Simon Elliott is a terrible shooter

[ChrisE]

Well, that's why I'm making this thread, at least. In the 8 years of the league's existence, the league has averaged .107 run of play goals/shot attempt. That number has seen a small decrease from the league's advent to now:

1996 0.116
1997 0.114
1998 0.116
1999 0.100
2000 0.104
2001 0.108
2002 0.102
2003 0.099

But it's remained pretty static. However, there's several guys who have, over their careers, almost doubled that number. Of players who have taken more than 80 shots in their career, these are the top 20 in career RoP goals/shots:

Savarese, Giovanni 0.228
Shannon, Musa 0.215
Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.214
Prampin, Alan 0.205
Marino, Pete 0.202
Lassiter, Roy 0.199
John, Stern 0.197
Twellman, Taylor 0.197
Valencia, Adolfo 0.191
Welton 0.185
De Avila, Antonio 0.176
Graziani, Ariel 0.174
Donovan, Landon 0.173
Takawira, Vitalis 0.172
Wolff, Josh 0.169
Ruiz, Carlos 0.169
Cerritos, Ronald 0.167
Diaz Arce, Raul 0.165
Buddle, Edson 0.164
Washington, Dante 0.163


I guess the most notable thing here is that 6 of the top 7, and 9 out of the top 11, played primarily during MLS's early years (so to speak). I'm not really sure what to attribute this to (I never saw Alan Prampin play), perhaps an increased range in talent.

On the other hand, there's several guys who probably shouldn't be shooting. Here's the bottom 10 in career RoP goals/shots (80 shot minimum):


Mulrooney, Richard 0.025
Burns, Mike 0.025
Hernandez, Daniel 0.039
Albright, Chris 0.042
Corrales, Ramiro 0.043
Franchino, Joe 0.045
Cloutier, Braeden 0.046
Elliott, Simon 0.049
Donadoni, Roberto 0.049
Vaca, Joselito 0.050


First of all, I think this may be an indicator of why Joselito Vaca hasn't been successful in the league. Whereas the other terrible shooters (save Albright) are defenders or defensive midfielders, Vaca is an attackind mid. In their careers, these 10 players have scored 50 run of play goals on 1206 shots, one more goal than Giovanni Savarese with only 991 more shots.

This year, eight players with 20 or more shots shot worse than 3%:


Cancela, Jose 0.000
Mulrooney, Richard 0.000
Hejduk, Frankie 0.000
Beckerman, Kyle 0.000
Garcia, Freddy 0.024
Corrales, Ramiro 0.026
Elliott, Simon 0.026
Guevara, Amado 0.029


Joselito managed to escape, ending up 17th this year, but you see three attacking, Latin midfielders who shot terrible percentages this year. Admittedly, Guevara scored some Open Cup goals that aren't accounted for, but it's an interesting trend. Also of note is that San Jose was either very very lucky to have Mulrooney make his shot in the Final, or Mulrooney takes very few shots like that.

This year's top 10 were:


Kovalenko, Dema 0.231
Noonan, Pat 0.227
Donovan, Landon 0.212
Roberts, Zizi 0.185
Buddle, Edson 0.169
Twellman, Taylor 0.169
Simutenkov, Igor 0.163
Klein, Chris 0.162
Kamler, Brian 0.162
Magee, Mike 0.159



Twellman put almost exactly the same number as Noonan in his rookie year (.224), I'd expect Noonan to cool off a bit. Kamler's interesting simply because he never used to shoot before.

Here are some other renowned goal scorer's 2003 numbers:


Ralph, Damani 0.111
Spencer, John 0.132
Razov, Ante 0.080
Mathis, Clint 0.099
Ruiz, Carlos 0.105
Preki 0.081

Obviously percentage isn't everything, but you have to wonder if Preki and Razov should be taking as many shots as they do. Ruiz's number fell of precipitously, from 0.219 to less than half that.



Also of note: Simon Elliott, after shooting a decent percentage in 1999 (.98), has now spent three straight years in the bottom ten.

Dema Kovalenko, who Karl Keller mentioned in a previous thread as perhaps this year's most efficient shooter, has seen a dramatic turnaround from last year. This year, Dema led the league at .23, last year he was 6th worst at .026. I have no explanation for this, hopefully some Fire or DC fans might offer some insight (in previous years, Dema was a good shooter, .159 and .196).

Chris Carrieri should score more goals next year; he saw a Dema-esque drop off to .056 from .203 (good for 4th in the league) and .25 in previous years. Some of this must simply be bad luck.

[kenntomasch]

One thing I do that I don't know is really that revealing, but is interesting to me, is to find out the percentage of shots that a guy puts on goal (Shots on Goal/Shots, minus PK's, of course) during the run of play. You can figure out what percentage of his shots on goal are saved (there will be a rare few that are blocked, but SOG-G will give you just about the number of times a guy had his shot saved by the keeper). You might be able to find out which guys get saved more often than others, which could be because they have a habit of shooting it right at the keeper, or because they played a disproportionate amount of great keepers or something.

So you could find out who has the highest percentage of his total shots saved and which guys are putting them off target. Like I said, I don't know how useful that would be, but it would be interesting to see.

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by kenntomasch
One thing I do that I don't know is really that revealing, but is interesting to me, is to find out the percentage of shots that a guy puts on goal (Shots on Goal/Shots, minus PK's, of course) during the run of play.

Yeah, I actually started out doing this, but it turns out that Simon Elliott gets a decent number of his shots on goal. He just never scores. Kerry Zavagnin is the worst in league history at SOG/shot. However, he still scores at twice the rate that Mulrooney or Burns does. Obviously, this may be luck, Zavagnin only has 5 goals in his career, but I'm not sure what this would show you that goals/sog don't. What do you think is the difference? I don't think that a shot on goal is in itself any better than a shot not on goal; an easily saved shot ain't any better than a shot that just misses the corner, or a glancing header that goes wide, etc.


You can figure out what percentage of his shots on goal are saved (there will be a rare few that are blocked, but SOG-G will give you just about the number of times a guy had his shot saved by the keeper). You might be able to find out which guys get saved more often than others, which could be because they have a habit of shooting it right at the keeper, or because they played a disproportionate amount of great keepers or something.

I think this is a good idea. I was thinking that maybe the reason Mulrooney, Elliott, Hernandez, etc. had such low percentages is that they were taking a lot of long shots. I'd imagine that a lot more long shots on goal are saved than close-in shots on goal.

So, basically, these numbers range from around .9 to .6, average of .76. The ten best are:


John, Stern 0.522
Shannon, Musa 0.535
Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.604
Buddle, Edson 0.614
Savarese, Giovanni 0.614
Prampin, Alan 0.630
Valencia, Adolfo 0.638
Welton 0.642
Lassiter, Roy 0.650
Serna, Diego 0.650


And the ten worst are:


Burns, Mike 0.938
Mulrooney, Richard 0.933
Albright, Chris 0.913
Corrales, Ramiro 0.898
Torres, Johnny 0.891
Cloutier, Braeden 0.886
Vaca, Joselito 0.884
Lewis, Eddie 0.882
Hejduk, Frankie 0.881
Convey, Bobby 0.881





So you could find out who has the highest percentage of his total shots saved and which guys are putting them off target. Like I said, I don't know how useful that would be, but it would be interesting to see. [/B]

I guess it's interesting to see four of our current national teamer's and one former phenom on the most-saved list, but to me it looks like it's measuring basically the same thing as Goals/Shot on goal...

edit: another comment about Carrieri; if he had shot what he did last year, he would have ended the year with 11 run of play goals and 8 assists, putting him putting him at third in the league in run of play points, behind only Twellman and Preki. Obviously he didn't, but I'll be interested to see how he does next year.

[ChrisE]

Using positions listed on the MLSnet.com rosters, the RoP goals/RoP shots numbers for MLS's 8 years were (approximately):

Forward: 1929/14410, .134
Midfield: 1301/14479, .090
Defense: 418/4982, .084

I tried dividing these up into the categories Soccer America used to rank american players, Striker, Forward, Attacking Mid, Defensive Mid, Left Mid, Right Mid, Center back, and Wing back (I decided not to use right and left, since i have no idea where ritchie kotschau plays, etc.). I don't think the striker/forward distinction means much, but some other numbers are interesting:

Striker: 126/934 - .135
Forward: 78/637 - .122
Attacking Mid - .066
Defensive Mid - .06
Left Mid - .107
Right Mid - .085
Wingback - .058
Centerback - .064

The only really interesting things here are 1. that there's a big difference between the flank midfielder's conversion rates and the central midfielder's, and 2. the attacking midfielders are surprisingly similar to the defensive midfielders. I would have expected a significant difference between the two.

Regarding the defensive mid/attacking mid similarity, I checked their assist/90 numbers, wondering if they weren't in fact playing similar roles. However, no, attacking mids averaged .319 assists/90, defensive mids averaged .088/90. Attacking mids scored a good deal more (.090 goals/90 versus .051), but that's only because they took more shots.


[Assists/90 for other positions: strikers averaged .192, forwards .208, left mids .185, right mids .22, wingbacks .069, center backs .031.]

[mpruitt]

Great stuff. One thing that I'm going to try to work on is individualized lists of where a player is shooting from. This might have to start next season, hoping that ESPN Matchtracker will do MLS games. There was a discussion in the US Mens forum about American players not being able to shoot from outside the box. I referenced the Stats from the MLS playoff media guide, but unfortunately as a group there's nothing to compare them yet to, or at least I haven't taken the time to find similar information for the US Nats or other leagues.

[beineke]

Great stuff, Chris, simply top-notch.

A few comments:
(1) Calling them "Run-of-Play" goals is a little mis-leading, since goals from free kicks and corners are also included in your numbers, right?

(2) You mentioned that Mulrooney's goal came from a breakaway; it seems worthwhile to point out that Elliott's 2003 goal was also a breakaway that the opposing keeper played poorly.

(3) My favorite part of your work is the way you formalize the differences by position. But it raises the chicken-and-egg question: do forwards have better shooting percentages because they're playing forward, or are they playing forward because they're better shooters?

One way to address this would be to look at multi-position players -- does their shooting percentage change depending on what position they're playing? Unfortunately, the differences are small enough that I'm not sure we could get enough data to really tease out a difference.

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by maxim-1
Great stuff. One thing that I'm going to try to work on is individualized lists of where a player is shooting from. This might have to start next season, hoping that ESPN Matchtracker will do MLS games...

This would be a great thing to know. How would you be planning on identifying the shots, though? I don't think it's enough to simply identify the location of the shot. There's other factors, e.g. breakaway or not; whether or not it was off a cross, header/foot...

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by beineke

A few comments:
(1) Calling them "Run-of-Play" goals is a little mis-leading, since goals from free kicks and corners are also included in your numbers, right?

Yeah, my bad. If you, or anyone, has something else to call this kind of stat (other than non-PK goal), I'd be glad to hear it.


(2) You mentioned that Mulrooney's goal came from a breakaway; it seems worthwhile to point out that Elliott's 2003 goal was also a breakaway that the opposing keeper played poorly.

Good to know. I looked through the goals scored by the currently active worst career shooters this year (Mulrooney, corrales, franchino, elliott, vaca, pareja, andy williams, chris armas, bobby convey and jeff agoos), and tried to see if the goals had anything in common; obviously, this information isn't very useful without knowing how they typically shoot, nevertheless:

of 12 goals:

2 free kicks (Agoos, Franchino)
4 shots from outside the box (zavagnin, williams, convey, armas
3 crosses taken scored from pretty close (all w/feet)
1 amazing mazy run leading to a 1-on-1 (vaca)
1 mid-range/through traffic (williams
1 Mulrooneyesque unmarked/far post goal (armas)

Not much there, really, though i'd like to compare those to the goals by a high-scoring forward or Mark Chung.




My favorite part of your work is the way you formalize the differences by position. But it raises the chicken-and-egg question: do forwards have better shooting percentages because they're playing forward, or are they playing forward because they're better shooters?

One way to address this would be to look at multi-position players -- does their shooting percentage change depending on what position they're playing? Unfortunately, the differences are small enough that I'm not sure we could get enough data to really tease out a difference. [/B]

Good point, but, an additional problem is, how often is it that a guy plays two distinctly different positions? Even if you slot chris carrieri in at left mid or jason kreis at a-mid, they're not going to be playing like your 'average' player for that position would be playing.

[mpruitt]

Originally posted by ChrisE
This would be a great thing to know. How would you be planning on identifying the shots, though? I don't think it's enough to simply identify the location of the shot. There's other factors, e.g. breakaway or not; whether or not it was off a cross, header/foot...

I really think there might be some promise with the matchtracker stuff, as I believe they indicate what's what in regards to all that.

[beineke]

Originally posted by ChrisE

of 12 goals:

2 free kicks (Agoos, Franchino)
4 shots from outside the box (zavagnin, williams, convey, armas
3 crosses taken scored from pretty close (all w/feet)
1 amazing mazy run leading to a 1-on-1 (vaca)
1 mid-range/through traffic (williams
1 Mulrooneyesque unmarked/far post goal (armas)

Not much there, really, though i'd like to compare those to the goals by a high-scoring forward or Mark Chung.
[/B]

In Kenn's "goals" thread, there's a breakdown for how all of this year's regular season goals were scored. Only 44 of 353 came from outside the box. For this group, am I right in saying 7 of 14 came from outside the box (two fk's, the four you list, plus Elliott)? If so, it looks a lot like the low-pct shooters are often the guys who are most willing to strike from distance ... oddly enough, three of the best players among the low-percentage shooters (Agoos, Mulrooney, and Armas) all hit pay dirt during the playoffs.

BTW, I do think that there are quite a few guys who make positional switches. Certainly, several of the current Quakes have spent a fair bit of time in their MLS careers at more than one position (Agoos, Lagos, Corrales, Donovan, Mullan). Maybe we should see if Peter Hirdt is willing to dig into this one ... I'm particularly curious to know whether midfielders shoot better when playing their "weak" side, e.g. a right-footer like Ben Olsen who plays on the left.

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by maxim-1
I really think there might be some promise with the matchtracker stuff, as I believe they indicate what's what in regards to all that.

Well is there any reason to think that matchtracker is going to start doing MLS games?

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by beineke
In Kenn's "goals" thread, there's a breakdown for how all of this year's regular season goals were scored. Only 44 of 353 came from outside the box. For this group, am I right in saying 7 of 14 came from outside the box (two fk's, the four you list, plus Elliott)? If so, it looks a lot like the low-pct shooters are often the guys who are most willing to strike from distance ...

Sorry, only 6/14 (13?). Armas's was actually just inside the box.

However, I also failed to mention that I didn't count Chris Albright's goals since he doesn't seem to fit the mold of all these other players. Of Albright's, two were from near the top of the goalie's box, one was a header from really close in. Still, 6/17, if you want to add those, is about three times the expected value.



oddly enough, three of the best players among the low-percentage shooters (Agoos, Mulrooney, and Armas) all hit pay dirt during the playoffs.

Actually, andy williams scored too, from outside the box.

[ChrisE]

But how does this compare to the A-league, you ask (as I hurtle towards overkill)! Well, fortunately, I can tell you, because shots is one of the very few stats the A-league keeps. Unfortunately, the A-league doesn't keep (or make easily available) their PK stats, so I'm going to have to ignore that. MLS's PK-included Goals/shot % was .114, the A-league's is a significantly higher .127. If I had to guess, I'd say this is because of significantly weaker goalkeeping and a broader range of talent, but that's really just a guess.

In 2003, the highest PK-included shooting percentage was dema kovalenko at .23, but prior to 2003, there have been some significantly higher numbers. Mauricio Cienfuegos shot 36.1% in 1998, Roy Lassiter shot 35.5% in his record-setting 1996, and Josh Wolff shot 34.8% as a rookie. In total, 10 players (20 shots minimum) have shot 30% or better, and an additional 12 have shot between 25 and 30%.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that 4 players shot above 30% in the A-league this year, with an additional 4 shooting between 25% and 30%, but it's certainly a change from MLS (let it be remembered that the A-league had almost twice as many clubs as MLS did last year, though).

These were the top 15 in A-league shooting percentage this year:


Fuller, Ian 0.364
Valencia-Jiminez, Gabriel 0.333
Martins, Thiago 0.306
Alvarez-Noriega, Byron 0.300
Asad, Shaker 0.286
Dusosky, Todd 0.262
Zuniga, Nicolas 0.261
Dresser, Jeff 0.250
Lassiter, Roy 0.241
Lyssand, Lars 0.238
Ukrop, Rob 0.231
Washington, Dante 0.220
Morehead, Marshall 0.220
Heald, Oliver 0.220
Miller, Doug 0.218


I thought this might be interesting because it would provide an opportunity to compare former MLS players against their A-league stats, so here are some additional former MLS'ers:


Chronopoulos, Teddy 0.167
Korol, Aleksey 0.160
Beasley, Jamar 0.158


These guy's career numbers were:


Chronopoulos, Ted 0.129
Korol, Aleksey 0.167
Beasley, Jamar 0.091
Lassiter, Roy 0.217
Washington, Dante 0.163


I would have expected their percentages to improve more substantially; instead, they showed slightly higher increases than would be expected by multiplying by the a-league shot%/mls shot%.
Not sure to make of that, or of the guys who ended up well above them. If anyone has any suggestions as to why Ian Fuller, Thiago Martins, etc. shot so well this year, please, help me out.

I divided out the numbers by position too:

F 0.157
M 0.099
D 0.094

Which, unsurprisingly, look quite similar to PK-inclusive MLS numbers:

F 0.143
M 0.097
D 0.086

Especially interesting, to me, is that midfielders consistently have a slightly higher % than defenders, although I'd imagine they are taking dramatically different shots. I'd wonder what this would look like in a league like Germany (lots of headers, more opportunities for tall defenders) vs. a Latin style (presumably, more shots for wingbacks).

Fin.

[Pegasus]

Originally posted by beineke
(3) My favorite part of your work is the way you formalize the differences by position. But it raises the chicken-and-egg question: do forwards have better shooting percentages because they're playing forward, or are they playing forward because they're better shooters?

I think forwards are better able to get off a shot ala Eddie Johnson in the U20 games. He brought a lot of critisism because he missed the shots he created but many players playing other positions would never get that seperation.

Vaca has never played the central Valderama like postion he needs to be successful. No team may be willing to build a formation around him to see if he can pull it off but from watching him practice he would score some close in goals from that spot because he runs like a deer through traffic and would get to some easy tap ins and finish off some give and go's. He also has a decent shot but it is also probably better from a central rather than right mid position. His strength from the wing is the swerve he puts on his crosses.

[ChrisE]

So, going through the original Stats & Analysis thread, I realized that Beineke made a comment about what a terrible shooter Simon Elliot was, which obviously was the inspiration for this thread; in the interest of pseudo-scientific academic honesty, I thought I ought to get that out there.


When thinking about goals/shot, I initially assumed that this was some kind of fixed ability (or maybe a fixed expression of a playing style, a la Ante Razov). However, there are a few (very few) notable players who have managed to improve their goals/shot ratios. Donovan's numbers have gone up every year, from 0.133 to 0.167 to 0.212; Damarcus Beasley is another, going from 0 to 0.074 to 0.115 to 0.156. I'd pass this off as a coincidence if these weren't two of our most notable prospects, and furthermore if they weren't two of the youngest players to ever play significant minutes in the league.

To test this out, I thought I'd look at goal-scoring rates of forwards in comparison their time spent in the league:


Tenure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Goals 700 467 281 186 118 50 36 26
Shots 4905 3353 2143 1477 936 465 336 228
Goals/Shot 0.143 0.139 0.131 0.126 0.126 0.108 0.107 0.114


Surprisingly, there seems to be a general trend downwards. The only three possible explanations (none very satisfying) that I can come up for this would be that either 1. players come on as subs more often when they are younger, giving them an advantage like goals/minute, 2. every new crop of players in the league is better than the previous crop, so it's not too surprising that the holdovers from 1998 aren't as good as the new guys from 2003, 3. older players (any age) are worse than younger players.

To test whether young players come on as subs more often, I thought I'd try comparing the games started/games played ratios of the players; they look like this:


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
GP 2727 1841 1114 652 455 247 148 79
GS 1795 1237 825 525 346 186 116 73
subs 932 604 289 127 109 61 32 6
gs/sub 1.93 2.05 2.85 4.13 3.17 3.05 3.63 12.17


That's clearly to some degree the case. Nevertheless, I'd say I'm stumped.

[beineke]

Originally posted by ChrisE
There seems to be a general trend downwards.

I do think that you've touched on some possible causes (particularly aging), but here's another possibility. In the early years of the league, more forwards were playing their first season. (The first year of the league, *every* forward was in his first season, and there was also more turnover from year to year.) At that time, there was also quite a bit more scoring early on. This could mean that first-year scoring is artificially high.

A further possibility is that teams gradually develop a "book" on a forward -- they figure out how to defend him.

By the way, in the interest of pseudo-scientific academic honesty, I'll point out that the day after I took that potshot at Elliott, he scored a goal against my Quakes. :)

[ChrisE]

Originally posted by beineke
I do think that you've touched on some possible causes (particularly aging), but here's another possibility. In the early years of the league, more forwards were playing their first season. (The first year of the league, *every* forward was in his first season, and there was also more turnover from year to year.)

Yeah, the founding year definitely presents a problem; those guys are going to be pretty profoundly different than the rest of the league. I guess I'll try to take them out and compare the two groups, but this is all turning into quite a hassle. :)




At that time, there was also quite a bit more scoring early on. This could mean that first-year scoring is artificially high.

Good point, I'll try adjusting for this later, but I hate to make these figures more confusing and distant from reality than they already are.




By the way, in the interest of pseudo-scientific academic honesty, I'll point out that the day after I took that potshot at Elliott, he scored a goal against my Quakes. :)

Simon Elliott, greatest enemy of the stats and analysis forum.

[ChrisE]

To test out how the shooting percentage by tenure stats are related to age, it's first necessary to figure out how the tenure in general is related to age. This also is a pretty nice opportunity to again look at how ages are changing in MLS with time. So, I created two charts, one outlining the changes in age, with respect to tenure, of forwards alone, the other of age/tenure of all players.

Forwards:


F 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Total
1 26.85 25.58 27.45 26.88 27.02 21.58 23.68 24.17 26.12
2 0.00 27.20 25.35 25.49 26.09 28.44 22.27 24.83 26.12
3 0.00 0.00 27.23 24.54 23.80 25.79 28.13 24.11 25.88
4 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.22 24.57 25.46 27.84 37.27 27.58
5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.41 25.56 25.76 28.48 27.52
6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 30.29 26.74 27.23 29.15
7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 29.52 28.78 29.32
8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 30.06 30.06
Total 26.85 26.97 27.12 26.86 26.45 26.32 25.52 26.00 26.57



All 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Total
1 27.27 26.99 26.77 25.54 24.67 25.15 24.54 24.98 26.42
2 0.00 27.75 26.94 25.95 25.79 24.56 24.13 23.71 26.43
3 0.00 0.00 28.38 27.06 25.81 25.99 24.16 24.84 26.92
4 0.00 0.00 0.00 29.16 28.46 26.66 26.66 24.97 27.93
5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 30.33 28.62 27.21 26.72 29.03
6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 31.06 28.56 27.92 29.83
7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 31.53 29.25 30.83
8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 32.07 32.07
Total 27.27 27.56 27.65 27.56 27.61 27.47 27.10 26.84 27.40

[ChrisE]

Simply removing the 'founding' players gives us these two charts:

Forwards:


F 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Total
1 0.00 25.58 27.45 26.88 27.02 21.58 23.68 24.17 25.67
2 0.00 0.00 25.35 25.49 26.09 28.44 22.27 24.83 25.40
3 0.00 0.00 0.00 24.54 23.80 25.79 28.13 24.11 24.58
4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 24.57 25.46 27.84 37.27 26.49
5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 25.56 25.76 28.48 26.34
6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 26.74 27.23 26.97
7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.78 28.78
8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 0.00 25.58 26.99 25.86 25.66 25.17 24.66 25.42 25.59




All 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Total
1 0.00 26.99 26.77 25.54 24.67 25.15 24.54 24.98 25.78
2 0.00 0.00 26.94 25.95 25.79 24.56 24.13 23.71 25.55
3 0.00 0.00 0.00 27.06 25.81 25.99 24.16 24.84 25.80
4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.46 26.66 26.66 24.97 26.81
5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.62 27.21 26.72 27.59
6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 28.56 27.92 28.19
7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 29.25 29.25
8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 0.00 26.99 26.85 26.23 26.12 26.16 25.86 25.84 26.19

[ChrisE]

Some problems, especially with the forwards, because we've got such a small sample. For the 6 year forwards from 2002, and the 5 year forwards from 2001, we're looking at 3 guys: Wolde Harris, Ronald Cerritos, and Eric Quill (for 2003 Quill got moved to midfield, according to mlsnet, so it's now just Cerritos and Wolde); things obviously improve elsewhere, but I'd be cautious of drawing general trends from any individual year.

On the other hand, what is surprising is that from years 1-3, average age seems to stay pretty much the same (and decline in forwards); presumably this is because there's two groups of guys entering the league: discoveries or allocations, who pretty much start immediately, but are generally phased out for guys from the draft who earn themselves more and more time.

Another interesting thing we see, unrelated to shot percentages, is that the (min. adj.) age of the post-1996'ers didn't decrease at all from 2002 to 2003. The 3 month drop in average age was attributable entirely to 1996'ers either retiring or getting less playing time. OK, that's all for now.