Orlando City has enjoyed a great run of form over a significant amount of its summertime fixtures, but as October quickly approaches, only a handful of matches remain on the schedule to pick up points and score goals. The Lions have been paced by their two stars in Designated Player Facundo Torres and USMNT Olympian Duncan McGuire. Currently, through 29 matches, Torres leads Orlando City with 12 goals and McGuire is right on his heels with nine. Let’s take a look at the underlying numbers to try to predict who will ultimately finish the Major League Soccer regular season as the top goal scorer for OCSC.

Facundo Torres

At this point in his Orlando City career, everyone should just accept the fact that Torres starts to heat up right about the same time as the Central Florida temperatures. Three years running and the DP has consistently started slowly before roaring to life over the summer months of the season. The 2024 campaign is no different, as it took Torres six MLS regular-season matches to score his first goal of the year and then another seven games before finding the back of the net for goal number two. After almost half the season (15 matches) Torres stood firm on those two goals and, coincidentally, his team’s position in the standings reflected his sluggish start.

Torres finally started to turn things around on June 19 against Charlotte FC and found the back of the net six times before the Leagues Cup interrupted the regular season near the end of July.

Since returning to action after the Leagues Cup, Torres has bagged an additional four goals and currently sits just two goals shy of his career high, which was set during the 2023 campaign. Facu has netted 12 throughout the regular season across 27 matches and 2,216 game minutes played. He has logged 54 total scoring attempts and has placed 25 of those attempts on target for a shooting percentage of 46.3%.

Duncan McGuire

So much has been made about McGuire’s off-season transfer drama that it might as well just be turned into its own telenovela at this point. Despite all of the drama and back and forth, McGuire has continued to work and has been nothing short of a consummate pro for both his club and country. McGuire scored his first and second of the year in a 3-2 loss to Minnesota United FC back on March 9, and throughout the first half of the season, he did well to find the back of the net fairly frequently, scoring about once every other game between March 30 and May 15. Time away representing the United States certainly played a role in McGuire finding himself as second on the goal-scoring list instead of leading it for Orlando City, as prior to the Sept. 14 match against the New England Revolution, McGuire’s last goal came all the way back on June 28 against New York City FC.

McGuire sits four goals behind the 13 that he scored in his rookie campaign as he has contributed nine through 23 matches and 1,465 game minutes. He has logged 35 total scoring attempts and has placed 15 of those attempts on target for a shooting percentage of 42.9%.

Projecting Orlando’s Top Scorer

If the current starting lineup holds true over the final five matches of the year, I have a hard time projecting that McGuire could be able to catch and then surpass Torres, even though he is only three goals behind. McGuire has operated out of a super substitute role since rejoining the squad from the Olympics, and if that role continues, then he will have far less time on the field compared to Torres to find the back of the net.

McGuire has done his best over the last two matches, scoring in each game quickly after entering, but at this point, he is unlikely to crack the starting lineup again before the end of the year. Not to mention that in the last two matches when McGuire has scored, Torres had already found the back of the net, keeping the striker at the same deficit despite McGuire’s efforts.

Torres is also the go-to penalty kick taker for the team and has converted two of his three attempts on the year, giving him the ability to pad his numbers from the spot should an opportunity arise over the last stretch of matches. Falling back to the numbers, Torres’ shooting percentage is few ticks better than McGuire’s and should allow him a slightly higher statistical chance to find the goal more times before the end of the season than his second-year counterpart.

I think they both should just keep scoring with reckless abandon…what a great problem to have! Do you think McGuire will catch Torres? Let us know in the comments below and as always, Vamos Orlando!

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 that his definition of obscenity is “I know it when I see it.” Now, obscenity is not a topic we often cover at The Mane Land, except when talking about the Professional Referee Organization, but it is the quote, rather than the topic, that I thought was prescient for the topic I want to cover today. And yes, this story drops when one of its subjects is suspended for the match tonight.

There are not a lot of statistics that can help define how effective a defensive, or holding, midfielder is. Of course there are statistics (passing completion percentage, defensive tackle win percentage, ball recoveries) that you can look at for every player and then isolate them to compare holding midfielder to holding midfielder, but even those statistics do not ever tell the full story, because they are dependent on the style of play of the team just as much as the players themselves.

Orlando City generally plays a 4-2-3-1 formation with two holding midfielders, but some teams play with only one holding midfielder, so how can you compare the statistics evenly? You can, but only to a point, and the style of play of teams requires more or less from a holding midfielder, making it even harder to compare effectiveness. Therefore, to some degree you have to default back to Supreme Court Justice Stewart and use the eye test.

Using the eye test of S. Andrew DeSalvo (alas the S. does not stand for Supreme Court Justice or even just Supreme, though perhaps I should think about a name change), I have been wildly impressed for three years now by the play of César Araújo and Wilder Cartagena. Both players arrived at Orlando City in 2022 — Araújo before the season began and Cartagena in August during the transfer window — and have been mainstays on the field since joining the team.. The table below shows their MLS regular-season stats since 2022, and illustrates how both players have started and played nearly 90% of the games and minutes that they could have played in MLS play:

Fbref.com tracks and codes players’ performances by position, and among MLS players who are classified as pure midfielders (as opposed to a player like Facundo Torres, who they classify as a hybrid midfielder and forward), Araújo ranks sixth and Cartagena 33rd in minutes played during the past two seasons. Those ranks would likely be even better if both players were a little bit better about controlling their tempers and their aggressiveness (Araújo has 18 yellow cards and Cartagena 14 yellow cards and a red card since the beginning of the 2022 season).

As I mentioned earlier, there are not a lot of publicly available statistics that help quantify the play of holding midfielders as compared to one another, but one that is pretty important for every player is plus/minus. A player’s plus/minus is a pretty simple measure. All it does is subtract the goals conceded by a team when a player is on the field from the goals scored by a team when a player is off the field. While it is difficult to blame a striker for a goal conceded by the defense, or conversely reward a defender for a goal scored by a striker, in the macro sense over an entire season, I think it is instructive to look at plus/minus and consider whether the data backs up the aforementioned eye test.

Considering only the players who have played more than 500 minutes in 2024, here is the full plus/minus heatmap (red is good and blue is not as good) for Orlando City thus far this season (includes all competitions and own goals):

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has been the hottest of them all? Why, that is Araújo and Cartagena, of course, as both players are +15 for the full season across all competitions. They have not always played next to each other in the midfield, as there have been injuries and substitutions, and Cartagena also played center back for more than 600 minutes this season. But in looking at the chart above, and also considering the eye test about who influences the games for the Lions, it is pretty clear that the eye test and the numbers match up here, and it is not just a feeling that Orlando City has an elite paring at holding midfield. It is, in fact, a fact.

I have another dataset that I have been tracking all season that evaluates Orlando City’s performance by offensive grouping, and in looking at all the offensive groupings where Araújo and Cartagena have played side by side in the midfield, the team is +13 across those minutes as you can see from the chart below (excludes own goals):

Translating +13 over 1,511 minutes to a per-90-minute metric, when Araújo and Cartagena play next to one another the team is +0.77 goals per 90 minutes, whereas during all the other minutes the team is -0.21 goals per 90 minutes. This nets out to an increase of 0.98 goals per 90 minutes, meaning that the Orlando City lineups with Araújo and Cartagena in the holding midfield roles are nearly one goal per game better than any lineup without the two of them playing side by side. I’d say that portfolio is strong to quite strong.

An old soccer cliché is that a team wants to have a midfield destroyer in its lineup, and Orlando City has that times two with Araújo and Cartagena when they play side by side. I believe that it is no coincidence that as the team has settled into a consistent lineup and consistent substitution pattern, the Lions have really taken off and have become one of the hottest teams in MLS with eight wins in their last 11 matches.

I know obscenity when I see it, and the Lions are looking obscenely good right now.

Orlando City announced this afternoon that the club has signed OCB goalkeeper Carlos Mercado to a first-team contract. The deal runs through 2024 with club options for 2025, 2026, and 2027.

“Carlos has done a great job this year with Orlando City B and has really performed well for us,” Executive Vice President of Soccer Operations and General Manager Luiz Muzzi said in a club press release. “With Mason Stajduhar’s injury earlier this season and Carlos’ performances with OCB, the opportunity has opened up where we don’t have to look outside the club to fill that position and can give a young goalkeeper an opportunity to continue developing and pushing our current goalkeeping corps. Carlos has shown us that he has the talent and work ethic to deserve that opportunity this season.”

Mercado joined OCB prior to the start of the 2024 MLS NEXT Pro season and split time with Javier Otero. When Stajduhar broke his tibia and fibula on June 28 in a game against New York City FC, Otero was forced to join the first team as the primary backup. As a result, Mercado became OCB’s full-time number one.

So far this season, Mercado has made 17 appearances for the Young Lions, conceding 26 goals and making 63 saves. The Laredo, TX, native has two shutouts on the season and a 1.53 goals-against average. He has an 8-4-5 record between the sticks this year and has helped his team win four shootouts.

Mercado signed a short-term contract with the first team earlier this season to back up starter Pedro Gallese. The game away to Toronto FC was his only time with the first team.

“I’ve given everything to this dream, fighting day in and day out, even when the path seemed impossible. Orlando City has invested and believed in me as a player, even when I thought I had nothing left,” Mercado said in the club’s press release. “The club has given me a chance to prove myself and I’m ready to give everything I have in return. I want to say thank you to the club, César Baena, and Marcos Machado for their guidance this year and for this opportunity.” 

Mercado played for the FC Dallas academy in his youth, earning call-ups to the United States U-16 National Team and Mexico U-18 National Team. He played collegiately at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, TX, before joining San Antonio FC of the USL Championship.

The goalkeeper made his professional debut in 2021, coming on for the final 29 minutes in a 3-0 win over Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC. He stayed with San Antonio FC through the 2023 season before joining OCB.

What It Means for Orlando City

Stajduhar’s injury earlier this year means Orlando City is down to two goalkeepers on its senior roster. While the club could have signed an experienced player as a third goalkeeper, the club’s technical staff is obviously comfortable with Gallese and Otero as the top two this season. The open roster spot provides an opportunity to reward Mercado for his play with OCB.

It’s highly unlikely that Mercado will see the field for the first team or even be included in the first team this season unless there is an injury ahead of him on the depth chart. Instead, he’ll continue to start for the Young Lions. This deal only runs through the end of this year, but he’ll have the opportunity to earn a spot in future squads in training and with his play with the second team.