With the 2019 season thankfully behind us, I felt it was time to look a bit closer at the numbers, just to see how bad it was.

The Vancouver Whitecaps finished 12/12 in the West and 23/24 in MLS. They were only ahead of expansion club, affectionately (?) known as Whitecaps II due to all the previous players on the squad.

Vancouver finished with 8 wins (23rd in MLS), 16 losses, and 10 draws, for a total of 34 points. They were 5-7-5 at home, and had 37 goals for, 59 goals against, for a goal differential of -22.

Compared to previous seasons, this was their second fewest wins (only expansion 2011 was fewer with 6) and second most losses (again, only expansion season was more with 18). They scored their third fewest goals, only ‘beaten’ by two (37 to 35) by the 2011 and 2012 teams. They also gave up the second most goals in their franchise, bettering only last season’s 67.

2019 Player Stats

While the team was futile at the club level, lets take a look at how the individual stats panned out.

Minutes

In-Beom Hwang led the team, logging 2,807 minutes. He was the only player to appear in all 34 matches, and the first to do so since Octavio Rivero in 2015. Hwang’s minutes was the second most played by any non-defender (or keeper) all-time for Vancouver. Nigel Reo-Coker leads that category with 2,817 minutes in 2013. For interest sake, Laba is third with 2,738 (2014), Rivero is fourth with 2,734 (2015), and Laba, again, is fifth with 2,729 (2016).

In 2019, 24 players saw the MLS pitch for Vancouver. Comparatively, 23 saw minutes in 2018, while 20 saw minutes in 2017.

Seven players logged more than 2,000 MLS minutes this season. In 2018 that number was five, while 2017 saw six.

Looking at a few notable players, heading into the 2019 season, Montero and Ardaiz comprised 2/3 of the Whitecaps designated players. After August 10th, the two combined for 351 minutes out of a possible 1,440.

Another interesting case study is Jon Erice. Beginning the season as the club’s captain, the Spaniard played 1,527 minutes prior to July 13th. After that date though, Erice saw the field in only three matches, for a total of 225 minutes.

In 2019, Erice, Montero, and Ardaiz had a guaranteed salary of just under two million ($1,993,090).

Goals

Moving on to goals scored, Fredy Montero led the way with 8, followed by Reyna (7) and Henry (4). It was only Darren Mattocks in 2012 who has led Vancouver’s scoring with fewer goals (7).

An interesting statistic is reliance on defenders for goals. Of the club’s 37 goals in 2019, defenders scored 9, or 24.3% of all goals: Henry had 4 while Adnan, Godoy, Sutter, Cornelius, and Nerwinski each had 1.

In 2018, defenders scored 4 (7.4%). In 2017 it was 6 (12.0%). In both 2015 and 2016 the number was 5 for 11.1%.

Comparing to the rest of Major League Soccer, only one club had a leading scorer with fewer goals, and that was FC Cincinnati (7 – Cruz; 6 – Ledesma). FC Dallas tied Vancouver (Ferreira with 8 and Ondrasek with 7), while Montreal Impact was similar (9 from Taider and 8 from Okwonkwo).

Assists

Of course, if you are not scoring then you cannot get assists, however, let’s have a look at how bad it was for Vancouver this season. The club was led by Adnan and In-Beom, who each had 5. Worth noting was Tiebert who was tied with Montero for third with 3.

Comparing to previous seasons, this is the fewest assists to lead the team in the MLS era. Their expansion 2011 season saw Chiumiento lead with 9. Camilo (7) in 2012; Teibert (9) in 2013; Morales (12) in 2014; Manneh (6) in 2015; Bolanos (8) in 2016; Bolanos/Techera (7) in 2017; Reyna/Davies (11) in 2018. Worth noting is that last season Felipe also had 7 while Kamara had 6.

Looking at MLS in 2019, 18 of the 24 clubs had AT LEAST two players with six or more assists, while Orlando had one (Nani 10; Ruan 5), as did DC United (Rooney 8; Jara 5) and Columbus Crew (Santos 6; Higuain 5). The only other two clubs led by a player with five or fewer assists were FC Cincinnati (Ledesma 5) and Real Salt Lake; however, RSL had four players with five assists and three players with four assists.

Potentially scarier for Vancouver was that three of In-Beom’s five assists came in the second-to-last match of the season, while Adnan had two in his last three matches of the season.

Although MLS has changed a lot and fullbacks are not the main assist guys, I thought it would be interesting to look at a case study. In his 2017 rookie season, Jake Nerwinski had five assists in 1,707 minutes. Since then, Nerwinski has played 4,325 minutes and mustered up only one assist (on the final day of the 2018 season). This season, Scott Sutter had zero assists while last season Sean Franklin also put up a goose egg. That means, over the past two seasons, the right fullback has provided ONE assist. Yes, the Whitecaps have focused on the left-hand side with Adnan this season and Davies the season prior, but that is still something to be concerned about.

I could continue to look at various stats, but I think I will leave it here, before this gets too big. However, if there is anything specific you want me to look into with the numbers let me know in the comments and I will put that together. In the meantime, what stands out for you in the above mess of numbers?