Last year I started tracking the games played by each Quakes player, including reasons for absence, in a spreadsheet. The idea was to help me visualize player churn. I started it in the middle of the year, so some of the injury data was no longer reliably available. I ended up getting a lot of it from reddit match threads.

For this year, however, I got to track it all year long, paying attention to injuries as the season went on. I also added more columns to track additional stats that I found interesting, including how many games a player started or was subbed into or out of. I thought it might be worthwhile to share some numbers from the spreadsheet. (Which is here if you’d like to see this year’s version.)

Most Used Players

The Quakes player who played the most games this season was Marvell Wynne, who played in 36 out of 38 games. He only missed a game versus Real Salt Lake (due to injury) and the US Open Cup match versus the LA Galaxy. Just behind him were David Bingham and Shea Salinas, with 35 games each.

I’d say the team had 12 players I’d classify as mainstays, people who played in the majority of games:

But special mention should go to Quincy Amarikwa, who played in every single game since he came to San Jose.

Least Used Players

To no one’s surprise, the least used player is Tomas Gomez, the backup backup goalkeeper. (I actually didn’t even have him on my spreadsheet until I went to write this article. Whoops.) David Bingham has been our rock between the posts this year, and didn’t play in three matches (one US Open Cup and two friendlies). In the three he sat out, Bryan Meredith stepped in. (Which makes Meredith #2 least used.) And considering the kind of goalkeeping talent we having coming out of the academy, I was not surprised at all to learn that we’d let Gomez go.

Here’s a list of the top ten least-used players, counting only games where the players were otherwise available and simply did not play (so not counting injuries, loans, callups, etc.):

It should be no surprise that of these ten, only four (JJ Koval, Leandro Barrera, Matheus Silva, and Bryan Meredith) are still with the club.

Discipline

Only one player got suspended more than once, which was Victor Bernárdez, who got suspended both for a red card versus Chicago in March and for yellow card accumulation later in the season.

Three other players got suspended once for yellow card accumulation: Clarence Goodson, Marc Pelosi, and Aníbal Godoy. The latter two are particularly impressive because they arrived mid-season and only had 14 and 10 games, respectively, in which to earn those five yellows.

There were seven other players who served suspensions for red cards: JJ Koval, Adam Jahn, Mark Sherrod, Matías Pérez García, Innocent Emeghara, Fatai Alashe, and Sanna Nyassi (at least I think he did, it was versus Man U after he got a card during the Club América). MPG actually got red carded twice this season, but as the second one came during the last game of the season, I guess he’ll serve it next season.

Jordan Stewart also picked up a suspension handed out by the MLS Disciplinary Committee.

Injuries

At various times, fifteen Quakes players missed games due to injury. Obviously the most games missed belongs to Mr. Goonie himself, Steven Lenhart, who was injured last season and spent all of this season trying to recover. Just behind him with 30 games missed for injury is our million-dollar star Innocent Emeghara, who ended up only playing in 7 games (missing one due to the aforementioned red card). In all, 15 players spent time on the injured list. Here are the top ten:

National Team Players

In 2015, seven Quakes players missed games due to being called up to represent their various countries:

Although it’s a tremendous honor to represent your country, and having players who have the skill to represent at that level also brings honor to the team, it can be a little scary when you have so many important players who could all be out at the same time because MLS fails to respect the FIFA Calendar. Given how close the Quakes came to the playoffs in 2015, one wonders how much of an impact these missed games had on the team.

Super (?) Subs

A few players were primarily used as subs. The big three were:

Adam Jahn: 9 starts but 19 subs

Tommy Thompson: 5 starts but 16 subs

JJ Koval: 10 starts but 11 subs

But Leandro Barrera, Mike Fucito, Matheus Silva, and Mathieu Coutadeur all also were subbed in more than they started. They just didn’t play much at all. (The latter two each had two subs and no starts.)

Gassed

There were three players who were subbed out in at least half the games the played:

Sanna Nyassi: Played in 29 games, subbed out in 17

Matías Pérez García: Played in 29 games, subbed out of 16

Quincy Amarikwa: Played in 19 games, subbed out of 10

Summary

So there you have it. The team definitely solidified in 2015, but there’s clearly some more work to be done, and it seems that Kinnear and his staff are on top of it. It’ll be interesting to see what other new signings come in before the start of the 2016 season.