Around The League // Awards
In 2026, we are still in the infancy of data analytics in the MASL. We have goals, shots, saves, and blocks, but not much beyond that. On the surface, those stats may seem rudimentary and nothing more, but through modeling and data wrangling, we can use them to gain a new perspective on what is happening on the turf.
If you’re familiar with my previous work, you’ll know I use stats such as Goals Per Shot (GPS), Save Percentage, Shot Differential (Hoxie), and a basic version of Expected Goals to understand the game better. With these tools, we can see how teams and players stack up over the course of a season and separate the signal (skill) from the noise (randomness) in this seemingly unpredictable sport. Today, we’ll use these stats to help pick our season award winners, starting with MVP.
Most Valuable Player
What does the word valuable mean? The definition changes depending on who you ask. For me, value is clear. To win an indoor soccer game, you need to score more goals than your opponent, so the league’s MVP should be a player who puts their team in a position to do that most often.
It sounds simplistic to say a player who is responsible for the most goals on either or both sides of the ball should win, but figuring out who that is can be harder than you think. How many goals does a goalkeeper prevent in a season? Is every save or block a goal prevented? Do individual assists and blocks matter as much as we may think? Very quickly, this becomes a complicated question, but fear not, data is here to help us.
We’ll start by looking at the main candidates. Kansas City’s Rian Marques led the league in points (52) and points per game (2.5). Milwaukee’s Alex Sanchez topped the scoring charts with 32 goals. Baltimore forward Juan Pereira obliterated his previous career-best points haul with 47. St. Louis goalkeeper Paulo Nascimento finished the season with the best save percentage among goalkeepers with over 600 minutes played. So how on earth do we compare them?
I’ll start by eliminating Paulo, for reasons we’ll address in greater depth later on, but for now, his MVP-caliber season lasted until March, when his save percentage started to drop. His first three months were impressive enough to warrant a nod, but he’ll have to settle for another award instead.
Among the other candidates, Rian Marques stands out in the data. The Brazilian target-forward was directly responsible for 41.9% of his team’s goals, with a shot conversion rate of 33.3%, significantly higher than the league average of 0.227. Given the number of shots he took this season, he scored 9.376 more goals than he would have been expected to, and his 2.5 points per game is 0.5 more than both Pereira and Sanchez. If that isn’t an MVP season, I don’t know what is.
Goalkeeper Of The Year
Goalkeeping lends itself to data analysis more so than any other position on the turf. The standards for a good goalkeeper are guided by their ability to do the one thing we’re able to quantify reliably. Among indoor soccer goalkeepers, a save percentage of over 70% is excellent, but few keepers maintain this level for an entire season.
This year, four goalkeepers hit that mark: San Diego’s Boris Pardo (0.707) and Chris Toth (0.769), Baltimore’s Julian Rodriguez (0.701), and St. Louis’ Paulo Nascimento (0.723). While Toth’s record is superb, injuries forced him to miss the majority of the season, and he only saw the field nine times. His 3.7 Goals Against Average (GAA) is more than deserving of recognition, and while I don’t believe he should be this season’s Goalkeeper of the Year, that is in no way an indictment of his incredible talent and his performances in 2025/26.
Baltimore’s Julian Rodriguez also had an incredible year, emerging as the league’s best young shotstopper, while adding the ability to turn defense into attack with eight assists. In San Diego, Boris Pardo earned his first career shutout with a heroic performance against Tacoma, and finished the season with a +70% save percentage for the fifth time in the last six years. That said, my vote goes to Paulo.
The Brazilian shotstopper enjoyed arguably the best season of his career, with a GAA of 4.53 and his first shutout victory with a 13-0 win over Utica City FC. Based on the number of shots he faced, he prevented an estimated +14.104 more goals than expected this season, as he and the Ambush became one of the league’s best defensive forces.
For much of the year, his performances put him squarely in the MVP race, but since the beginning of March, he’s regressed, hitting that 70% mark just once in his five full appearances. His veteran presence is unmistakable, and without him, there’s a good chance the Ambush are not in the MASL Shield race.
Defender Of The Year
What makes a good defender in the MASL? The question often keeps me up at night. Some prioritize shot blocking while others recognize the need for offensive output. I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle. When accounting for blocks and points, a defender's Impact Score attempts to level the playing field, allowing us to compare apples with oranges, or in this case, Chad Poarch with Chad Vandegriffe.
Vandegriffe, who led the league with 64 blocks, only added five points in 2025/26, less than half of his total from last season. By comparison, his Comets teammate Lesia Thetsane recorded exactly half as many blocks as Vandegriffe, but added 25 points in his 23 appearances. As a result, Thetsane’s Impact Score (1.403) is higher than Vandegriffe’s (0.930).
When looking at the data, we can see what tips the scales, and this year, attacking defenders ran rampant. Mario Alvarez, Oumar Sylla, Poarch, and Thetsane all play different styles of defense, but they all add an attacking threat with the ball at their feet. Blocks are still important, but accounting for their effect on the score, it’s nowhere near as impactful as a goal or assist.
When looking at the league’s most impactful defenders, we can use their Team Goal Contribution Percentage to add another layer of analysis. Sylla, Poarch, and Thetsane were all directly involved in 20.2-26.6% of their team’s goals this season, but Milwaukee’s Alvarez took it to another level.
The 33-year-old is not a target defender, but rather a second-forward marker who prevents shots from happening in the first place rather than throwing his body in the way of a shot. In possession, he’s the Wave’s conductor: directing traffic, picking out passes, and finding space in dangerous areas. Alvarez tallied 21 points and 21 assists, both career bests by a significant margin, as he became the Wave’s second top scorer behind only Alex Sanchez.
Newcomer Of The Year
I’m in my third year covering the league, and I’m starting to see a theme. This award, Newcomer of the Year, is not often contentious. Last year it was Chad Poarch, the year before that, Marco Fabián. Suffice to say, whoever wins it this year is in very good company.
The criteria, in my opinion, are roughly the same as MVP, but with the caveat that only rookies or newcomers are eligible. Therefore, we’ll use the same criteria to decide this award, and upon looking at the graph, we may have a third consecutive landslide on our hands.
I’ll take this chance to first give a shoutout to Utica defender Thayssan Santos, who finished the season with the 4th most blocks in the league. His 0.841 Impact score puts him in the same ballpark as Drew Ruggles and Christian Briggs, and I expect him to only grow from here.
Up top, Mario Falsone and Kevaughn Frater grabbed the league’s attention, averaging one and 1.2 points per game, respectively. Falsone became the Ambush’s focal point in attack after injuries to experienced forwards Duduca Carvalho and Robert Kristo, and he’s directly contributed to 18.5% of his side's goals in 2025/26. Frater’s involvement is even higher at 21.8%, but both have shown an immense ability to pick up the game and swim, not sink.
Despite all that, Milwaukee’s Oscar Flores remains the clear pick after an astonishing 36-point debut campaign. The 23-year-old took a few games to acclimate himself, but since the start of February, he’s been a genuine MVP candidate.
In his last 12 games, Flores has 25 points, including three hat-tricks. His second goal against Baltimore remains one of the most incredible single acts any player has performed this season, and he followed it up with a game-winner in overtime that defied logic. This is a no-brainer for me: Flores should be in the MVP conversation at the start of next season.
Coach Of The Year
A coach’s impact is evidently very difficult to determine. How do you quantify that which is unquantifiable? Rather than give up and admit defeat, I’m giving it a shot by looking at every team’s conversion rates this season and incorporating the insight I’ve gathered in my conversations with all eight coaches this season.
We’ll start by explaining the criteria. I used my shot differential (Hoxie) stat to build an alternate league table based on every team’s performances this season. If a team outshot their opponent in a game by more than three shots, they got three Hoxie Points. If a team’s opponent outshot them by three or more, they got zero Hoxie Points. Closer splits resulted in one or two Hoxie Points depending on the margin.
If we take the Hoxie table to the actual league table, we can see which teams overperformed and which underperformed. Looking at the difference, most teams hovered between -4 and +5. However, the Blast and Comets consistently overperformed their Hoxie scores and finished the season with +11 and +12 margins, respectively.
In my opinion, this overperformance is the coach's responsibility. Coaches who put their team in tactical situations that make scoring goals easier and conceding goals more difficult are reflected in this graph. When looking even deeper into the data, Baltimore’s offensive and defensive GPS is among the league’s best in both regards, while Kansas City’s overperformance is almost entirely reliant on its defensive prowess.
Based on this two-pronged overperformance, and his midseason adjustments that took the Blast from fighting for a playoff spot to earning a first-round bye, my vote for coach of the year will go to Baltimore’s David Bascome, with an honorable mention for Kansas City’s Stefan Stokic.
MASL ELITE 6 and Second Team
Elite 6: Rian Marques, Alex Sanchez, Juan Pereira, Mario Alvarez, Oumar Sylla, Paulo Nascimento
Seeing that I’ve waxed lyrical about many of my Elite Six and Second Team picks above, I’ll take the chance to briefly elaborate on why I feel Alex Sanchez and Juan Pereira deserve this award, before doing the same for my second team choices.
We’ll start with Pereira, who led Baltimore’s treacherous attack in all 24 games for the first time in his career. The 11-year veteran bagged 47 points, accounting for 19.1% of his entire MASL points haul. Rarely does an individual get this much better with age, but it’s clear Pereira is the best soccer player of his life. Since the start of March, he’s accumulated 23 points in just seven games for an unstoppable 3.29 points per game.
At this point, everyone knows what Milwaukee’s Alex Sanchez is capable of. He’s arguably the league’s best dribbler, and he’s capable of finding the net from any angle with either foot, whenever he wants. In a Milwaukee team loaded with attacking talent, it’s Sanchez who runs the show. He scored or assisted 39.5 % of the Wave’s goals and willed his team to victory numerous times, most notably scoring five goals in his side’s 7-6 win over the Ambush.
Second Team: Zach Reget, Jonatas Melo, Alex Steinwascher, Chad Poarch, Lesia Thetsane, Julian Rodriguez
Up top, our team needs Zach Reget. The Wisconsin native played in all 24 of the Comets' games this season for just the second time in his MASL career, and he matched his second-best points haul with 43. Reget scored or assisted 34.7% of his team’s goals this year and ensured that, despite sharing the turf with Marques and Dom Francis, their opponents needed to focus on him.
It’s impossible to talk about Pereira without giving some love to Jonatas Melo. The pair play so well together, so it’s fitting that both would enjoy career-best seasons alongside each other. Melo is the league’s standout two-way midfielder, averaging 1.8 points and a block per game. He has the third-highest Impact Score (2.063) of all players and stands out as one of your favorite players’ favorite players.
Alex Steinwascher fits a similar mold to Melo in that he blocks shots as much as he scores them, and his ability to gain possession in crowded midfields, turn quickly, and generate dangerous attacking chances leads to a tremendous amount of goals for Milwaukee. He ended the season as the league’s eighth-best point-getter and found the net as many times as Sergio Penal and Mario Alvarez. Add in that he has the highest shot conversion rate among MASL players with at least 10 shots attempted, and you have a certified midfield goal machine.
I’ll give Poarch and Thetsane some love here after their Defender of the Year mentions, but if you want attacking contributions from your back line, you need to call Poarch and Thetsane. Their Impact Scores (Poarch: 1.506, Thetsane: 1.403) are the highest among defenders not named Oumar Sylla and Mario Alvarez, as the pair defy expectations on both sides of the field.