'Goal scorers are expensive,' says RSL boss Pablo Mastroeni, but just how expensive?

SALT LAKE CITY — In the 2011 sports drama "Moneyball," Jonah Hill's character gives Oakland A's general manager Billie Bean and the audience a lesson in how teams should think about acquiring players and building teams.

"People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players," Hill's character says. "Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins; and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs."

That brief explanation provides the premise of the movie: buying runs, or Moneyball.

After Real Salt Lake's fourth scoreless match in a row on Wednesday, head coach Pablo Mastroeni answered a question about whether it's more apparent now than ever to the team that a goal scorer is needed.

"Goal scorers are expensive," Mastroeni said. But in terms of Moneyball, he might as well have just said, "goals are expensive."

Now, whether or not that is a true statement may depend on your definition of expensive.

The highest-paid player on RSL this season is Jefferson Savarino, who makes $1.75 million in guaranteed compensation for 2023. The highest-paid player in MLS is Chicago's Xherdan Shaqiri, who makes $8.15 million in guaranteed compensation.

This is where Moneyball comes in, though, because if RSL is focused on buying goals, Chicago is getting awful value for its $8 million investment — to the tune of zero goals scored and just one assist from Shaquiri so far this season.

Savarino, on the other hand, has three goals and three assists, essentially contributing six goals this season for RSL. To put it in Moneyball terms, Chicago is paying $8 million per goal from Shaquiri (so far), while RSL is paying $292,000 per goal from Savarino.

Shaquiri may be an outlier, but the numbers tell a slightly different story when it comes to the most expensive MLS players and their goal output.

Through 12 weeks of MLS play, there are seven players with more than five goals and five players with more than five assists. Just one of those players appears on the list of the 17 players making more than $3 million in guaranteed compensation — the threshold used by The Athletic to separate the most expensive tier of players.

That one player is Nashville's Hany Mukhtar, who checks in at last place on the "Fortunate 17" list of the most expensive players at $3.19 million in guaranteed compensation. Mukhtar has six goals and six assists already this season, good for 12 goal combinations — that's cost Nashville $266,000 per goal.

The leading goal creator in MLS this season is Atlanta's Thiago Almada with 13 goal contributions (six goals and seven assists); he makes $2.33 million in guaranteed compensation, which is just over $179,000 per goal out of Atlanta's pocket.

Are you seeing a pattern? RSL doesn't need to drop $3 million (or more) on a big-name striker to get goals in the back of the net.

If goals were taken straight up, LAFC's dynamo Denis Bouanga, who leads MLS with 10 goals and makes $2.08 million in guaranteed compensation, makes the math a little easier: LAFC is paying right around $200,000 per goal from Bouanga.

Both LAFC and Atlanta currently sit in the top 5 in the league standings and the top 5 in goals scored. Like Hill said: "Your goal should be to buy wins; and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs."

In this case, RSL needs to buy goals.

So, how do they do that? Well, first, they need players who can score and create goals.

Savarino leads the team in goals scored with three, followed by Justen Glad's two — the only other player on the team with more than one. Savarino and Andres Gomez both have three assists on the season, and Bryan Oviedo is the only other player with more than one at two.

"Last year we had Sergio (Cordova) and Bobby (Wood), and we haven't brought in anyone to replace them," Mastroeni said.

Cordova was the leading goal scorer last season, with nine goals and two assists for 11 total goal contributions. Bobby Wood, however, had just three goals and one assist, and Savarino was the second-leading scorer last season with seven goals in just 17 starts.

If Mastroeni's words should be taken literally, RSL essentially needs to replace the 12 goals scored by Cordova and Wood.

So where does that come from? And how expensive will those goals be?

Considering RSL is essentially at the one-third mark of the MLS season, a 12-goal player would need to have scored four goals by this point — a feat that only 24 players have achieved around the league, none of which come from RSL.

Two of RSL's most expensive players have exactly zero goal contributions this season: Rubio Rubin and Braian Ojeda — both above $600,000 in guaranteed compensation. The other two most expensive, non-defensive players — Damir Kreilach and Andreson Julio — have one goal a piece.

Kreilach, in particular, makes $1.65 million this season and has not started an MLS match since March. RSL is paying $1.65 million for his one goal — not great, especially when several of the 24 players with at least four goals make much less than Kreilach. Cincinnati's Brazilian forward Sergio Santos makes almost exactly half of what Kreilach does at $814,375 and has already put up four goals and an assist for his league-leading club.

If $200,000 per goal is a reasonable Moneyball price, RSL would need to find a player who can contribute 12 goals for around $2.4 million in guaranteed compensation this season. All seven MLS players with more than five goals so far this season make less than that — with the exception of Mukhtar — and five of them make less than $2 million.

So does RSL need to spend some money to buy more goals? Yes, but it doesn't have to break the bank. The dollar amount is really less important than the production, at the end of the day.

If Billie Bean and the A's could do it, RSL can likely manage.

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