The Case of Ricardo Salazar

If you happen to be a Sounders fan or anyone who knows a Sounders fan, you probably already know who they hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns. This fiery hatred is directed towards the Portland Timbers Steven Lenhart pro-grass people MLS "ref" Ricardo Salazar. This name should be familiar with you, but if it isn't, let me give you a quick summary of him.

Picture if Ed Hochuli switched from football to futbol and became hispanic. There, that's pretty much all you need to know. In recent years, Sounders fans have grown to hate this man due to his constant bias against Seattle during our games that he refs. Now, I know the league rotates which refs we get at our games, but it really does seem like every other week has Ricardo's name written on the scorecard. This, however, is not true. He has only managed to meddle in six of our games this season (five MLS games and one US Open Cup final which shall never be mentioned again).

In our most recent outing, the Sounders played to a nil-nil draw with the Lakers of Real Salt and happened to have a few controversial calls/no calls for and against Seattle. Some examples of these are as follows:

• Two weak yellow cards accumulating for a 30' red for Zach Scott.
• A yellow when Shuler took down Montero as the last man
• No hand ball called inside the box against RSL

Let's start at the end. No hand ball was called when Fredy crossed the ball across the box. This was a good call no matter how many people were screaming for the call. The defender's arm was against his body and was incidental contact. Good job, Salazar. Next, in the second half, Fredy was taken down by Schuler during a break away. Schuler was the last man back (Borchers was a yard or two behind Fredy) and he was awarded a yellow when the rules state that a red should have been given. Good try, good effort, Salazar. Third, Zach Scott was given a delayed yellow near the beginning of the game (10') for stabbing for a ball and catching a little of Espindola's feet. This was not a yellow. Maybe it would warrant a verbal caution, but nothing serious should have came from this. In the 30th minute, Scott came in with a tackle on Morales and knocked the ball away but Salazar deemed this worthy of a second yellow because Morales ran into Scott and embellished the fall. Hey, Salazar, go f... yeah, I'll keep this clean.

This was the last straw for me. I decided to take to the inter google and Excel to make my judgement on Salazar and his bias. Disclaimer: I'm heading into this with the starting view that Salazar hates everything about Seattle, including Pike Place Market and the Space Needle.

Sources

I'm going to be formulating my opinion based off of three websites: refrefs.com (this site tracks different refs and how they award fouls and cards to teams compared to the team averages), football-lineups.com (this site shows lineups for a bunch of games and allows you to sort by ref), and good old mlssoccer.com (the super official MLS website).

Procedure

From the three websites I listed in the previous section, I will gather information about fouls called against the Sounders and see how that total compares to the expected amount of fouls based on the lineup. I calculated the average number of fouls committed by each player per minute by dividing fouls committed by minutes played (numbers from mlssoccer.com) and assigned each player their FC/M number. Next, I created lineup cards for each game that included starters and subs and how many minutes they played (info from football-lineups.com). The next step is multiplying FC/M by minutes played for each player and then summing the results to find how many fouls we should expect from the lineup. Doing this is especially important, in my opinion, for the Sounders since we use so many different lineups. An example of this would be if Tiffert or Evans were on the field. Tiffert is 5th highest on the team in FC/M (0.02 FC/M) while Evans is 22nd (0.006 FC/M). If both players were to play a full 90, we would expect Tiffert to account for 1.8 FC and Evans to only contribute 0.54 FC.

The next step is to assign each game to the official that was head ref for the game and then average the difference between actual fouls called and expected fouls called for each ref.

Data

Here is the data for each MLS game this season:

KEY: 
Red = More than +2 difference
Yellow = within +/- 2 difference
Blue = Less than -2 difference

Date	Opponent	Actual Fouls	Expected Fouls	Difference (A-E)	Referee
10/17/12	Salt Lake	13	10.760	2.240	Salazar
10/7/12	Portland	11	14.040	-3.040	Marrufo
9/29/12	Vancouver	17	14.090	2.910	Petrescu
9/22/12	San Jose	13	12.858	0.142	Grajeda
9/15/12	Portland	11	13.733	-2.733	Salazar
9/8/12	Chivas	7	13.321	-6.321	Stott
9/2/12	Dallas	20	12.382	7.618	Stoica
8/25/12	Chivas	17	14.441	2.559	Rivero
8/18/12	Vancouver	16	13.822	2.178	Petrescu
8/11/12	San Jose	17	13.043	3.957	Toledo
8/5/12	Los Angeles	11	13.635	-2.635	Penso
7/28/12	Colorado	8	13.513	-5.513	Ward
7/15/12	New York	12	11.722	0.278	Gonzalez
7/7/12	Colorado	4	12.531	-8.513	Stott
7/4/12	Salt Lake	10	14.053	-4.053	Grajeda
6/30/12	New England	20	12.505	7.495	Jurisevic
6/24/12	Portland	23	13.589	9.411	Salazar
6/20/12	Kansas City	9	12.849	-3.849	Marrufo
6/16/12	Montreal	20	12.706	7.294	Geiger
5/26/12	Chivas	9	11.871	-2.871	Penso
5/23/12	Columbus	10	12.503	-2.503	Gamble
5/19/12	Vancouver	13	13.581	-0.581	Stott
5/12/12	Salt Lake	13	13.244	-0.244	Geiger
5/9/12	Dallas	16	12.883	3.117	Bazakos
5/5/12	Philadelphia	15	12.423	2.577	Salazar
5/2/12	Los Angeles	9	13.020	-4.020	Grajeda
4/28/12	Chicago	13	12.832	0.168	Kennedy
4/14/12	Colorado	12	12.866	-0.866	Toledo
4/7/12	DC United	13	12.144	0.856	Jurisevic
3/31/12	San Jose	12	14.404	-2.404	Kadlecik
3/23/12	Houston	10	11.698	-1.698	Toledo
3/17/12	Toronto	12	12.157	-0.157	Salazar

Results

Once we average the difference for each ref, this is what we get:

Referee	Games reffed	Average Difference
Stoica	1	7.618
Jurisevic	2	4.176
Geiger	2	3.525
Bazakos	1	3.117
Rivero	1	2.559
Petrescu	2	2.544
Salazar	5	2.267
Toledo	3	0.464
Gonzalez	1	0.278
Kennedy	1	0.168
Kadlecik	1	-2.404
Gamble	1	-2.503
Grajeda	3	-2.644
Penso	2	-2.753
Marrufo	2	-3.445
Stott	3	-5.145
Ward	1	-5.513

My Analysis

As we can see, many of our games have been reffed by officials that only have a sole game to base our foul differential on. Let's cut that list down a bit to refs that have at least three games with us.

Referee	Games	Average Difference
Salazar	5	2.267
Toledo	3	0.464
Grajeda	3	-2.644
Stott	3	-5.145

By looking at this chart, we can see that Salazar is averaging just over 2 fouls extra called against us per game versus our expected fouls number. This number, while highest of the refs with 3+ games, isn't that extraordinary to support an obvious bias against the Rave Green. If we look on the other end of the spectrum, Kevin Stott is averaging just over 5 fewer than expected fouls called against us which is a lot for a team that is averaging 13 fouls committed per game.

I decided not to include average yellow/red cards in my calculations because it would be harder to judge bias than fouls committed. When looking at cards, we have to take into account how many warnings a player has received that game, positioning of the foul, likelihood to talk back to the ref, and viewpoint of the foul from the ref among other factors.

If we go back to the large game chart, I would like to point out some outliers that could affect the reffing numbers.

Our four largest positive differences are Dallas (+7.618, Stoica), New England (+7.495, Jurisevic), Portland (+9.411, Salazar), and Montreal (+7.294, Geiger). Looking at these four games, we can see that there isn't one ref that has multiple high difference games. This leads me to think that there isn't one ref that has it out for us. The largest difference is the 6/24/12 game down in Portland where the Sounders lost 2-1. The 23 fouls committed is high, but it makes a little more sense if we look at the circumstances. Early in the first half, Portland netted two quick goals to give them a 2-0 lead. Seattle then went on the offensive in order to try to get a couple themselves. By putting more pressure on a transition midfield and a "give it all you got" attack, Seattle was fouling more in order to win back possession to start an attack.

The five largest negative differentials are Chivas (-6.321, Stott), Colorado (-5.513, Ward), Colorado (-8.513, Stott), Salt Lake (-4.053, Grajeda), and Los Angeles (-4.020, Grajeda). Unlike in the positive differences, we see that Stott and Grajeda both have two games that are over four below the expected fouls. The one game that really stands out to me is the 7/7/12 game at home against Colorado. This is a Colorado team that plays really physical in order to stop small ball, finesse teams like Seattle. The fact that only four fouls were called against Seattle seems strange to me because the Sounders always try to do some stupid fouls out of frustration when they are getting knocked around. In addition to these two games reffed by Stott that have a -6.321 and -8.513 difference, Kevin's other game was -0.581. 

I don't follow many non-Sounders people on Twitter or read any non-Sounders blogs regularly, but why don't I hear any "Stott loves Seattle" comments like I hear "Salazar hates Seattle" comments?

In conclusion, I don't think that Salazar is anti-Seattle as much any more (I still have to hold some bias so that I can have a conversation starter with Sounders fans), but I do think that Salazar is an inconsistent ref. I'll go back to the Schuler take down on Fredy as an example. How does Salazar support not handing out a red there when a textbook stab by Scott is given a yellow without any discussion? I'm more upset about having Salazar as a ref because I know that the game won't be called fairly (different foul definitions for both Seattle and our opponents) instead of knowing that Seattle will be committing X amount of fouls that aren't fouls and will be getting Y amount of cards because Salazar is a power monger.