean much. It's just something simple to keep track of that I hope adds weight to my musings on Crew Football. The simplicity of soccer is the reason for it's greatness.

That said, this metric would get shot down were I to present it to the C level Emeryville team of the company I work for. It's not something they could put on a slide deck and present to the board during quarterly meetings. However.

It is definitely a metric that would be used by someone, say, on the operational level. Someone whose survival requires more sweat then swagger, flash and splash.