Sounders at San Jose, community player ratings

A bit of strangeness in the Sounder at Heart community player ratings following the team's 1-0 loss to San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday: Readers rated the midfielders and strikers higher than they did the defenders and goalkeeper despite the fact the team gave up only one goal and scored none.

Ozzie Alonso earned Man of the Match honors with a 5.58 rating and all four starting midfielders and the two starting strikers all ended up above 5 in ratings cast by about 290 readers. No Sounders player earned a 6, which is considered "good" in our ratings system.

Goalkeeper Stefan Frei received a 4.46, left back Leo Gonzalez a 4.97 center backs Zach Scott and Jalil Anibaba earned a 4.0 and 3.91, respectively. Only right back DeAndre Yedlin was above a 5 in the back, earning a 5.20 - a score that still put him behind Alonso, Gonzalo Pineda, Brad Evans and Clint Dempsey.

Read on to see the full set of scores from the community for the loss. 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 4.46 (5) -0.54 There is pretty general agreement that Stefan should have done much better on the San Jose goal. The only disagreement in the comments in the voting thread was whether he should have come up more quickly and forcefully or he should have stayed back and let Zach Scott have more time to try and close the gap to San Jose's striker. I don't really have a thought on that having never played keeper. I do agree though that if you come out like Stefan did you better do everything in your power to come quickly and close down the attacker. Stefan hesitated and the goal was relatively easy.

DeAndre Yedlin: 5.20 (6) -0.80

Jalil Anibaba: 3.91 (4) -0.09

Zach Scott: 4.00 (3) +1.00 You can see that readers generally rated Zach better than I did in this one, and, surprisingly to me, rated him ever-so-slightly higher than Anibaba. I suppose 9/100ths is really not much of a difference, though, and it shows just how flawed readers thought both players were.

Leo Gonzalez: 4.97 (5) -0.03

Ozzie Alonso: 5.58 (6) -0.42 I also had Ozzie as man of the match in this game, if rating him slightly higher.

Gonzalo Pineda: 5.34 (6) -0.64

Brad Evans: 5.35 (5) +0.35

Marco Pappa: 5.04 (5) +0.04

Clint Dempsey: 5.54 (5) +0.54 I'm a little shocked to see Clint had the second-highest rating from the community for this game, and finished just .04 behind Alonso for man of the match. I'd love to read comments in the comments below from the people who gave Clint a rating of 6 or higher in this one to understand what you saw that I missed.

Obafemi Martins: 5.04 (4) +1.04 I knew that people were going to feel my rating of a 4 for Oba in this one was too low. Perhaps it's a personal taste issue. To me, every time I see Oba way back into the midfield trying to find the game I think "stop that." Perhaps some of you think he is better at that, or felt like he had too because the midfield wasn't playing as it should. I just look at all those passes that don't connect and think how much better I like him when he's on the shoulder of the center backs forcing them to deal with his speed and touch.

Subs

Kenny Cooper (65th minute): 5.31 (6) -0.69

Chad Barrett: (45th minute) 5.34 (6) -0.66

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