Ralston was also Roy Lassiter's teammate in 1996, though he only finished with 2 assists (but still won Rookie of the Year with 7 goals). That means that three of the seven 20-goal scorers in MLS had Steve Ralston as a teammate. Pretty cool stat.
Alas, all Emilio can do is match the lowest assist total for a 20-goal scorer in MLS. Roy Lassiter, Tampa Bay Mutiny, 1996 – 30 games, 27 goals, 4 assists Stern John, Columbus Crew, 1998 – 27 games, 26 goals, 5 assists Mamadou Diallo, Tampa Bay Mutiny, 2000 – 28 games, 26 goals, 4 assists Carlos Ruiz, Los Angeles Galaxy, 2002 – 26 games, 24 goals, 1 assist Raul Diaz Arce, DC United, 1996 – 28 games, 23 goals, 2 assists Taylor Twellman, New England Revolution, 2002 - 28 games, 23 goals, 6 assists Eduardo Hurtado, Los Angeles Galaxy, 1996 – 26 games, 21 goals, 7 assists What a shocker that, statistically, Carlos Ruiz would be the most selfish player in MLS history.
Rodan, there are a lot of "facts" available here. 1. That half of the pool happened in 1996 (where defense was mostly nonexistent). So if we're generalizing off of a pool then of about 4 players, it's hard to argue that proves anything. For instance, b/c Angel, Twellman, EJ, Galindo and Emilio are all pumping in goals this year, and it is a fact that it's also an expansion year, does that mean that it's not about being a first year striker and more about playing in a "diluted talent pool" caused by expansion? 2. I think the original point that it's hard to draw generalizations from the pool is an accurate one. Yeah, there are a lot of people who scored 20 goals in their first year. But 20 is not some magic number. In fact, I would argue that 15 goals this year is more like 20 in 1996 b/c you had the Gold Cup, Copa and various international matches (with the "96 year didn't have to deal with) that took guys like EJ and Twellman out. The real hypothesis you're arguing for here is that goal scorers do better in their first year than later years b/c the league figures them out. And there is plenty of factual data to dispute that. For every player who has a career goal scoring year as a rookie, there is someone else who does better in their second or third year (Eskandarian for example). 3. I would argue that the reasons that there is a prevalence of first year players in this pool is b/c: --half come from 1996 when the defense was bad (basically an "expansion league") --20 goals is an arbitrary number. Let's supposed we looked at the number 10 instead (10 goals is a respectable number--most teams would feel that a forward who scored 10 goals had at least a respectable season). I bet we'd find plenty of goal scorers who got better after year 1 or year 2 (which would argue against the position that defenses adjust after year 1). --there are plenty of guys who showed talent in front of goal and then only got 1 or 2 more years to play in MLS before they left. Damani Ralph are Ariel Graziani are players I think would have hit for 20 later on if they'd played 6-7 seasons in MLS (and each had the talent to stick around). Three of the players on the first year 20 list left MLS shortly afterwards to play overseas (Hurtado, Diallo and John) so maybe if they'd been here for 7 years they'd have gotten 20 again. And it wouldn't be a shock if Razov, Angel, EJ or Cunningham were to hit 20 next year or the year after--which again would deny the hypothesis.
Lotta stuff here, but I'm not sure much is useful. 20 goals seems like a reasonable (though arbitrary) number because it encompasses a small subgroup of the most successful goal-scoring years ever. There aren't more in it (theoretically) because it's darned hard to do. Whether or not defenses were weaker in the first year (and I don't many would argue this), relatively speaking, the standard still holds up. The seven highest goaling scorers (soon to be eight) in MLS history all got their highest number of goals in their first year. The rest is just sort of speculation without hope of verification - like guessing the number of angels that can ballance on the head of a pin. If Emilio gets 20+ next season, that will be a data point in the opposite direction. But until then, the numbers are "suggestive". It might also be interesting to see how may guys who had sub 20-goal seasons (say, between 15 and 20) got more in a succeeding season. But the fact will still remain that the cream of the crop - numbers-wise - all did it in their first season.
NASL 20 Goal Scorers For the curious: Yanko Daucik (Toronto) 20 (17 games) 1967 John Kowalik (Chicago) 30 (28 GP) 1968 Cirilo Fernandez (San Diego) 30 (29 GP) 1968 Iris DeBrito (Toronto) 21 (22 GP) 1968 Henry Klein (Vancouver) 20 (26 GP) 1968 Steve David (Miami) 23 (21 GP) 1975 Derek Smethurst (Tampa Bay) 20 (24 GP) 1976 Steve David (Los Angeles) 26 (24 GP) 1977 Giorgio Chinaglia (New York) 34 (30 GP) 1978 Mike Flanagan (New England) 30 (28 GP) 1978 Trevor Francis (Detroit) 22 (20 GP) 1978 Kevin Hector (Vancouver) 21 (28 GP) 1978 Jeff Bourne (Dallas) 21 (30 GP) 1978 Alan Willey (Minnesota) 21 (30 GP) 1978 Oscar Fabbiani (Tampa Bay) 25 (26 GP) 1979 Giorgio Chinaglia (New York) 26 (27 GP) 1979 Karl-Heinz Granitza (Chicago) 20 (30 GP) 1979 Alan Willey (Minnesota) 21 (29 GP) 1979 Giorgio Chinaglia (New York) 32 (32 GP) 1980 Roger Davies (Seattle) 25 (29 GP) 1980 Luis Fernando (Los Angeles) 28 (28 GP) 1980 Alan Green (Washington) 25 (31 GP) 1980 Giorgio Chinaglia (New York) 29 (32 GP) 1981 Mike Stojanovic (San Diego) 23 (32 GP) 1981 Brian Kidd (Atlanta) 22 (27 GP) 1981 Franz Gerber (Calgary) 20 (25 GP) 1981 Giorgio Chinaglia (New York) 20 (32 GP) 1982 Karl-Heinz Granitza (Chicago) 20 (32 GP) 1982 Ricardo Alonso (Jacksonville) 21 (30 GP) 1982 Roberto Cabanas (New York) 25 (28 GP) 1983 Steve Zungul (Golden Bay) 20 (24 GP) 1984 Note: not a single native-born American on the list Also note: the list grows exponentially beginning with the ill-advised 1978 expansion, but reverts to "normal" after the exodus of franchises following the 1981 season. Anyway, with the exception of the 1978-1981 "bubble," is appears the 20-goal standard is a pretty consistent one over the years. Props to Steve David, who managed to have two 20 goal seasons pre-1978. Oh...and honorable mention: Archie Stark (Bethlehem Steel) 67 (44 GP) 1924-25 Now there's a good year...
Yes, it is, but I would argue that taking away the arbitrariness of it leaves a more convincing point, not less. Now that Emilio has already entered the top 10 single season scorers in league history, nine of that 10 (the other being Chacon with 19, and the exception being Cobi, also with 19) were in their first year. I think that's pretty strong evidence that a good goal scorer, other things being equal, does better his first year. One would imagine this is because defenses later adapt to them or devote more resources to covering them.
I would certainly argue that too. Seems pretty simple and reasonable assumption to me. It's not a fact, but it's (IMO) a fairly simple and supportable assumption. Props to peledre and Stan. I wouldn't have noticed it off-hand.
1. So Emilio did best his first year in Honduras and his first year in Germany I"m assuming? And ditto with Angel in England and other countries? Or is the argument that this only applies to MLS? B/c if the argument is that defenses adjust to strikers and learn to play them better, than we're using a ridiculously small pool by confining it to only MLS talent--we should be looking at new additions to the Premiership, Bundesliga, Serie-A, La Liga and so on. 2. If the argument is that it applies only to MLS, than why is that so? That Italian or German clubs do a better job studying strikers so they get no first year advantage? Or the reverse--these clubs don't study talent and so a Ronaldo or Owen can score more goals in their second or third year b/c coaches and clubs aren't figuring out how to stop them? Rodan can argue about angels dancing on a pinhead but what's the argument that supposedly explains why this would be true for MLS but not other leagues? B/c if it's first year players aren't scouted and defenses haven't caught up with them, than that should be true world wide. And if it isn't, than it means that there is another explanation for the numbers others have pointed out in MLS (like....really outstanding strikers like Stern John don't get a chance to post those numbers b/c MLS can't afford to keep them and players like Damani Ralph don't get a chance to break that trend b/c they don't stay around for 4-5-6 years).
In fact, let's suppose that goals were distributed at random. Now, being a first-year forward is likely a minority trait. Let's guess, for the sake of argument, that only a third of starting forwards in a given season are in their first year. If being a first-year forward is not consequential, the odds of a first year forward being tops (or any specific position) if goals were on that list should be the same (in our example, 1 in 3). Not crazy, but the odds of the top eight guys all being newcomers, as they are in real life is 1/(3^8), or 1 in 6561, or 0.015%. It gets more complicated with 9 of the top 10, but the numbers don't change dramatically. That's not NASA's definition of astronomical, but it's far fetched. Even if you assumed that half of all forwards are first year forwards, the odds of the top 8 sharing some non-essential trait that 50% of the population has is 1 in 256, or 0.4% (that would be the same as the odds of flipping a coin 8 times and having them all come up heads).
Re: NASL 20 Goal Scorers When did the NASL add the 35-yard offside line? I imagine if Ruiz, Twellman and Lassiter, etc... could stand on the 35-yard line that there'd be a lot more 20-goal scorers. Hell yeah, it is. I'd love to know more about this and the level of competition and the number of teams in the league when he did it. Anyone got those answers?
Here's the challenge of treating the first, second, third and fourth years all the same: when a young forward comes in and burns it up, he gets major offers to go overseas. And that's true whether it's the first year or later on (like EJ--who turned down his transfer offers). As I pointed out, if you look at the list of 20 goal scorers, a high percentage of them went overseas soon (Hurtado, John, etc.). When Damani Ralph goes overseas, he doesn't get a chance to score 20 goals. When Stern John goes overseas, he doesn't get a chance to repeat his first year numbers.
Not really. If we assumed each team had ~2 starting forwards and there have been ~11 teams per year in the league for 12 years, you've got ~250 forward-seasons to pull from. When some trait is shared among only a minority of the 250 population but by 9 of the top 10, I think you should assume that trait is not random. As to whether this applies in other leagues, I really don't know.
In your hypothetical world he does. In real life, every one of those top 10 were still there the next year. Stern John was the only one to leave after his second season with the league. Plus, John was also the only one to really leave for greener pastures--this against two (Chacon and Diallo) who were more or less chased out of the league. Most guys had at least three more shots to equal their feat and have not. No, Hurtado did not leave soon, other than on loan. He was still in MLS five years later. (He only had 3 more seasons with a significant number of games, though). When he finally did leave, he made what I would charitably describe as a lateral move.
Re: NASL 20 Goal Scorers I think it's pretty much impossible to tell. The US did pretty damn well in the 1930 WC and I've read that during some friendlies people like Stark and Billy Gonslaves impressed. There's really no good metric to look at though.
Don't know. We could expand the pool to include all goal scorers in all leagues since the game was conceived. But why? Not answerable within the scope of the information we have I think. IMO the best course is just to consider the information within a salient pool : MLS history. Your eschewing a simple, and at least for now supportable, assumption in favor of complex and unverifiable generalizations. This usually isn't profitable. We're not trying to establish some universal truth, just an identifiable trend (which could change at any time) over a reasonable period of time.
The problem with this is that none of you are idiots. It's pretty much all true. It's true that young players need time to adapt and turn into the scoring machines that they're capable of. It's true that veterans may need time to get used to the league. It's also true that new players, whether veteran or rook, can show defenders things that they haven't seen before. It's true that players need time to adapt to the physical nature and lax refereeing of the Premierhsip. It's also true that players coming into MLS from better leagues generally will have the advantage of coming from a higher to a lower level. All of those ideas make sense and seem right-- but which one has the most effect in MLS? Well, I started to look at what percentage of the league's Top 10 goal scorers for each year happened to have their best year in their first year in the league. I only got about half way, but the number was between 1/4 to 1/3. The average tenure of these players was greater than 4 years, so it was a better-than-random distribution. BUT, I didn't correct for the MLS Year One Effect (when almost all of the Top 10 goalscorers had their best year) and I imagine that if we threw that out the First Year Effect would be much less. Still, I think there's enough out there to assume that, in MLS, there is some First Year Effect.
All these things may be anectdotally "true", but what you hope to do is try figure out what is *most* true at a particular time in a particular place. Even if you can do this, you have to realize that it may be only true for a short time. IMO you're probably dilluting the sample pool a bit much here. If the total number of goals isn't sufficiently high, it becomes much easier to repeat or exceed randomly. For example, in 2004 the ten top MLS goal scorers all had between 10 and 12 goals. Good numbers but not necessarily outstanding in a larger persepctive. I would think that narrowing the sample to goal scorers (in all seasons) with, say, between 15 and 20 goals would be more useful. Again, we're not looking for some universal formula. Otherwise, why even restrict yourself to the top 10? Maybe it should be all goal scorers. I'm not sure I get why this is an issue, especially if you concentrate on goal number instead ranking.
Well, I think, conceptually, all of these ideas make sense. It is true that forwards need to adapt to a new league. It is true that defenders have a tough time adapting to new forwards. Maybe it's semantics, but it's not that one idea is more "true" than others-- it's simply that it may have more of an effect. Definitely if we were talking about the EPL, we'd be certain that it takes attackers time to adapt to the prem. In England, the style of play clearly has a huge effect-- but I don't think for a second that defenders aren't at the same time beguiled by stepovers they've never seen before. I don't think diluting the pool should have any effect IF all you're trying to show that defenders figure out how to defend new players. I think though the real argument is probably more nuanced: it's that defenders in MLS have a tougher time coping with new "elite" (used loosely) attacking players. I expected to see some First Year Effect regardless of the relative goal production of the "elite" in that year. Well I think it does matter because the numbers really suggest that the first year was a huge anomaly. The fact that almost the entire Top 10 never repeated their feats suggests something about whether the 20+ goalscorers in year one were an anomaly or not.
I remember talking to Roy Lassiter at a Meet the Team event in 99 and we talked about Stern John, how close he'd come to Roy's mark and whether or not he'd break it that year. I remember, clearly, how emphatic Roy was on the topic of whether John would approach his record again in 99. "He'll still get his goals, but I guarantee you he doesn't have as many goals this year as last year, not even close," was the gist of his comment. (Obviously, I don't remember the exact wording almost nine years later.) I asked why and Roy went on to say that John would be a marked man and he wouldn't sneak up on defenders because they all want to shutdown the scoring champ. He also said the defenders would better know his tendencies and have a better chance to stop his pet moves. "They'll figure out the Stern Turn. They won't always stop it, but they'll have a better chance than last year." The conversation ended with "just watch." Well, Roy was right. John still had a great year, finishing with 18 goals. But it was still a pretty big drop off from the year before. Was it because of the reasons Roy said? I dunno. But I have enough respect for Lassiter to not dismiss his prediction and what happened with John as just a coincidence. So, while there may not be enough evidence to show why all the 20-goal scorers did so in their first season, I don't think we can dismiss the familiarity theory as being valid. Might be coincidence. Might be a host of other reasons. Might be for all the reasons Roy said. BTW, I always found Lassiter to be a very amazingly honest person at the Meet the Team events. The same time we talked about Stern John, we talked about his status with the national team. This even was shortly after the US had tied Bolivia 0-0 in one of Bruce's first games as head coach. Lassiter had had several chances to score the game-winner but failed to convert, as he often did with the US. His comments were along the lines of "I should have won that game for us. I blew it. I know Bruce will give me a fair shot but not if I keep blowing chances like that." Sure enough, Lassiter got a few more chances but didn't score and early in 2000 he played his last game for the US.
To be fair, I don't think it's a case of defenses learning to defend an elite scorer, but rather learning that it's worth devoting more resources to that scorer even if it means risking more opportunities for his teammates. Ruiz and Twellman weren't really "figured out"--they were just watched at all times. And that didn't necessarily hurt their teams, once they counter-adjusted by figuring out how to exploit the attention deficit elsewhere. By 'first year' here I assume you mean 1996. Yes, 1996 featured both a lot of scoring and in many cases fairly one dimensional attacks. Actually none of them, even Jones, have done so. I would tend to think that if anyone scored 20 goals he'd be watched real carefully the next season, whether or not his 20 goal year had been his first year. That much might not be true about 11 goals, even if that led the league. It just isn't as memorable.
Not if first year success among elite goalscorers is a legitimate trend. You could actually say that it's not an anomoly at all, but an explainable phenomonon when all goalscorers are new to the league. Again, I think swichting the focus from elite goal-scorers (high numbers of goals in a single season), to top-ten goal scorers (in a single season) is fairly unprofitable. And it still doesn't change the original assumption (about 20-goal scorers) at all. Also, simply chucking out large parts of a sample (as some have suggested) because you think they may be anomolous is a fairly perilous way of analyzing data.
Yeah, that makes sense too. But never since year one have nearly all the new elite goalscorers reached their pinnacle in their first year. After that, new goalscorers had about a 1 in 4 chance of that. Agreed as a general matter. But I don't think many folks have too much trouble with the idea that 1996 was generally anomalous.
Well, I think it's both. I liked Sandon Mibut's Lassiter quote: "I asked why and Roy went on to say that John would be a marked man and he wouldn't sneak up on defenders because they all want to shutdown the scoring champ. He also said the defenders would better know his tendencies and have a better chance to stop his pet moves. "They'll figure out the Stern Turn. They won't always stop it, but they'll have a better chance than last year." You get to know a player's tendencies and you adjust accordingly and figure out their tricks. But teams also devote more resources to stopping you. Granted, MLS never figured out Preki's cutback, but I think it did figure out Jones' stepover... Actually, a couple in the 1996 top 10 did surpass themselves (Savarese and Kreis). Jones wasn't in the top 10, but of course his best season was that devastating 1998. Good point about 11 goals not necessarily leading people to key on you-- that makes sense. But looking at the 2004 list (i.e. the year that the goals were lowest), is there anyone on there that you don't think would have been the focus of defenses in 2005? Brian Ching SJ 25 12 Eddie Johnson DAL 26 12 Edson Buddle CLB 24 11 Pat Noonan NE 29 11 Damani Ralph CHI 26 11 Carlos Ruiz LA 20 11 Alecko Eskandarian DC 24 10 Amado Guevara MET 24 10 Josh Wolff KC 26 10 John Wolyniec MET 30 10 (Well Woly probably wasn't ever the focus of defenders)
That's because even Frankie Hejduk doesn't know where the ball is going to go when he does a stepover.