08 January 2013

January Transfer Window Special Report: WMFC Front Office employing advanced statistics

Over the last decade or so, professional sports have been inundated with volleys of "new stats"- impossibly complex mathematical functions that have helped tiny markets compete with juggernauts. To take advantage of the inefficiency of the GPSL transfer market, in 2008 the Blues hired a young Computer Science major from Carnegie Mellon University named Alexander Salamander to develop a new set of football statistics to frame their transfer policy. Two years later the Blues bought midfielder Mike Hasson and defender Tony Kutscher and a few other blokes that would be really easy to name if I had even the most miniscule amount of feeling-like-doing-it-ness to move my hand to the mouse to click over to that year's notes and see who it was. But I don't. Regardless, the Blues went 4W 1D 4L that season and the supporters became restless. However, the following season, the Blues reached the GPSL post-season for the first time. They faced a disciplined, intelligent and unbelievably obnoxious Indiana FC team that whined the Blues into submission and scored three good goals to send the snots into the final and the Boys home.

Many wondered if the ambitious plan was worth pursuing further; if the "moneyball" formula had its place in the beautiful game. It was thought that if Liverpool FC, England's most storied and most pre-buy-your-titles-era successful football club tried the same approach...and failed so miserably and hilariously, how could tiny little West Mifflin Football Club, in the tiny little Greater Pittsburgh Soccer League manage to make it work? The answer is always clearer in hindsight. Salamander learned from Liverpool's mistakes - mistakes that he claims were almost immediately evident at the start of the 2011/2012 Premier League season. According to Salamander, the players brought in simply did not compliment each other. Clearly, a racist Uruguayan striker will almost never mesh well with three overpaid English turd balls, but for Salamander, it went beyond cultural and economical nuances. He says, "it matters very little what their pay packets were tee hee! It was a matter of their style of play hee hee ho ho! So, in order to create the perfect team, I developed statistics that reflect how the current players compliment each other on the pitch!"

After years of hard work, the Blues went into the 2011 season with what was believed to be their best team since the 2001 Wildcats took the PA West Open title. But they only won five games that year, one shy of the 2010 season when they won a record high six games. There was a lot of dissent among the team that season. Many thought that too many games were being lost when a season ago the boys were grinding out draws. Supporter unrest grew as well. However, the last game of the season proved to be a boost for the Blues that catapulted them over Arsenal in the semi-finals and past Sporting Club of Pittsburgh XVIIXVVIX in the finals.

Now, West Mifflin Football Club Online is very happy to reveal the stats developed by now Dr Alexander Salamander that helped Managing Director Bob Stinner and Manager Bob Stinner select the team that brought home GPSL silverware. Below are five select statistical markers that Dr Salamander and Stinner pored over for months as the team blitzed through the league two seasons ago. Each stat contains a brief description, the formula from which the statistic is derived and the WMFC player that leads the team in the stat. We hope you enjoy this exclusive West Mifflin Football Club Online special report!


Inaccurate-Pass Accuracy Rating (I-PAR) - This reflects a player's ability to pass the ball directly to an opponent with pinpoint accuracy. It seeks to remove the effect of actually trying to pass the ball to a player's own teammate and objectively pinpoint the accuracy of inaccurate passes.

Calculation: # of passes directly to an opposing player / total # of passes

Leader: Mike Hasson - 86.7%
To be sure, West Mifflin has a solid Team I-PAR. All current members send at minimum two passes a game directly to the other team. However, Mike Hasson is king of the I-PAR castle. The bullish midfielder shows great ability to avoid defenders while in possession, and often uses fancy footwork to make an over-extended right-back look silly. It makes one wonder why he would expel such energy to avoid being dispossessed, only to clip the ball right into the eager arms (legs) of those same dingleberries' teammates? "It's all in the placement of the pass," says Hasson. "I like to keep them guessing. And when I say them, I mean everyone. Including my own teammates!"


Cement Boot First Touch Rate (CBf(t)R) - This is the rate at which a player's first touch is graceful as a drunken giraffe padidlying about an icy pond.

Calculation (counting stat): Simply add up the number of times a player is dispossessed because their first touch is abhorrent.

Leaders: Etan Pasternak-69.5%, Anthony Degerolamo-85.2%, Bob Stinner-99.99999%
To be fair, most of the current Blues roster excel in this statistical measure. It was once commonly believed that this was because the Borland pitch was a nightmare to stand on, let alone control a football. However, adjusting for Pitch FX (the football version) it became clear that Pasternak, Degerolamo and Stinner all play like they're wearing Tims. Pasternak's poor touch may be more excusable because he spent a lot of time last year patrolling the Israeli/Palestinian border in military grade equipment and has had to re-adjust to the skin-like feeling of a football boot, but Degerolamo's only excuse is that he cheats in FIFA and is a ditry, cheating cheater.


Dribble Directly Out of Bounds Percentage (DDOB%) - This is the rate at which a player receives a pass, turns, and within two dribbles watches haplessly as the ball rolls out of bounds. This stat was developed to target wingers (who typically play within a few feet of the touchline). Although similar to the more complex I-PAR, this stat doesn't immediately assign a plus-1 value to the category 'Turnover', since the result of a successful Out of Bounds Dribble merely results in a throw-in, which can be intercepted by the Blues...who can then immediately dribble out of bounds again.

Calculation: # of dribbles out of bounds / total # of dribbles

Leader: Tyler Lacock-98.3%
Again, West Mifflin as a team excels at dribbling out of bounds for no reason, but Lacock certainly has been most guilty. This is mostly self-explanatory but it is amazing how proficient Lacock has become with this. There were times even this past season where he would batter an opposing winger and come up with the ball, turn and dance elegantly around another defender and then, in wide open space, walk the ball out of bounds like when your controls get finicky in FIFA13. It is remarkable to watch such grace and skill. I can only imagine what those kids he's coaching are learning from such a dribbling masterclass. Let's hope for their sake he's the passing coach!


Unnecessary Fouls Rate (UFR) - this is the number of fouls a player that possesses little to no control over their emotions commits in a given game.

Calculation: # of fouls that are 100% unnecessary / [(total # of fouls) + (# of situations in which no physical or verbal contact is considered rational or useful to the team)]

Leaders: Jordan Gasparovic, Matthew Alan, Etan Pasternak 
Every team has one. The Blues are blessed with three. Hot heads that don't know when to shut up and let it go. Each week it is a heated competition to see which of the three will lose their temper the fastest and in the most comical fashion. Some memorable moments include Gasparovic's walloping of an Indiana County FC forward and subsequent tongue-lashing he delivered to the flattened striker's corpulent female friend; or his constant (and totally unprovoked) badgering (both physical and verbal) of the British player-coach of Arsenal in the semi-finals two seasons ago. Pasternak, who delivers pure rage-induced comedic gold every Sunday from May to July, is known for many hot-headed outbursts over the years. It has been speculated that the rage comes from the talent gap that exists and must be endured between women from the Israeli coasts and Squirrel Hill. Lil' Etan no likey. The most memorable outburst has to have been from the playoffs three years ago when Etan bellowed the fateful "your view is skewed!" Of course, there are also the numerous fights he's almost taken part in. Finally, there is Matthew Alan Baguet and really, there isn't much to say that hasn't been said already. "I ain't your son!", "I'm just gonna keep doin' it anyway!", being drunk at a game and innumerable instances of mouthing off to the ref. What can you say about the man that has single-handedly made the market for X-Box 360 controllers for the last decade? Nothing, that's what. And that's why he, along with Gaspo and Pastenak, leads the team in UFR.


Goals From Mid-field Let In Percentage (GFMF-LI%) - this is the number of goals a keeper allows on shots that are taken from ridiculous distances...like from the center circle.

Calculation: # of goals let in from midfield / total # of goals let in

Leaders:
 Rob Vargo with 1 out of 21 total goals let in for 4.76%
There's only one Robbie Vargo! There's only one Robbie Vargo! There's only onnne Robbie Vargo!! Ah yes, for the Blues there is only one Rob Vargo and that means there's only one goalie and, in turn, only one person that could possibly let in a ball that was shot from midfield. I don't remember what game it was or what the final score ended up being, but he got toasted from 50 yards and it was BLOODY INFURIATING. Dr Salamander found it disturbing that a fellow CMU grad didn't calculate the appropriate angle between where the ball was struck and where his net was and even brought up concerns regarding the authenticity of Vargo's CMU diploma, stating that even a graduate of Penn State grad could make that calculation on the fly. But what can you say about this iron horse? He's been around West Mifflin longer than the WMFC ground itself. He's allowed a howler every now and again.


Defender Independent Possession Loss Efficiency (DIPLE) - This is the rate at which a player loses possession of the ball despite being under no pressure whatsoever. It takes into account other advanced metrics such as DDOB, CBf(t)R, UFR and I-PAR. It is the football equivalent of OPS (On-base plus slugging percentage) and tries to convey just how useless a player can be. It is the granddaddy of the new metrics developed by Dr Salamander despite being one of the simplest to calculate.

Calculation (counting stat): Add up the # of times a player loses possession despite being under no pressure whatever and subtract out the number of times possession is kept and when a player actually makes a sound pass. Values of +1 are added for bonehead plays that lead directly to an opposition goal.  Yes, you need a Carnegie Mellon education to come up with this shit. 

Leaders: Anyone that has and anyone that may have in the future, the honor to pull on the mighty Blues jersey.
There was a time, and to this day there are flashes, when the West Mifflin Football Club Wildcats dominated possession in a fashion similar to modern day Barcelona or 2004's unbeatable Arsenal. Those days, however, are pretty much gone. While there are pockets of Blues players that are in their primes, the crux of the team is made up of cynical old turds in their late 20's that haven't stretched properly in close to a decade and couldn't make a proper pass from the penalty spot to the edge of the penalty area on the pristine greens of Wembley Stadium, which, of course, the woebegone patch called Borland exacerbates. In fact, when Dr Salamander came up with this stat and ran the numbers, he was amazed that the Blues have been as successful as we have been because most of the first XI lead the GPSL in DIPLE. Stinner clocks in with a DIPLE of 74. Pcholinski sports a DIPLE of 68. Matthew Alan's DIPLE is a whopping 84. And these are low! Pasternak: 105. Gasparovic's, on the strength of his back-pass assist last season, skybombed up to 235. The king, however, is Mike Hasson, at 243. Clearly, this is almost entirely down to his considerably high I-PAR.

So, there you have it folks. Years of painstaking quantitative research intended to improve the team merely went ahead and proved what was clear to many from the beginning: that many of the Blues can not dribble with any kind of competence or make even the simplest of passes without losing it, and that several have rage issues that probably require serious therapeutic work and may possibly warrant neurological examination. Somehow, however, manager Bob Stinner manages to get the most out of his team.

123 days until kickoff!

Toodaloo!

West Mifflin Football Club Update: Matthew Alan Baguet

West Mifflin Football Club can confirm that Matthew Alan Baguet will return to the club for the 2013 season on an incentive-laden, pay-as-you-play contract (because he is constantly hurt...or just doesn't come to games...or comes to the games drunk). I guess the team is excited to have  him back...I know the comedy writers here are!