New striker Lucas Melano unveils his jersey on the Providence Park pitch.
by Matt Hoffman
Under Caleb Porter scoring has seldom been an issue for the Timbers. The team has finished in the top three of goals scored in each of Porter’s previous two seasons managing the squad.
Scoring goals are necessary to win but preventing them is important (some might say more important even), which is why the Timbers off-season focus was improving its defense.
The early results show the Timbers defense has improved. Goalkeeper Adam Kwarasey is tied for MLS lead with eight shutouts. The emphasis on defense has helped the Timbers rise in the standings; With a win this weekend, the Timbers could have a share of the league’s best record.
Which is amazing considering how little this team scores. By the time of the All-Star Game, the Timbers could very well have the least goals of any MLS team so far this season.
There’s no shortage of theories to explain why the Timbers offense is in the doldrums of despair. Injuries, style, personnel on the filed have all been put out there as explanations but another that has at least some (possibly bad, like really bad) statistical support is that of just plain ‘ol bad luck.
Expected Goals or “xG” attempts to measure how many goals a team should have or conceded taking a variety of factors into account. According to the up-to-date advanced metrics DB run by SBNation, the Timbers are third overall in expected goals.
So, the data says the Timbers are among the lowest scoring clubs in the league. Yet other data simultaneously suggests the Timbers are a team that should be scoring a lot?
How does the team navigate through the dissonance? Well,if the problem truly is that the Timbers are creating chances and are just not finishing them, the MLS blueprint is to sign a striker to a million deal.
Being able to score goals in any league is a scarcity putting a premium on their services. As such, if you average the salaries of the top ten goal scorers as of July 20th, it comes to just under $2.75 million dollars per year, nearly ten times the salary of an average MLS player.
According to Grant Wahl, the Timbers newly minted striker Lucas Melano will be joining the million dollar club on the of the $5 million transfer fee.
There isn’t much information out there about Melano. Still, that didn’t stop us from trying to parse data what data we could.
As more and more minted millionaires begin plying their trade on these coasts, hopefully we’ll have the necessary sample size to draw conclusions about their relative worth on the field. With only twenty players pulling in that sort of income, it’s a rather small sample size to draw any firm conclusions from.
Save for one and it’s a pretty obvious one at that: the “millionaires” are much more likely to take–and make–penalty shots. Of the 98 players with two or more goals, 39 goals have been scored from the penalty spot. Of those 39, 16 (or 41%) of those PK goals were scored by seven players.
Speaking of a break of parity*, half (52.4%)of all players salaries come from five clubs: Toronto, LA, NYCFC, Seattle, and Orlando.
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The Galaxy and Seattle have been two of the best teams in the last five years.
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Toronto, not so much, though they do look poised to make their first ever foray into the playoffs.
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Orlando looks to be the first expansion team to make the playoffs in their first year since Seattle in 2009.
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NYCFC is the hunt in a decidedly weaker Eastern Conference despite more than $8 million for two players who have yet to make a single appearance for the team this season.
Including those five clubs, eleven teams have at least one player earning over $1 million: New England (Jermaine Jones), Chicago (Shaun Maloney), Colorado (Kevin Doyle), San Jose (Innocent Emeghara), Vancouver (Pedro Morales), and the Timbers (Liam Ridgewell).
New England is an interesting case study as Jermaine Jones is the rare DP who isn’t really counted on to score. Last year New England was famously undefeated in the games Jones went the full 90, losing only in MLS Cup game.
This year, the Revs are 3-1-5 with Jones in the lineup, 4-7-2 without him.
An example of how mortgaging your teams fiscal fitness on an ineffective player (see Boyd, Kris), hurts, but not nearly as bad as an injured player tying up not not only the books but a DP slot as well, like the Eddie Johnson situation in DC.
As is typical for Portland, the Timbers have zigged where others have zagged. Unlike signing a “name player” as is so often the case in these high-profile DP signings, Melano is both young and relatively unknown.
The Timbers are banking on the notion that Melano can make himself a name. If signing Melano is enough to stage an offensive renaissance in the Rose City, he’ll have no problem doing just that.
*All salary figures come courtesy of the MLS Players Union’s release of surveyed data through July 15th. Salaries include Pirlo, Gerrard, and Lampard but not Melano.
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