In my last post, I claimed that Tom Soehn had an ADR this year of 3.11. What does that mean? Is that good or bad?

Well as readers of this blog know, I've been passing down player ratings of either "Top Shelf", "Call", or "Rail" to players after every match. I've also been tracking those ratings over the course of the year, and displayed all of them here. Now let's take it one step further.

"ADR" stands for "Average DCUMD Rating", and is calculated by taking the average rating of each player for the year, with "Top Shelf" being worth 5, "Call" being worth 3, and "Rail" being worth 1. So to look at this in its most basic form, an ADR over 3 is good.

Before we reveal the ADRs, let's make one distinction. It's important to divide the players up between "Regulars" and "Reserves". Otherwise, as you'll see, it would be too easy to argue that James Thorpe is the best player on the team. For the purposes of this entry, a Regular will be considered any player with more than 6 ratings.

Regulars:
Jaime Moreno: 3.94 (10 T, 5 C, 2 R)
Francis Doe: 3.86 (4 T, 2 C, 1 R)
Bryan Namoff: 3.71 (10 T, 3 C, 4 R)
Clyde Simms: 3.57 (8 T, 2 C, 4 R)
Ivan Guerrero: 3.44 (4 T, 3 C, 2 R)
Luciano Emilio: 3.29 (10 T, 4 C, 7 R)
Santino Quaranta: 3.21 (7 T, 7 C, 5 R)
Tom Soehn: 3.11 (7 T, 5 C, 6 R)
Marc Burch: 2.85 (8 T, 9 C, 10 R)
Fred: 2.76 (4 T, 7 C, 6 R)
Zach Wells: 2.54 (2 T, 6 C, 5 R)
Marcelo Gallardo: 2.50 (2 T, 2 C, 4 R)
Devon McTavish: 2.44 (3 T, 7 C, 8 R)
Gonzalo Martinez: 2.38 (2 T, 7 C, 7 R)
Gonzalo Peralta: 2.33 (2 T, 4 C, 6 R)
Louis Crayton: 2.33 (1 T, 2 C, 3 R)
Quavas Kirk: 2.33 (1 T, 2 C, 3 R)
Craig Thompson: 1.86 (0 T, 3 C, 4 R)
Rod Dyachenko: 1.71 (0 T, 5 C, 9 R)

Reserves:
James Thorpe: 5.00 (1 T, 0 C, 0 R)
Greg Janicki: 4.33 (2 T, 1 C, 0 R)
Ryan Cordeiro: 3.50 (1 T, 3 C, 0 R)
Joe Vide: 3.40 (3 T, 0 C, 2 R)
Mike Zaher: 3.00 (1 T, 0 C, 1 R)
Ryan Miller: 3.00 (0 T, 1 C, 0 R)
Thabiso Khumalo: 2.60 (1 T, 2 C, 2 R)
Pat Carroll: 2.60 (1 T, 2 C, 2 R)
Dominic Mediate: 1.67 (0 T, 1 C, 2 R)
Franco Niell: 1.67 (0 T, 1 C, 2 R)
Dan Stratford: 1.00 (0 T, 0 C, 1 R)
Jose Carvallo: 1.00 (0 T, 0 C, 1 R)

Pretty interesting, huh? There's a lot that you could read into these ratings, some of which is relevant, and some that isn't. Of course there's plenty of potential for these ratings to be sorely biased, and they're definitely subjective, but in some ways they paint a more realistic picture about how a player performed than any other statistic. For example, if you were to look at the team's stats, you might assume that Fred had a better year than Simms because they scored the same number of goals, but Fred had 2 more assists. But the ADR tells you that Simms' 3.57 is far superior to Fred's 2.76, and I think any fan would agree that Simms did actually perform better this year than Fred.

What else? No one should be surprised that Moreno earned the highest number, but how about the fact that Zach Wells earned a higher ADR than Louis Crayton? Didn't see that coming. Bryan Namoff's 3.71 ADR confirms that he's clearly the best defensive player on the team, but you might be surprised to learn that Marc Burch is our second best defender. Not only could you argue that Quaranta should be our regular starter ahead of Gallardo, but you also wouldn't be crazy to suggest that Doe should be starting over Emilio. It's hard to read too much into the ADRs for the Reserves because they haven't really seen enough action to make a strong conclusion, but you could at least make a point that Janicki, Cordeiro, and Vide should be granted more playing time next year, and Dyachenko and Thompson should be granted less.

Is there anything else here that caught your eye?