Looking past the hot takes: How will the loss of Martins and Dempsey affect the Sounders?

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Those of you who read ASA regularly know that I am tentative declare to others that I am a “Sounders fan” because of the bias and label that it automatically associates with me and my analysis. Last night, to me, was a wonderful game played by titanic rivals. Extra time happened and things began to take shape and my thought was regardless of the outcome we would yet again be talking about the epic-ness of when the Timbers and Sounder meet in battle.

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Weekend Kickoff: Living in another world

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I've come to the harsh realization that this week my ideas within Major League Soccer are a bit different from the rest of yours. It's not that my ideas are better or worse, again, just different. That's not an effort to be politically correct or validate both of our (yours and mine) opinions, rather it's just two different methods of analysis.

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Evaluating goalkeepers: Save Percentage vs Goals Against Average

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It’s nice to see MLS goalkeepers starting to pick it up. After a rough first couple months, we have finally compiled enough saves to have an honest Save of the Week competition.

So because of the sudden upswing in production, now is a great time to take a look at some stats instead of walking through every goalkeeper’s worse game this season. This month, we’re going to take a look at the stats Goals Against Average and Save Percentage to find out which one is worse. Or perhaps which stat is better, if you’re more optimistically inclined. It’s no secret that both stats are rather useless when gauging goalkeepers. There’s a reason why no one is bragging about being in the top ten GAA: it’s not that stellar of a group to be in. Sure we’ve got some of the all-time greats in there, but… Josh Saunders and Bouna Coundoul are in the list? Jimmy Nielsen is not only number one but he’s significantly ahead of his peers. That seems incorrect.

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Which MLS players take "good" shots? (And does Lovel Palmer take all the bad ones?)

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I have been a frequent and vocal critic of Lovel Palmer, and his all too frequent tendency to launch shots from 40 yards into the 40th row.

Ask around, and the journeyman is hardly beloved by the fans of any team he’s played for. When I unscientifically surveyed a few friends who are separately fans of his former teams, Palmer did not once get described using the words “quality”, “ability” or “skill.” Indeed, nearly everyone described him with a different variation of some four-letter word, but “frustration” is an apt synonym that sums them up. And most had a similar complaint; for every solid defensive play he makes, it always feels like he kills his own team’s attack because of his overconfidence in his long-range shot. A shot that has earned him four goals in his MLS career, and only one in the last three seasons. While my memory of his time with the Timbers may be unreliable, it seemed he was good for at least one cringe-worthy long distance shot per game. The below video encapsulates what I’m talking about:

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USMNT at the Netherlands: USMNT efficient and resilient

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Jurgen Klinsmann’s investment in new players this cycle began to pay off as the USMNT earned some retribution with a late, come-from-behind win, shocking the Netherlands in Amsterdam 4-3. Gyasi Zardes (33’), Danny Williams (’89) and Bobby Wood (90’) all scored their first international goals while center back John Anthony Brooks (70’) scored his second to lead the United States to victory.

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MLS Proactive Score through May: The league’s most tactically diverse team is….

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It’s time for our Monthly review of which teams play proactively and which teams play reactively in Major League Soccer (read this article for more background on how Pscore works). Three months into the MLS season and I’m ready to anoint the most tactically diverse team in MLS: the Vancouver Whitecaps. The Whitecaps are one of just three teams that currently have above average points per game, regardless of which style they play; reactively, proactively or somewhere in the middle. The other two teams are New England and FC Dallas. Vancouver wins the award because their distribution of games playing different styles is most evenly spread out.

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Weekend Kickoff: Chicago... again? Plus Houston with Galactic Show Down.

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It's Friday! FRIDAY! Gotta get up for Friday. (Yes, I was just singing a Rebbeca Black song. Let It Go... or I'll start singing Frozen). This isn't just any Friday either. It's the start of a long weekend for many, the first of four glorious days. Regardless of your work schedule, there's a great double header, so let's talk about all four teams this week.

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Does travel distance affect results in MLS?

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By Brendan Kent (@brendankent)

A key feature of Major League Soccer that differentiates it from European leagues is the physical distance between the teams. While the two-conference system reduces the average distance an away team travels for a match (teams play in-conference opponents three times per year and out-of-conference opponents once), MLS teams still spend some weeks traversing several time zones.

Back of the napkin rendering of MLS stadium locations. Obviously not perfectly to scale, but you get the drift: Western Conference teams travel farther.

Back of the napkin rendering of MLS stadium locations. Obviously not perfectly to scale, but you get the drift: Western Conference teams travel farther.

In the 2013/2014 MLS Season teams traveled an average of 1,058 miles to away matches‒by this I mean the distance between the two teams’ stadiums. Houston traveled the furthest on average, at 1,345 miles per away match. The average distance traveled to away matches by each team in the 2013/2014 season is shown below. Unsurprisingly, Western Conference teams tend to travel further.

This raises the question, does travel distance effect results? In other words, can we expect teams to perform better away from home when that away match is closer to home?

In answering this question, I used multivariate regression with data from the 2013/2014 MLS regular season. Away results were used as the dependent variable to control for the significant influence of general home advantage. To control for the relative strength of the two teams, I used end of season point differential with a minor adjustment: I removed the result of the game in question to prevent any bias. I also removed any matches between LA Galaxy and Chivas USA from the data because one team was technically playing an ‘away’ game at their home stadium when they went head-to-head.

I ran several variations of the regression, all of which used away results as the dependent variable and the adjusted point differential as one of the independent variables. First, I added distance between the two teams’ stadiums as a second independent variable. This proved to be insignificant, with a p-value of .31.

Next, I ran the regression replacing distance between stadiums with the difference in time zones between the stadiums. This again proved to be an insignificant variable, returning a p-value of .5.  

Finally, I replaced the time zone variable with an indicator variable for whether the teams were two or more time zones apart. Again, insignificant, this time with a p-value of .73.

This tells us that when we control for general home advantage and the relative strengths of two teams, the physical distance between two teams has no effect on results from a statistical standpoint. This is not to say that travel takes no toll on players, it probably does, but the difference between Vancouver traveling to Portland and Vancouver traveling to New York is statistically insignificant when we control for the strength of the two teams.