Opponent Difficulty, Crew Players

"Imagine Druids cavorting at Stonehenge, and you'll get the idea. They danced in the spaces where the big blocks were not. They didn't run right at them (or, if they did, it's no surprise that their religion died out)." - Steven Goldman, Baseball Between the Numbers.

One of the things that's got me scratching my head is the absolutely ridiculous start Federico Higuain has had in Major League Soccer. It's literally video game-y. More specifically, the kind of numbers you see when an experienced FIFA 12 player drops the CPU difficulty. Do that - and every cross Sebastian Miranda makes drops perfectly for a Ben Speas who is suddenly averaging 2 goals and 1 assist (to Olman Vargas) per game.

I generally consider the quality of Major League Soccer sides to be negligible but after watching enough games like last night's San Jose destruction of Chivas USA, I've started to change my thinking. Perhaps opponent difficulty in the real MLS world is something that should be weighted more heavily when measuring player performance. Perhaps MLS opponent difficulty is more like difficulty level on a video game then I previously thought.

Below is the average opponent's rank on the most current MLS True Table (pts pGM, combined table) when a particular player is starting.

OPP. RANK : NAME : GMs STARTED
5.5 : Julius James 2
6.6 : Cole Grossman 5
6.7 : Justin Meram 9
8.0 : Bernardo Anor 5
9.0 : Chris Birchall 12
9.5 : Tony Tchani 12
9.6 : Nemanja Vukovic 11
9.6 : Joshua Williams 20
9.8 : Kevan George 4
9.9 : Eric Gehrig 7
9.9 : Dilly Duka 11
10.1 : Andy Gruenebaum 25
10.3 : Carlos Mendes 10
10.3 : Eddie Gaven 26
10.4 : Jairo Obando Arrieta 10
10.5 : Emilio Renteria 15
10.6 : Sebastián Miranda 25
11.0 : Danny O´Rourke 12
11.0 : Aaron Schoenfeld 3
11.1 : Chad Marshall 18
11.3 : Olman Vargas 6
12.6 : Milovan Mirosevic 18
14.7 : Ethan Finlay 3
15.0 : Matt Lampson 1
15.8 : Federico Higuaín 4

Interesting takeaways here come in comparing players of the same position. Like, Meram's 9 starts with a 6.7 opponent team rank compared to Dilly Duka's 11 starts and 9.9. or Chris Birchall and Tony Tchani's opponent difficulty compared to Milovan Mirosevic and Danny O'Rourke.

Take a look now at Higuain, my reason for performing this exercise. The teams he has faced in his 4 starts average nearly 16th on the table (out of 19). It sheds light a little bit on why he has had the early success.

But even when considering the level of opposition, 3 goals and 6 assists in 378 minutes is way out of control on the awesome scale of awesome. No doubt this pace will slow against some better teams, the question is how much.

He should reach his 5th start this week and therefore crosses the first Helltown hurdle. In doing so, even if he stands there for 90 minutes staring at the football lines at Gillette Stadium he will still be tops in the league in Goals + Assists per 90 minutes for players over 450 minutes.

Next hurdle will be the 900 minute mark (league leaders on right) which he could hit on October 7th against Kansas City. And by then, I have to say again, if he just stands on the field with no other goals and assists, will still be at 0.90 per game. Good enough for 13th best right now. My goodness.

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For those looking, here is updated Goals + Assist per 90 totals for the Columbus Crew 2012 season to date.

G+A p90 : Name : Minutes

2.17 : Federico Higuain : 373
0.75 : Jairo Arrieta : 839
0.47 : Justin Meram : 767
0.35 : Eddie Gaven : 2305
0.34 : Emilio Rentería : 1336
0.33 : Tony Tchani : 1084
0.30 : Aaron Schoenfeld : 298
0.27 : Nemanja Vukovic : 1002
0.25 : Chris Birchall : 1092
0.21 : Dilly Duka : 844
0.18 : Bernardo Anor : 493
0.18 : Cole Grossman : 500
0.17 : Milovan Mirosevic : 1556
0.15 : Josh Williams : 1794
0.14 : Olman Vargas : 658
0.13 : Eric Gehrig : 712
0.11 : Chad Marshall : 1606
0.04 : Sebastian Miranda : 2194

0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum : 2205
0.00 : Danny O'Rourke : 1063
0.00 : Carlos Mendes : 769
0.00 : Ethan Finlay : 426
0.00 : Kevan George : 426
0.00 : Julius James : 275
0.00 : Matt Lampson : 135
0.00 : Tommy Heinemann : 5

When putting this post together I came across a Steven Goldman quote atop this post from Baseball Between the Numbers in which he tries to describe how they look "around the numbers, beyond the numbers, and quietly tiptoeing past the numbers".

Goals + Assists per 90, Columbus Crew

A good attacking rate in any league or at any level is a player getting a goal or an assist in a third of the games they play in. The more minutes they player logs, the more meaningful the number.

Below is Crew player G+A per 90 minutes played efficiency with the number of 90 minute games each player has participated in on the right.

League matches only. See bottom of post for notes.

G+A per 90 : Name : GMs Played

0.82 : Jairo Arrieta : 3.7
0.53 : Shaun Francis : 5.6
0.41 : Chris Birchall : 7.3
0.41 : Justin Meram : 7.3
0.30 : Aaron Schoenfeld : 3.3
0.30 : Emilio Rentería : 13.5
0.30 : Nemanja Vukovic : 10.1
0.25 : Eddie Gaven : 19.6
0.25 : Tony Tchani : 11.8
0.19 : Dilly Duka : 5.3
0.18 : Bernardo Anor : 5.5
0.14 : Olman Vargas : 7.3
0.13 : Josh Williams : 15.2
0.13 : Eric Gehrig : 7.9
0.08 : Chad Marshall : 11.8
0.08 : Milovan Mirosevic : 12.5
0.05 : Sebastian Miranda : 18.5
0.00 : Andy Gruenebaum : 20.0
0.00 : Danny O'Rourke : 8.5
0.00 : Carlos Mendes : 5.1
0.00 : Kevan George : 4.7
0.00 : Ethan Finlay : 4.6
0.00 : Cole Grossman : 3.6
0.00 : Julius James : 2.2
0.00 : Tommy Heinemann : 0.1


NOTEs:

• A good goal and assist rate for an individual with less then 5 games is a player trending in the right direction. It should only be seen as a trend, however.

• The best attacking players in the league play in over 70% of total minutes and have G+A per 90 rate of +0.40. Only 22 players in the league have achieved this and that list is impressive.

G+A per 90 : Name : GMs Played

0.91 : Chris Wondolowski : 21.90
0.85 : David Beckham : 17.59
0.78 : Robbie Keane : 17.99
0.75 : Dwayne De Rosario : 20.13
0.74 : Eddie Johnson : 16.24
0.73 : Landon Donovan : 19.27
0.67 : Will Bruin : 19.53
0.66 : Brad Davis : 19.79
0.60 : Fredy Montero : 18.46
0.57 : Graham Zusi : 21.04
0.57 : Kenny Cooper : 21.20
0.56 : Alvaro Saborio : 21.24
0.55 : Saer Sene : 18.04
0.55 : Marco Pappa : 16.27
0.53 : Fabian Espindola : 18.83
0.51 : Felipe Martins : 23.47
0.50 : Kei Kamara : 21.94
0.41 : Martin Rivero : 19.40
0.41 : Ryan Johnson : 22.00
0.41 : Kris Boyd : 19.56
0.40 : Brian Mullan : 19.80
0.40 : Joel Lindpere : 20.08

• Eddie Gaven ranks 36th in this category.

• Columbus is tied for last in number of players that have played in over 70% of minutes possible by club. Gruenebaum, Gaven, Miranda, Williams.

• Josh Williams and his 2 assists in 15.2 games puts him 16th among defenders. He only needs a goal or assist in the next few games to put him at elite defender levels. Interesting note... fellow Ohioan, Marc Burch is right there with him. 3 assists in 16.9 games, good enough for 12th among defenders in this efficiency (0.18).

FORMULA:

Score=((Goals-PK+Assists)/(Minutes Played / Standard Game Length))

Example: Eddie Gaven
0.25 = ((4-0+1)/(1765/90)
4 goals, 0 PKs, 1 Assist in 19.6 games