That Certain Something

When discussing former Fire midfielder Ivan Guerrero, I think a lot of fans found it difficult to put their finger on what it was about his game that made him so valuable. He wasn't exactly an offensive terror, nor was he a destroyer in the middle of the park. And yet he obviously brought something to the game. According to Jeff Carlisle at ESPN.com, Billy Beane measured it, which helped new Earthquakes coach Frank Yallop and GM John Doyle pull the trigger in the expansion draft:

"You have a feeling about a player, and then you see how those feelings were backed up by data," Doyle said. "I think it was very useful to us to have that at our fingertips."

Yallop added that in the case of midfielder Ivan Guerrero, the information supplied played a part in his selection.

"We looked at [Guerrero's] stats and saw that he's was one of the best in possession in the league," said Yallop during the team's expansion draft announcement. "Getting the ball and keeping the ball is important, and Ivan does that."

On the one hand, soccer fans -- and, to be fair, the Quakes' coaches -- knew instinctively that Guerrero was a worthwhile investment. Fire fans all but assumed he'd be taken as soon as the list of protected players hit the Internet. So the incremental benefit of the additional statistics might not be all that great. Which isn't to say that figuring out just what those seemingly "intangible" qualities are isn't an interesting subject. It's just not clear how it would be operationalized, outside of fantasy leagues.