Discussing Baca with his adamant supporters and his recent departure have finally brought me to this. I wanted to do something like this for some time, and finally reached the last straw. I've worked on a little project this evening. I went through the 2011-2013 seasons and looked at every regular season and playoff game where Baca played minutes. I totaled minutes on the field and minutes off, and totaled goals for and goals against. What did I find? Let's just say, what I've been saying all along is pretty well corroborated by these numbers. Rafael Baca Regular Season and Playoff Games, 2011 through 2013 Minutes On: 6,123 Minutes Off: 1,145 (only minutes on bench when subbed on/off) Team Goals For On: 86 Off: 37 Team Goals Against On: 96 Off: 10 Which leads us to the highlight of the evening: Goals Per 90 Minutes With Baca: 1.3 Without Baca: 2.9 Goals Against Per 90 Minutes With Baca: 1.4 Without Baca: 0.8 For those with blinders still on, for those with blue-colored glasses still on - what does this all mean, you ask? What have we learned here? What is the conclusion? WE ARE BETTER WITHOUT BACA ON THE FIELD. It's over. Finally. Now will anyone admit you could be wrong? Will you still continue to defend Baca, say we made the wrong move, say he was simply a victim of our playing style, an undervalued, unappreciated, asset to the team? No truth to the criticisms myself and others have been saying about him as a player for the past couple of years? The results speak for themselves. Sure, there might be a small number in the totals off here or there, given stoppage time or my error entering data - but even with some miniscule error, the GF and GA stats are in stark contrast to one another. We scored 1.5 more goals per 90 mins without him on the field than with him! We give up half a goal less without him on the field than with him! Consider the numbers side by side in theoretical matchups: Without Baca on the field, we win 2.9 - 0.8 With Baca on the field, we lose 1.4 - 1.3 That is a disastrous case for any player who is fighting for a roster spot. How can a GM justify keeping a player with this kind of track record? Say all you want about how Baca has a high pass completion rate, covers ground, work ethic, or supposed "possession" skills or bossing the midfield. Aside from the legitimate criticisms myself and others have of Baca's play itself, the facts speak for themselves. Our team was better when Baca was not on the field. Period.
Your numbers are all fine and dandy but in 2012, the Quakes scored like half their goals in the final 10 minutes. Also worldwide, a disproportionate amount of goals get scored in the final 10-15 minutes vs any other 15 minute period of time during a game. And if Baca is a guy who gets subbed in the second half, he's going to miss the time when the action heats up. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I don't care one way or the other. All I ask is that he gets properly replaced,
It's interesting that this analysis only looks at the games in which Baca played. I wonder if the statistics would skew the other direction if they included the games in which he didn't participate. I also think it's inconclusive to look at this numbers in a vacuum. Who were those opponents? When he was subbed in (I don't remember this happening) whose place did he take? And when he was subbed out, who took his place, and how did that player's record compare to Baca's? For example, if Baca played 60 minutes against RSL and they scored 1 and we didn't score, and then a sub came in and RSL scored twice, the statistics won't reflect that he did a superior job. I am not a huge Baca fan. I think he had a role to fill and he filled it,and the reason the coaches played him, game after game, was that they appreciated his consistency. Some of you doubters may be surprised at the Baca that emerges from his next incarnation. Finally: better than...what? Ok, Baca wasn't all that, but the team didn't do so well at the beginning of the season when he was playing and it did a lot better at the end when he was playing. Baca was not the difference. Where is that player who is going to help take the team to the next level? It's moot at this point, but unless we can be assured of a 20% upgrade on that position, we should have tried harder to keep the devil we know.
Nice effort, QT, but no cigar. As we (should have) learned in grade school science, in order to run an experiment that has any merit at all, you need to have only one independent variable that changes. If a bunch of stuff is changing at once, you don't know which of those variables is contributing to the effect (the dependent variable) and by how much. In your "experiment" there are a lot of changing variables besides just Baca being on the field or not, including: 1) (Most importantly) tactics - in most of the cases Baca went to the bench late in the game when the Quakes went to 3-forward or twin towers lineups. So did the Quakes do better because Baca was not on the field or because they were just very effective in this desperation / goonie mode? If say Sam Cronin was the guy who went off for say Gordon instead of Baca, for example, would the results have changed? (I tend to doubt it - in which case I suppose we'd have to suffer the "Definite we are better off without Sam Cronin" thread). 2) Who came in for Baca? Were the results better because Baca was not on the field or because the player who came on happened to be very, very effective late in games. Alan Gordon, for example, had, by far, the best goals per minute average in MLS in 2012. How much of a factor was Alan Gordon's extreme gooniness? And again, if someone else went out for Gordon, would the results have changed drastically? I tend to doubt it. Interestingly, when Gordon started, he tended to be much less effective. So the thought that, "Hey if it worked so well at the end of games, let's try it for the whole game!" didn't really work out. 3) Soccer is a team game, and you can't attribute results to one player being on or off. In basketball the "plus minus" stat is not given much credence for the same kinds of reasons, and soccer has over 2x the number of players, so the effect of one player is even much smaller. 4) Soccer is a 90 minute game, and things happen in the first 70 minutes that might affect the last 25. Gordon would always attribute part of his success in 2012 to Lenhart wearing down defenses. In the same way, one could hypothesize that the Quakes goonie success in 2012 (and to some extent 2013 as well) was partly due to the Quakes strong midfield play wearing down the opposition in the first 70 minutes, Baca helping to hold possession and clog lanes defensively to make the Quakes difficult to play against. From 2011 to 2013, the Quakes tried many times to play with more attack minded center mids (Tressor Moreno, Khari Stevenson, WalMart, even Dawkins, and even Adam Jahn!), but they kept coming back to Baca. That is because the other center mids just couldn't cover the field and defend like Baca did. But you don't need to take my word for it. You can read what people like Yallop and Wondo had to say about it. "I thought he did an excellent job", Quakes star Chris Wondolowski said of Baca to MLSSoccer.com. "He just really goes unseen. He's kind of the engine that runs us. He has great vision. He defends. He covers so much ground, and he makes those dangerous runs out of the midfield. He's an all-around player, and he's someone I enjoy playing with out there." http://m.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/03/15/baca-makes-his-case-starting-spot-sj-midfield Or Yallop...: "He never stops running," coach Frank Yallop said. "When he plays, we seem to play better." http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20373444/rafael-baca-providing-clutch-midfield-play-san-jose The definitive analysis on Baca has already been done, and it isn't this silly goals per minute analysis with independent variables running amok. It's Matthew Doyle's tour-de-force analysis of Baca's game, where he takes a very close look at what Baca is actually doing on the field, not making broad stroke conclusions from faulty experiments. http://m.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/04/27/armchair-analyst-baca-mexicos-missing-olympic-piece
Ok, well according to Doyle, we just sold the best player in all of North America. Somehow I think he's somewhere in between.
So essentially it's this: Me: "Baca is not good. Look at his play, his decisions. He's hurting us. We need an upgrade." Baca defenders: "But he is a great player, you're criticizing him unfairly. He contributes to the team!" Me: "Baca scored 2 goals and had 9 assists over 2.5 years as a CM." Baca defenders: "But it's not about his individual offensive stats, it's about overall he helps the team!" Me: "Baca's stats show we score more goals and get scored on less when he's not on the field." Baca defenders: "But you can't read into that! Just trust us! Baca is awesome! Really!!"
It wasn't an experiment. It was statistics. Based on reality, based on recorded information. This in no way was meant to be a stand-alone "well, look at this, therefore, Baca = sucks." This is the cherry on top of what I've been saying, observing, and criticizing for the past 3 years, meant to be a book end on what has been a long-fought battle with unwavering support of Baca in the face of everything brought against him. These were numbers I put together to plug yet another route his defenders seem to default to when anyone criticized him. And why exactly were the Quakes in desperation mode in those games that necessitated Baca coming off for offensive firepower in the first place? Because we couldn't score and we got scored on! We suck, we generate no offense with Baca (nor Cronin, but it is overwhelmingly the consensus that he is the default CDM role, regardless of whether Baca is on or not. Baca was supposed to be more of a two-way mid while Cronin had more of a defensive role) on the field, go down, then spend the rest of the game trying to come back. Yes, but then again, this is just one set of statistics that clearly show a pattern. A CM, by default, has a much more impactful role as they have more touches in general than other guys on the field. Of course, if these numbers proved otherwise, I somehow doubt this would be brought up by you. Which in another world could account for these numbers if they also didn't coincide with being scored on at a higher rate when he was on the field than off as well. "Holding possession" and "clogging lanes defensively" doesn't really make sense considering we got scored on by half a goal more a game when he was on the field. Well, also has to do with those other CMs suck (with the exception of Dawkins who wasn't utilized enough as a CAM in my opinion, but cornered on the left, and Jahn, who.... isn't a midfielder whatsoever). What is Wondo supposed to say? "Uh, yeah... he's kind of the crappiest guy in our staring 11. But he's there and he makes passes, I guess.. Just happy he can pass the ball to the wings for guys to whip in crosses. But I do wish he would try to connect more with me by going up the middle, sending through balls, and making runs. Oh well." Quoting Yallop to defend Baca? As if he wasn't one of "his boys"? You should know better. Also, where did Baca get Yallop this year? Yeah. Aside from that, he's wrong (although he chose the word "seem" fittingly, as it has more to do with perception just like people on these forums). When he plays, the Quakes played worse, as is evidenced by the stats.
i loved these stats. But to be fair, it would be good to generate these stats for 2-3 other players, so that we could compare. Maybe even compute for players who were gone a lot, like chavez, bernardez, wondo? Or Salinas and Cronin?