Matt Doyle looks at Jozy Altidore's performance for TFC as they booked a trip to their first ever MLS Cup.
After 340 regular-season games and 16 playoff games, the 2016 MLS campaign has one match remaining, as Toronto FC hosts Seattle on Saturday, in the first MLS Cup without an original MLS franchise.
Both Toronto and Seattle are obviously riding hot streaks and hot players into the final. Seattle has ridden the Nicolas Lodeiro train to BMO Field, while TFC has followed the net-bursting form of Jozy Altidore.
Here's a look at the numbers behind the recent runs of Lodeiro and Altidore, plus what ESPN's Soccer Power Index says about Saturday's final matchup:
The Lodeiro/Schmetzer effect
Seattle is attempting to become the fourth MLS champion (and second in a row) without a player on the MLS Best XI for that season, though Nicolas Lodeiro might have cracked the list had he played the entire season. He had four goals and eight assists in 13 regular-season games, and has since added four goals in five playoffs games.
It's no secret that Lodeiro's arrival kick-started Seattle's turnaround after the All-Star break. The 27-year-old Argentine midfielder made his Sounders debut on July 31, in what was also Brian Schmetzer's first game as head coach following the dismissal of Sigi Schmid.
At the break, Seattle was in ninth place, and SPI pegged Seattle's playoff chances at 11 percent. But the Sounders finished the regular season on an 8-2-4 run, doubling their points-per-game pace to 2.0 and earning them a league-best 28 points in that span.
Seattle's improved offense keyed the revival, according to both conventional and advanced statistics.
Before Lodeiro joined, Seattle was averaging 1.30 expected goals per game but scoring only one goal per game. That underachievement of expected goals by 0.30 per game was the fourth-worst number in the league at the All-Star break.
Afterward, the Sounders jumped to 1.62 expected goals per game, second-best in the league, and then exceeded that rate by scoring 1.71 goals per game.
That adds up to an expected-goals swing of 0.32 per game and an actual goals swing of 0.71 per game, both the third-best improvements in MLS from the first half to the second half of the season (relative to the All-Star Game).
Simply put, the Sounders took better shots during their upswing. They averaged 0.102 expected goals per shot under Schmid, which is about normal in the big picture and put them 14th in the league during that time.
Under Schmetzer, the Sounders improved to 0.128 expected goals per game, and while that may not seem like a massive change, it means Seattle's shots were nearly 26 percent better on average. That was the biggest leap in the league, and it helps explain their enhanced offensive output.
Put another way, even though the Sounders took fewer shots per game in the second half of the season (12.64, compared to 12.75 in the first half), they averaged more from inside the box (8.36 to 7.55), which is a rough proxy for shot quality. Again, not a massive change, but in a league like MLS, which is rife with parity, taking 10 percent more shots from inside the box can make a big difference.
Lodeiro was obviously key to that improvement, ranking second in MLS with 37 chances created and first with 4.16 expected assists after the All-Star break. He contributed to Seattle's 26 percent rise in expected assists from the first half to the second half, a number that is almost identical to the team's expected goals change in that span.
Schmetzer is the third mid-season replacement coach to lead his team to MLS Cup, and now he can become the first to win the title.
What's gotten into Jozy Altidore?
Toronto has gotten to MLS Cup in part thanks to Jozy Altidore, who has five goals and four assists so far, making him the first player to hit both those numbers in a single MLS postseason.
He's also the second player to score in five straight playoff games and the first to do so in a single postseason (Carlos Ruiz scored in six straight spanning the 2002 and 2003 playoffs).
Like Seattle, Altidore struggled prior to this season's All-Star break, though his issues were largely injury-related. He missed Toronto's first two games this season with a hamstring injury, then failed to score in eight games before re-injuring the hamstring May and missing more than two months.
Altidore scored on July 31 in his second game back, and he's been on perhaps the best run of his career since then, tallying 15 goals and seven assists in 19 MLS games (including the playoffs). However, his form may be the product of fortunate finishing.
During his nine-game scoring drought to start the season, Altidore underachieved his non-penalty expected-goals total by 1.89, and he also missed the penalty (worth 0.77 expected goals) when he was injured in May.
Since then, Altidore's 15 goals have (stunningly) more than doubled his total of 6.62 expected goals. He's done it by putting 56 percent of his shots on target (league average was 36 percent this season) and scoring on 35 percent of them (league average: 11 percent).
It's not like his average shot quality changed for the better. He averaged 0.172 expected goals per non-penalty shot in his first nine games, compared to 0.154 afterward. The raw expected-goals numbers suggest he's due to regress.
Toronto fans shouldn't necessarily be bracing for the proverbial other shoe to drop in MLS Cup though. Altidore has 50 non-penalty goals in his 174 games for club and country in ESPN's data set, cumulatively exceeding his expected goals by 17.7 goals in those games. That includes plus-11.5 in 54 MLS games, so he's finished well with Toronto. (For what it's worth, he was 3.2 goals below his expected total in his sole Premier League season with Sunderland.)
Playing with Sebastian Giovinco certainly helps. Of Altidore's 28 MLS goals with Toronto, Giovinco has assisted on eight, five more than any other player. Altidore has scored 20 of his Toronto goals with Giovinco on the field, with a GAA of plus-7.94.
But Altidore has scored eight goals with a plus-3.56 GAA without him, actually averaging slightly better shots without Giovinco present. That's not to suggest Altidore is better without Giovinco, but merely to point out that Altidore's success hasn't been entirely Giovinco-based.
SPI projections
Our Soccer Power Index rates the two finalists nearly even overall. Toronto has a better offensive rating (1.56 to 1.41), meaning that TFC is projected to score 0.15 more goals per game against an average opponent on a neutral field. But Seattle has a slightly better defensive rating (1.22 to 1.31), which collectively makes Toronto a marginal 51 percent favorite were the game being played on an neutral field.
But the game is at a sold-out BMO Field, and home-field advantage makes Toronto a 63 percent favorite to be the first Canadian team to lift MLS Cup.
If the game were in Seattle, the projection would be nearly flipped, with the Sounders a 60 percent title favorite.
In an admittedly small sample size, history backs Toronto as well. Seven previous teams have played MLS Cup at home, and five of those won the title, including three of four under the current format that rewards the better regular-season team.
But as fans on both U.S. sides of the Cascadia rivalry will certainly point out, Portland won last year's MLS Cup on the road in Columbus, where the Crew were 64 percent SPI title favorites.
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