Top Center Backs in MLS

[Season start - July 26, 2019 - I round ages]

Here are the best Center Backs in MLS based on my own Helltown player ratings and WhoScored (average rank between the two systems).

	Name(2)	BIRTHPLACE	Team	Age	Salary
1	Walker Zimmerman	Lawrenceville, Georgia	LAF	26	$600,000
2	Miles Robinson	Arlington, Massachusetts	ATL	22	$201,250
3	Maxime Chanot	Nancy, France	NYCFC	30	$650,000
4	Ike Opara	Durham, North Carolina	MIN	30	$367,917
5	Daniel Steres	Burbank, California	LAG	29	$155,500
6	Leandro González Pírez	Buenos Aires, Argentina	ATL	27	$810,008
7	Jack Elliott	London, England	PHI	24	$265,000
8	Auston Trusty	Media, Pennsylvania	PHI	21	$124,100
9	Steve Birnbaum	Newport, California	DC	29	$550,000
10	Frederic Brillant	Sedan, France	DC	34	$300,000
11	Florian Jungwirth	Grafelfing, West Germany	SJE	31	$616,675
12	Diego Polenta	Montevideo, Uruguay	LAG	28	$777,276
13	Eddie Segura	Pereira, Colombia	LAF	23	$212,000
14	Matt Hedges	Rochester, New York	FCD	29	$575,008
15	Bastian Schweinsteiger	Kolbermoor, West Germany	CHI	35	$5,600,000
16	James Sands	Rye, New York	NYCFC	19	$105,000
17	Amro Tarek	Los Angeles, California	NYR	27	$156,250
18	Keegan Rosenberry	Harrisburg, Pennsylvania	COL	26	$164,945
19	Alex Callens	Callao, Peru	NYCFC	27	$664,000
20	Michael Boxall	Auckland, New Zealand	MIN	31	$317,333

28: Median Age of top 20 CBs in MLS
$342k: Median Salary of top 20 CBs in MLS

CALL OUTS

Walker Zimmerman, 26, LAFC
In the right place at the right time in his career. I'm not sure if I see him making a big move overseas at this point, but he'll likely be winning a few trophies.

Maynor Figueroa, 36, HOU (ranked 25, not listed):
He has been in MLS since 2015 (FC Dallas, Houston) and is a steal, at least according to published wage data. WhoScored doesn't necessarily rate him (they love lots of activity, something CBs don't have as much as, say, mids).

Donovan Pines, 21, DC (ranked 24, not listed):
The highest-rated WhoScored CB is playing for DC and is only 21. If you are looking him up, join the club. I had to as well.

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Outside of those two you have a bunch of players performing like they should. Notable is Ike Opara (excellent pickup by MIN), Walker Zimmerman, Auston Trusty, Miles Robinson.

 Here's how WhoScored has them:

WS	Name(2)	Team
7.17	Donovan Pines	DC
7.11	Ike Opara	MIN
7.09	Francisco Calvo	CHI
7.05	Miles Robinson	ATL
7.04	Walker Zimmerman	LAF
7.03	Maxime Chanot	NYCFC
6.98	Leandro González Pírez	ATL
6.97	Francisco Calvo	CHI
6.95	Florian Jungwirth	SJE
6.90	Frederic Brillant	DC
6.90	Amro Tarek	NYR
6.89	Steve Birnbaum	DC
6.88	Diego Polenta	LAG
6.87	Bastian Schweinsteiger	CHI
6.87	Matheus Bressan	FCD
6.84	Aaron Long	NYR
6.83	Matt Hedges	FCD
6.79	Lamine Sané	ORL
6.78	Maynor Figueroa	HOU
6.70	Zakaria Diallo	MTL

Here are my other TOP IN MLS lists, so far:

FORWARDs
CENTRAL MIDFIELD
RIGHT MIDFIELD
LEFT BACKS

Now THIS is a lineup sheet

Compare to modern design that lives behind an "I can use editing software, therefore, I know design" mantra. It's age-old.

I remember shortly after graduating and applying for a design job at a fairly well known ad agency (Audi, Starbucks as clients). First interview was great. I have a BA in Design, I'm young and fired up, so I made it through to another day... in my second interview, they had me do a keyboard shortcut command test for Photoshop and Illustrator. Getting hired was dependent on a damn computer software speed test.

Speed is important, obviously, but it has nothing to do with creating art.

1. Learn the craft
2. Learn the software/tools
3. Develop speed (if doing it for a living).

In that order, simple. Too often we only seem #2 these days.

Anyhow, this isn't picking on whoever did this Crew lineup card, it's just in general. What might be a neat exercise for me (the complainer!) is to create my own damn card. I should! I will!

Top Forwards in MLS

Today we are looking at the top Forwards in MLS in continuation with all the other positions that I have evaluated over the last week or so. I did it before last weekend's games, but that only matters in specific stats. The overall rank of players aren't going to change much because I take the rank of the player based on WhoScored.com's measurement against my own here at Helltown.

Here the are, the best Forwards in MLS 2019:

29: Median Age of these guys
$2.0 million: Median salary

	Name(2)	BIRTHPLACE	Team	Age	Salary
1	Carlos Vela	Cancun, Mexico	LAF	30	$6,300,000
2	Diego Rossi	Montevideo, Uruguay	LAF	21	$1,052,000
3	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	Malmo, Sweden	LAG	38	$7,200,000
4	Josef Martínez	Valencia, Venezuela	ATL	26	$3,058,333
5	Wayne Rooney	Liverpool, England	DC	34	$3,507,500
6	Carles Gil	Valencia, Spain	NER	27	$2,337,500
7	Latif Blessing	Accra, Ghana	LAF	23	$103,125
8	Kacper Przybylko	Bielefeld, Germany	PHI	26	$277,000
9	Darwin Quintero	Tumaco, Colombia	MIN	32	$1,750,000
10	Kei Kamara	Kenema, Sierra Leone	COL	35	$750,000

If you are in the MLS orbit, you probably recognize most of these names. Well, I take that back. You probably don't know Elis, Blessing, Castellanos, Heber or Savarino. I wrote about Carles Gil before the season started and it looks like he is paying off for New England this year.

Here are the WhoScored player ratings, sorted:

WS	Name(2)	Team
8.50	Carlos Vela	LAF
7.71	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	LAG
7.49	Kacper Przybylko	PHI
7.44	Diego Rossi	LAF
7.42	Wayne Rooney	DC
7.40	Josef Martínez	ATL
7.37	Alberth Elis	HOU
7.35	Carles Gil	NER
7.30	Kei Kamara	COL
7.30	Johnny Russell	SKC
7.24	Latif Blessing	LAF
7.21	Jefferson Savarino	RSL
7.19	Darwin Quintero	MIN
7.15	Araújo Héber	NYCFC
7.07	Alexandru Mitrita	NYCFC
7.02	Jordan Morris	SEA
7.01	C.J. Sapong	CHI
7.00	Valentin Castellanos	NYCFC
6.93	Mauro Manotas	HOU

As mentioned in one of my other posts on this top player stuff, Rooney is loved by modern measurements because he does loads of stuff in the midfield.

Lastly, Rossi should be mentioned somewhere in there - so Diego Rossi.

Top Central Mids in MLS

Going to drift into the middle of the pitch now and take a look at what's become the most important position on just about every MLS team - The Central Midfielder.

First up, a couple housekeeping items:
1. These lists were created July 24th and do not include games after that. It wouldn't move needles that much but does impact any stats you might see.
2. This is my third positional evaluation. Right Mids HERE and Left Backs HERE.
3. Ages are rounded. So if you are 33.6 then it's 34. Just ease of use.
4. Rank is determined by the average of the Helltown Player Rank and WhoScored.

TOP CENTRAL MIDS

Modern metrics and stats are built around these players. They do a little bit of everything so spreadsheets absolutely love them. In year's gone by, stats loved forwards because it was easy to track. Goals, assists. These days is dozens of measurements in Aerials Won, Dribbles, Key Passes, Dispossessed's. So, congratulations central mids, you're getting paid.

	Name(2)	BIRTHPLACE	Team	Age	Salary
1	Eduard Atuesta	Velez, Colombia	LAF	22	$493,000
2	Álejandro Pozuelo	Seville, Spain	TFC	28	$3,800,000
3	Nicolás Lodeiro	Paysandu, Uruguay	SEA	30	$2,502,500
4	Jamiro Monteiro	Rotterdam, Netherlands	PHI	26	$569,200
5	Mark-Anthony Kaye	Toronto, Canada	LAF	25	$177,811
6	Diego Valeri	Valentin Alsina, Argentina	PDX	33	$2,420,000
7	Nico Gaitán	San Martin, Argentina	CHI	31	$2,197,504
8	Magnus Eriksson	Solna, Sweden	SJE	29	$450,000
9	Pedro Santos	Lisbon, Portugal	CLB	31	$864,560
10	Albert Rusnak	Vyskov, Czech Republic	RSL	25	$2,001,667
11	Saphir Taider	Castres, France	MTL	27	$1,400,000
12	Damir Kreilach	Vukovar, Yugoslavia	RSL	30	$1,082,102
13	Gonzalo Martínez	Guaymallen, Argentina	ATL	26	$900,000
14	Felipe Gutiérrez	Quintero, Chile	SKC	29	$1,650,000
15	Paxton Pomykal	Lewisville, Texas	FCD	20	$105,000
16	Sebastian Lletget	San Francisco, California	LAG	27	$312,667
17	Alejandro Bedoya	Englewood, New Jersey	PHI	32	$1,266,250
18	Alexander Ring	Helsinki, Finland	NYCFC	28	$945,000
19	Federico Higuain	Buenos Aires, Argentina	CLB	35	$1,100,000
20	Luciano Acosta	Buenos Aires, Argentina	DC	25	$702,000

As mentioned in previous posts, you can see a couple from the same team because the position assigned to them is the one they play most often, not necessarily the one they are pegged to play. Almost all the top players here are in the Helltown and WhoScored top 50.

28: Median Age of all Central Mids on this list
$1,013,551: Median salary of the players on this list

NOTABLES

Mark-Anthony Kaye Bob Bradley has found a solid player in this Canadian. There's nothing spectacular on his resume. No youth career in Spain or Argentina. He was with Toronto for a bit, collect for a couple years. Played for Louisville in the USL. Along with Eduard Atuesta (who plays more central a bit with Kaye to the left of him), he works. He salary being ridiculously low puts him top of my list.

Eduard Atuesta 5th on WhoScored list, 6th on mine. This 22-year-old is likely not going to be in MLS for much longer. His formative years were with Independiente Medellín, then straight to MLS. LAFC signed him at a great wage.

Alejandro Pozuelo Neat pickup for Toronto from Seville, Andalusia with loads of experience in top leagues. Opta loves him and I'm sure his teammates do too. His salary is steep, but players like him (known) come at that price.

WHOSCORED RATING

Here's their average rating on the season. Anything over 7.25 is outstanding. Important to remember that there are 24 teams in MLS and 20 players here.

WS	Name(2)	Team
7.63	Álejandro Pozuelo	TFC
7.59	Eduard Atuesta	LAF
7.50	Jamiro Monteiro	PHI
7.45	Mark-Anthony Kaye	LAF
7.37	Nicolás Lodeiro	SEA
7.32	Paxton Pomykal	FCD
7.18	Diego Valeri	PDX
7.15	Felipe Gutiérrez	SKC
7.14	Magnus Eriksson	SJE
7.13	Pedro Santos	CLB
7.10	Nico Gaitán	CHI
7.08	Albert Rusnak	RSL
7.06	Damir Kreilach	RSL
7.04	Sebastian Lletget	LAG
7.00	Saphir Taider	MTL
6.94	Alexander Ring	NYCFC
6.92	Gonzalo Martínez	ATL
6.87	Alejandro Bedoya	PHI
6.87	Luciano Acosta	DC
6.81	Federico Higuain	CLB

Final note: Paxton Pomykal is in some pretty good company and having an outstanding season with Dallas. He's 19 and played at every US National team age group (pretty much). I'm sure he's getting attention from overseas.