The Blaise Nkufo signing has people judging the merits of Nate Jaqua. He's been considered a failure despite putting up solid Goal and Assist numbers in the league. He was one of the best second forwards in the League last year by these measures, and when adjusted for a rate stat, he remains in the top.
Today I saw a new argument, that he was just too inefficient a use of the 208k that he made, so I added in salary to my PP90 number and valued each player by Points Per 90 per 100k of salary. This makes it a double rate, because I'm lazy I only did it for the players last year who will be in the league this year, and who made more than 200k. That made it only 27 players, we are missing Blanco, Vitti and Huckerby, but Jaqua was certainly better than all but Blanco, and rolly-polly made a ton of money, so it would be close.
Guess what? Nate Jaqua was 3rd. Yep, THIRD. Its a rate stat people. He scored goals, got assists. He was efficient, and of the high priced players he performed. Oh, and he really wanted to play in Seattle. Sure, he wasn't pretty, and he certainly isn't a classic Target Forward. But only Jeff Cunningham and Conor Casey were better values amongst the "rich" MLS players. The poor man's Brian Ching (that's Jaqua), just edged out Brian Ching. Go to the bottom of the list and you'll find the DPs.
Full Chart below the Jump
| Name | Salary | Minutes | Points | PP90 | PP90 per 100k |
| Cunningham | 219 | 1918 | 42 | 1.971 | 0.900 |
| Casey | 200 | 2087 | 33 | 1.423 | 0.712 |
| Jaqua | 208 | 2278 | 25 | 0.988 | 0.475 |
| Ching | 243 | 1549 | 19 | 1.104 | 0.454 |
| Moreno | 355 | 1240 | 21 | 1.524 | 0.429 |
| Wolff | 200 | 2348 | 22 | 0.843 | 0.422 |
| Kljestan | 203 | 2041 | 13 | 0.573 | 0.282 |
| Jankauskas | 240 | 667 | 5 | 0.675 | 0.281 |
| Ferriera | 300 | 2692 | 25 | 0.836 | 0.279 |
| Barrett | 203 | 2069 | 13 | 0.565 | 0.279 |
| Gomez | 321 | 1612 | 16 | 0.893 | 0.278 |
| DvdB | 227 | 2446 | 17 | 0.626 | 0.276 |
| DeRo | 426 | 2444 | 28 | 1.031 | 0.242 |
| Joseph | 450 | 2228 | 24 | 0.969 | 0.215 |
| Arnaud | 229 | 2214 | 12 | 0.488 | 0.213 |
| Fred | 257 | 1422 | 8 | 0.506 | 0.197 |
| McBride | 385 | 1963 | 16 | 0.734 | 0.191 |
| Mapp | 255 | 1013 | 5 | 0.444 | 0.174 |
| GBS | 775 | 1816 | 27 | 1.338 | 0.173 |
| Morales | 200 | 2076 | 7 | 0.303 | 0.152 |
| Donovan | 900 | 2152 | 30 | 1.255 | 0.139 |
| Emilio | 758 | 2070 | 22 | 0.957 | 0.126 |
| Corrales | 202 | 2066 | 3 | 0.131 | 0.065 |
| JPA | 1798 | 2133 | 26 | 1.097 | 0.061 |
| Ljungberg | 1314 | 1836 | 13 | 0.637 | 0.048 |
| Beckham | 6500 | 889 | 7 | 0.709 | 0.011 |
| de Guzman | 956 | 450 | 0 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
I'm notsaying that I want Jaqua more than others on this list, what I am saying is that if we are going to invent a measure of a player's effectiveness let's see what the numbers say before we condemn the man. I am also not saying that this is a complete image of who any of these players are.