Nothing really to say here, just a few lists, all lists have penalty kicks removed. Top 15 in Goals/90 2003, min. 600 minutes: Code: [size=1] Twellman, Taylor 0.713 Roberts, Zizi 0.617 Buddle, Edson 0.596 Noonan, Pat 0.547 Donovan, Landon 0.526 De Rosario, Dwayne 0.525 Moreno, Alejandro 0.483 Ralph, Damani 0.453 Simutenkov, Igor 0.439 Ching, Brian 0.437 Mcbride, Brian 0.412 Serna, Diego 0.409 Spencer, John 0.397 Chung, Mark 0.375 Eskandarian, Alecko 0.371 [/b][/size] assists/90, 2003: Code: [size=1] Preki 0.571 Cancela, Jose 0.552 Lisi, Mark 0.541 Moore, Joe-Max 0.531 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.499 Williams, Andy 0.463 Nhlecko, Toni 0.455 Cunningham, Jeff 0.448 Garcia, Freddy 0.423 Guevara, Amado 0.398 [/b][/size] (I cut this one short because Quaranta snuck on at like 14. The ultimate sin.) assists+goals/90 Code: [size=1] Noonan, Pat 0.930 De Rosario, Dwayne 0.918 Twellman, Taylor 0.903 Buddle, Edson 0.835 Moore, Joe-Max 0.834 Donovan, Landon 0.813 Preki 0.807 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.799 Ralph, Damani 0.725 Cunningham, Jeff 0.705 Serna, Diego 0.682 Nhlecko, Toni 0.682 Moreno, Alejandro 0.645 Simutenkov, Igor 0.627 Eskandarian, Alecko 0.618 [/b][/size] And career numbers, minimum 2000 minutes: goals/90 Code: [size=1] John, Stern 0.867 Twellman, Taylor 0.731 Shannon, Musa 0.636 Diallo, Mamadou 0.616 Buddle, Edson 0.588 Ruiz, Carlos 0.554 Marino, Pete 0.545 Savarese, Giovanni 0.540 Lassiter, Roy 0.530 De Avila, Antonio 0.526 Graziani, Ariel 0.523 Serna, Diego 0.521 Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.501 Diaz Arce, Raul 0.500 Razov, Ante 0.486 Rammel, Steve 0.485 [/b][/size] assists/90 Code: [size=1] Valderrama, Carlos 0.657 Etcheverry, Marco 0.557 Bishop, Ian 0.553 Limpar, Anders 0.546 Williams, Andy 0.531 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.515 Preki 0.511 Martinez, Antonio 0.506 Paz, Adrian 0.496 Hermosillo, Carlos 0.480 Machon, Martin 0.464 Wynalda, Eric 0.463 Podbrozny, Jerzy 0.457 Warzycha, Robert 0.452 Kosecki, Roman 0.447 Nowak, Peter 0.444 [/b][/size] assists+goals/90 Code: [size=1] John, Stern 1.008 Twellman, Taylor 0.939 Hermosillo, Carlos 0.929 Serna, Diego 0.912 De Avila, Antonio 0.912 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.901 Buddle, Edson 0.882 Shannon, Musa 0.859 Cunningham, Jeff 0.832 Diallo, Mamadou 0.831 Wynalda, Eric 0.814 Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.811 Valencia, Adolfo 0.783 Moore, Joe-Max 0.776 Razov, Ante 0.768 [/b][/size] Well, maybe a few things to say. First of all, I was really surprised to see Toni Nhlecko on any lists, considering it was generally thought in Dallas that he looked good and made the offense better, but wasn't himself particurlarly effective. Alecko scored had a higher goals/90 than Ruiz (.309). It will be interesting to see how he does under new management next year. Zizi Roberts didn't play a lot of minutes, but was productive in the time he did play. And several of the 5 goals he scored were quite impressive. I hope he finds a spot in the Rapid's lineup next year. Two of this year's three MVP candidates practically disappear when you look at per90 stats. Cunningham ain't the black hole people make him out to be. Steve Ralston career assists/90: 0.390 Jeff Cunningham career assists/90: 0.369 OK, I think this post is by now far far too long.
Why? Because Carlos Ruiz takes LA's penalty kicks, and it would upset the BS faithful if he showed up higher on your lists? A penalty kick counts just as much on the scoresheet as any other goal. If you are going to subtract penalty kicks, why not goals scored off free kicks, or tap-ins from 2 yards out with the keeper already beaten - surely that is an easier shot than a penalty kick.
Quibbles about PK's aside, this is interesting stuff and your analysis is spot on. Hard to understand with DC's anemic offense why Eskandarian didn't get more chances - hard for the crude but effective types to get minutes I guess. Similar situation with Alejandro Moreno in LA, as much as they struggled to score, seems like he should have been Ruiz's regular strike partner. Lisi looked great in the few times I saw him play - also not sure why he didn't figure more prominently for Bradley.
FWIW, the top 15 G/90, A/90, and G+A/90 including PK's: G/90: Taylor Twellman 0.713 Zizi Roberts 0.617 Edson Buddle 0.596 Carlos Ruiz 0.579 Landon Donovan 0.574 John Spencer 0.556 Ante Razov 0.555 Pat Noonan 0.547 Dwayne De Rosario 0.525 Hristo Stoitchkov 0.499 Damani Ralph 0.499 Brian McBride 0.495 Alejandro Moreno 0.483 Igor Simutenkov 0.439 Brian Ching 0.437 A/90 Preki 0.571 Jose Cancela 0.552 Mark Lisi 0.541 Joe-Max Moore 0.531 Hristo Stoitchkov 0.499 Andy Williams 0.463 Toni Nhleko 0.455 Jeff Cunningham 0.448 Freddy Garcia 0.423 Amado Guevara 0.398 Dwayne De Rosario 0.394 Pat Noonan 0.383 Santino Quaranta 0.366 Ali Curtis 0.358 Ian Russell 0.336 (G+A)/90 Hristo Stoitchkov 0.999 Preki 0.975 Pat Noonan 0.930 Dwayne De Rosario 0.918 Taylor Twellman 0.903 Landon Donovan 0.861 Edson Buddle 0.835 Joe-Max Moore 0.834 Ante Razov 0.793 Carlos Ruiz 0.772 Damani Ralph 0.771 Jeff Cunningham 0.769 John Spencer 0.755 Toni Nhleko 0.682 Alejandro Moreno 0.645
Some observations Perhaps Hristo still had the skills to be MVP, but not the fitness or attitude. If Noonan and Twellman, and Donovan and DeRosario can remain healthy, the Revs and Quakes could put up some big offensive numbers in 2004. For that matter, if the Crew can retain their trio of Buddle, Cunningham, and McBride (#18 on (G+A)/90) and keep them healthy, perhaps Andrulis can get some vindication in 2004. Giving Freddy Garcia more minutes in MF might help.
I agree that, ideally, PK goals should count for something, both for the player who drew it and for the player who converted it. (Likewise, a shooter should be penalized for missed PK's.) But elsewhere in this forum, Chris documented all of this year's PK's, and IIRC, Ruiz only drew 3 of the 8 he attempted.
Great stuff Chris, the next step is to "normalize" the stats to compare across years. Why: A. MLS in 2003 decided to get a bit more picky in the way it hands out assists, so assists dropped this year. B. Scoring was a good deal higher in the 1996-1999 period of MLS before the league started to develop decent defenses league wide. If you do this, it makes Twellman's performances thus far look pretty damn stunning. On the subject of PKs, PKs were converted roughly 80% of the time. Until someone can show me _significant_ differences in the abilities of various players in taking PKs (secondary PK takers in MLS had a slightly higher conversion percentage than the primary ones in 2003), I'm VERY comfortable with giving out not much for converting spot kicks. Give credit to the guys who drew them, but I don't think the league lists them in it's stats databases. And there's no comparison to tap ins from two yards because it often takes a fair amount of skill to be in position to convert those easy chances. The penalty kick easy chances are handed to you by your coach. If you want to give Ruiz .2 goals for his converted ones and minus .8 goals for his missed ones, I suppose I can't stop you. Ruiz would then have 8.6 goals and Twellman would have 14.2.
If you look at a broader sample, you'll find plenty of evidence. For instance, in post-game penalties, shooting percentages are much lower, not much over 60%, IIRC. Also, Peter Hirdt noted at one point that players listed at under 150 pounds had made fewer than 50% of their MLS PK attempts (excluding Cienfuegos, it was like 30%). Finally, you seem to be setting a remarkably high baseline. In 2003, MLS PK's were converted 81% of the time, but prior to 2003, only 71% of PK attempts were converted. Even this latter number is biased, since it includes the only best available penalty takers. Shouldn't a player's penalty taking performance be evaluated relative to the next-best available shooter? And isn't that player's percentage likely to be somewhere in the mid-to-high 60's?
I agree with Beineke on this one. But there is a comparison. Let's say the average success rate on penalty kicks is 70%. If I search hard enough, I'm sure I can find a class of shots during the run of play that has a percentage near that - say, shots taken from inside the opponent's six yard box. By your rationale, those goals should be excluded, too, because they're just too easy?! According to the laws of the game, a goal is scored when the whole of the ball passes completely over the end line below the cross bar and between the goal posts. Since Ruiz's penalty kicks all qualified under the laws, I'll continue to record them as 1.0 goals. Look, Twellman and Ruiz have tied for the league lead in goals the last two years. I like Twellman a lot better because he's a much cleaner player than Ruiz, and to me cleaner play is more beautiful. But when it comes to statistics, I strongly believe the more objective the better, so I try not to let my feelings interfere with my better judgement.
Re: Re: Goals/90, Assists/90 and Points/90 Frankly, I couldn't care less where Ruiz, or anybody else for that matter, ended up on these lists. Regardless, I doubt many of the BS faithful will ever see this thread. True, but who do you credit with the goal? When Damarcus Beasley forces Wes Hart into making a desperation foul, and Ante Razov subsequently scores the PK, does Razov deserve all of the credit? What if Razov misses? Does Beasley deserve no credit because a goal wasn't scored? I suggested in a previous thread a system like what Voros suggested, where a player gets .8 (should have been .7) goals for drawing a PK, .2 for making one, and -.8 for missing one. I didn't use that here because 1. nobody seemed to care and 2. I don't have PK's drawn for previous years. Do you think that would be a fair way of accounting for PK's? Well, I'd never thought about it, but I suppose that if I had the numbers for free kicks taken and scored (and corner kick assists as well), I would be willing to subtract those as well. Unfortunately, except for Elias Sports Bureau, I don't think anyone has those stats, and I definitely am not going to go through 8 years of match logs to be able to do that.
Re: Re: Goals/90, Assists/90 and Points/90 I don't think you can simply assume this is the same kind of sample as an in-game PK. It's an extremely different situation than taking one PK in the middle of a game. But even if PK's were only converted at 60%, does that mean that players should be credited with a full goal for scoring one? I'm not sure what the point here is. Sure, some players will have difficulty making PK's. That may include players under 150 pounds. However, I don't think there are many teams in MLS starting more than two or three players under that weight, and by my count there's only two forwards less than that weight (Herculez Gomez and Igor Simutenkov). Anyway, it's a very convenient weight he chose, the numbers would be a good deal less convincing at 151 lbs.
Re: Re: Re: Goals/90, Assists/90 and Points/90 FTR, I've spent the last hour examining the paper whose appendix is linked below. There appear to be some inaccuracies in its analysis, so I gave up on trying to do anything with the data. But there is one very interesting finding (on page 11). In the last ten minutes of close games, shooters appear to convert substantially fewer penalties. (They also appear to be much less willing to shoot up the middle.) http://www.econ.brown.edu/~iph/pdf/PeleAppendix.pdf [Note also: these numbers are for top European pk takers, so the shooting %age is (presumably) biased upwards.]
Sure, but does a converted penalty kick tell us nearly as much about a player's goal scoring _ability_ as other goals do? That's the rub. We want to try and get at the varying abilities of players at scoring goals. That Ruiz had 8 penalty kick attempts and Twellman had 1, doesn't really tell us much about their goal scoring abilities. It doesn't really even tell us much about their penalty taking abilities. Ruiz has converted 85% of his in his MLS career, Twellman has converted 75% of his. Considering the small samples (Ruiz has 13 attempts, Twellman has 4), does that really tell us much about their penalty taking abilities? Ante Razov had converted 86% of his penalties (12 of 14) in his MLS career before missing on the potential 3-3 equalizer in the MLS Cup. Ruiz did have an excellent year in 2002, better than Twellman's particularly when you count the playoffs. But Twellman was a superior goal scorer in 2003 when he was healthy.
I really like your work in breaking down Ed Johnson's youth team stats in terms of PK goals and non-PK goals, and I agree that such adjustments are useful ... but NoSix has a valid point in saying that other adjustments are possible. During the time that Twellman wasn't healthy, Chris Brown was a "superior" goal scorer to either Twellman or Ruiz. Then Brown got hurt, and Pat Noonan scored a bunch of goals. Even Chris Bagley drew a PK during his 59 minutes of action. The Revs did just fine without Taylor. By contrast, Ruiz was out of the Galaxy starting line-up five times. They lost four games and tied one, scoring a total of three goals.
Re: Re: Re: Goals/90, Assists/90 and Points/90 I would credit the goal to the penalty taker. I understand that it is a high percentage shot, but my argument is that a penalty kick being a high percentage shot is not a reason to treat it any differently from any other goal. In your example, I would credit Beasley with an offensive foul suffered in the opponent's penalty area. If at the end of the season I found that he had four such fouls suffered while no other player in the league had more than two, then that would tell me something about how much an offensive threat Beasley is. But in your example, whether or not a goal is scored is entirely up to Razov and Cannon.
Yes! Philosophically, I believe a goal is a goal, and once you start down the slippery slope of excluding goals from penalty kicks, I don't believe there is any consistent way of determining which other high percentage shot goals should count and which should be excluded. I agree, and that is reflected in their G/90 minute ratio INCLUDING PK's: 0.713 vs. 0.579.
This whole PK controversy could be easily avoided if FIFA would simply change the rules to be the person who drew the penalty has to take the penalty unless injured to the point of being subbed. Andy
PKs Personally, I like that proposal but I can't quite see the logic for it, except for to settle arguments such as this one. Anyway, to register my vote, I would heartily recommend removing PKs from the studies. If Hristo Stoichkov scores once every 3 games by pushing his teammates out of the way so that he can take the PKs, he scores at a .33 rate per 90 minutes (actually more, since he probably won't play the whole 30 minutes per game). But that doesn't make him an effective offensive player, because if he didn't exist some other guy would take and make those same PKs, plus would probably contribute something useful to the offense in the run of play.
Re: PKs You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but someone for whom Hristo is their all time favorite player could use similar reasoning to argue that PK's should be included. In 901 minutes, Stoichkov scored at a rate of 0.499 goals per 90 minutes. Consider the alternatives: Player Min G/90 Stewart 1923 0.047 Cerritos 1767 0.204 Curtis 1509 0.119 Quaranta 738 0.122 Eskandarian 728 0.371 Hudson chose Stewart and Cerritos, and got fired. Who knows, maybe if he had given Stoichkov and Eskandarian Stewart's and Cerritos's minutes, things would have been different?
Well, I'm not sure if I agree with this suggestion, and I'm afraid the numbers I came out with may not be a whole lot more telling than the ones I've already used, but I tried this anyway. If anybody has criticisms about this, or even better suggestions as to how if might be improved, I'd be happy to hear them. To start off with some numbers: Year - G - - - A - - Minutes 1996 - 485 - 505 - 315981 1997 - 479 - 620 - 316037 1998 - 690 - 942 - 404066 1999 - 514 - 738 - 378670 2000 - 555 - 769 - 387215 2001 - 473 - 697 - 318993 2002 - 381 - 565 - 282540 2003 - 380 - 418 - 306758 Which gives totals of 3957 Non-PK goals, 5254 Assists, and 2710260 Minutes played (5 years). So we get an average goals/90 of .1314, and an average assists/goal of 1.328. (I hope the PK debate doesn't arise again, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree for the time being, but right here I think it's particularly important to use non-PK goals because assists aren't handed out for PK's.) Now, for individual seasons, the numbers are: Code: [size=1] 1996 0.138 1.041 1997 0.136 1.294 1998 0.154 1.365 1999 0.122 1.436 2000 0.129 1.386 2001 0.133 1.474 2002 0.121 1.483 2003 0.111 1.100 [/b][/size] And so the ratios of individual season G/90 and A/G to all time G/90 and A/G look like (respectively) Code: [size=1] 1996 1.051 0.784 1997 1.038 0.975 1998 1.170 1.028 1999 0.930 1.081 2000 0.982 1.044 2001 1.016 1.110 2002 0.924 1.117 2003 0.848 0.828 [/b][/size] So, to normalize everything, as best as my underfed, statistically untrained brain knows how, I divided individual season goal and assist numbers by those two numbers (again, respectively). So, if Chris Henderson had 10 non-PK goals and 7 assists in 2002, I credited him with (10/.924=) 10.823 goals and (7/1.117=) 6.267 assists. So the top 15 in career (super-)adjusted G/90, minimum 2000 minutes, are: Code: [size=1] John, Stern 0.821 Twellman, Taylor 0.821 Buddle, Edson 0.654 Diallo, Mamadou 0.633 Shannon, Musa 0.631 Ruiz, Carlos 0.615 Graziani, Ariel 0.542 Marino, Pete 0.527 Serna, Diego 0.520 Savarese, Giovanni 0.515 De Avila, Antonio 0.504 Razov, Ante 0.504 Lassiter, Roy 0.503 Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.498 Diaz Arce, Raul 0.481 [/b][/size] And assists/90 are: Code: [size=1] Valderrama, Carlos 0.657 Etcheverry, Marco 0.573 Paz, Adrian 0.535 Preki 0.526 Limpar, Anders 0.516 Williams, Andy 0.514 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.513 Wynalda, Eric 0.502 Bishop, Ian 0.498 Guevara, Amado 0.480 Martinez, Antonio 0.465 Hermosillo, Carlos 0.463 Warzycha, Robert 0.461 Jara, Guillermo 0.454 Machon, Martin 0.453 [/b][/size] and g+a/90: Code: [size=1] Twellman, Taylor 1.034 John, Stern 0.957 Buddle, Edson 0.951 Stoitchkov, Hristo 0.918 De Avila, Antonio 0.918 Hermosillo, Carlos 0.903 Serna, Diego 0.890 Shannon, Musa 0.840 Wynalda, Eric 0.837 Cunningham, Jeff 0.836 Diallo, Mamadou 0.830 Pineda Chacon, Alex 0.792 Moore, Joe-Max 0.788 Donovan, Landon 0.781 Razov, Ante 0.781 [/b][/size] and the 12 greatest goal-scoring [rate] seasons of MLS history are, minimum 600 minutes: Code: [size=1] Diallo, Mamadou 2000 0.953 John, Stern 1998 0.887 Ruiz, Carlos 2002 0.861 Twellman, Taylor 2003 0.841 Pineda Chacon, Alex 2001 0.819 Harris, Wolde 1998 0.815 Molnar, Miklos 2000 0.813 Twellman, Taylor 2002 0.806 Lassiter, Roy 1996 0.796 De Avila, Antonio 1996 0.790 John, Stern 1999 0.760 Cunningham, Jeff 2002 0.745 [/b][/size] and assists: Code: [size=1] Wynalda, Eric 1997 1.100 Williams, Andy 1998 1.076 Etcheverry, Marco 1996 1.017 Valderrama, Carlos 1997 1.008 Valderrama, Carlos 1996 0.948 Valderrama, Carlos 2000 0.774 Dougherty, Paul 1998 0.750 Etcheverry, Marco 1999 0.749 Warzycha, Robert 1996 0.723 Martinez, Antonio 2001 0.722 Machon, Martin 2000 0.707 Moore, Joe-Max 1998 0.704 [/b][/size] Now, Wynalda's 1997 and Williams's 1998 season only lasted about 900 minutes, and Dougherty's was just over a thousand. Nevertheless, it looks like the dedicated playmaker is, for whatever reason disappearing from the league. Maybe it's that the league hasn't been able to find replacements for Etcheverry and Valderamma, maybe it's that a player simply can't sit back and distribute anymore, I don't know (to be fair, 15 on the list was Preki 2003, 22 was Cancela). On the subject of the career goals/90, Twellman and Stern John stand atop the field like colossuses. Twellman's dominance, combined the fact that Noonan would have slotted in right behind Buddle (.644) with 350 more minutes, makes it hard to wonder whether his scoring isn't a product of Nicol's system. I really look forward to seeing how they respond to playing together next year. Buddle's numbers are almost as impressive as Twellman's, though, and he's obviously the superior athlete. I think there's no doubt he'll be a fixture on the Nats for years to come, once he gets the opportunity. That's it for now.
Re: Re: Goals/90, Assists/90 and Points/90 Thanks for prepping all this stuff, Chris. It's a fascinating read. How hard would it be to threshold this list at, say, 2000 minutes? I'm wondering if the big assist seasons were mostly in 96 and 97, back in the league's (effectively) pro-am days.
Fascinating stuff Chris. Really, excellent job. One thing that strikes out at me is actual numbers of Carlos Valderamma's long time, and wel desirved reputation of being a play makers. Very impressive. I foudn your comment about Steve Nicol's system to be interesting I'm not sure if I could think of any particular reason why to justify what in his system might be the key. Maybe it's just Nicols scouting ability? Perhaps a more direct style of play? I'd really have no idea.