Sounders at Salt Lake, community player ratings

The people want some goals; love some goals. That's my theory after seeing the scores from the Sounder at Heart community following the Seattle Sounders' tough 2-1 loss to Real Salt Lake in Utah.

Chad Barrett, who scored the team's lone goal in a 28-minute substitute shift, earned the second-highest score from the fewer than 200 readers who cast ballots. This despite the fact he had one of the worst pass-completion ratings recorded by any Sounder this season.

The number of ballots cast is one of the lowest of the season. I think the timing of the story more than 24 hours after the game had something to do with the low turnout, timing that was necessary to make way for other ratings stories as the team piles game after game during this current stretch and messes with the usual timing we have for when ratings stories happen. I think there is also perhaps some general disgust with the team following a loss that had many of us very worried that this team is not performing up to expectations right now.

Chad Marshall earned Man of the Match in the loss; though that's faint praise considering his team leading rating was just 6.01. The majority of the squad finished between 5 and 6, with Zach Scott, Lamar Neagle and Brad Evans all earning scores below 5.

Read on to see the full set of scores from the community for the game. Reader scores follow the player's name, followed by my ratings in parenthesis and then the difference between those two numbers in italics.

Player: Average Fan Rating (Author Rating) Difference

Stefan Frei 5.60 (6) -0.40

DeAndre Yedlin: 5.42 (5) +0.42

Chad Marshall: 6.01 (5) +1.01 One person who commented in the story with the ballot said he counted 10 positive plays for Chad to just one negative. Clearly many others saw the same. I would say that I only marked down three positive plays to one negative. Perhaps I have become spoiled by Chad's level of play but I definitely didn't see as many things of note. Either way, I get that people can see different things and consider different things when watching a game. And I think it's great that others of you are sitting around with notebooks during the game, making marks when you see things happen, and taking the ratings process seriously. If nothing else this, that thought makes me think of this whole ratings experiment in 2014 as a success. People are watching with a more critical eye and trying to really explain why it is they think a player performed well or poorly. That's a huge step above what you see on other websites where people comment about Sounders games.

Zach Scott: 4.41 (5) -0.59

Leo Gonzalez: 5.74 (8) -2.26 This is the largest gap between one of my ratings and a community rating in a long time. As I said in the previous story, I marked Leo down as a plus-10 in my notebook, and when you get a plus-10 you get an 8 from me, all other things being equal. Leo's play isn't always glamorous, he isn't slotting home any goals to win games. But I personally get just as excited when a player comes down his flank and his positioning ends the threat without even a cross. No other Sounders outside back does that regularly. Even the speedy Yedlin gives up his share of crosses from his side of the field. I'm going to go ahead and stand by my 8 here, and just hope Leo puts up a few more performances like this one as the season plays out.

Osvaldo Alonso: 5.44 (5) +0.44

Gonzalo Pineda: 5.24 (6) -0.76  .

Brad Evans: 4.69 (5) -0.31

Lamar Neagle: 4.21 (5) -0.79 Lamar lost his mark on the first goal, and he paid for it in these ratings. That said, I have a hard time believing he was the worst player on the team in this one. His pass-completion accuracy was actually better in this game compared to previous games. I rated a lot of players at 5 in this game, but if I had to pick based on my notes, I had Yedlin with the lowest score of anyone on the team in terms of impact plays at an even 0. Lamar was at plus-3, the same as Alonso. I do wonder if perhaps I'm not marking folks up as much as the community for goals and assists, nor down as much for mistakes that lead to opponents' goals.

Clint Dempsey: 5.28 (6) -0.72

Kenny Cooper: 5.36 (5) +0.36

Subs

Andy Rose: (46th minute) 5.40 (5) +0.40

Chad Barrett: (62nd minute) 5.77 (5) +0.77

Aaron Kovar (84th minute): 4.54 (incomplete) ~

The key to the 1-10 scale:

1. Horrible
2. Awful 
3. Poor
4. Flawed
5. Adequate
6. Good
7. Very good
8. Great
9. Superb
10. World Class