Superdraft Thread

ChrisE · 03 Feb 2004, 08:53 PM

Well, it's been days since there was a new post here. I think there's a lot of interesting possibilities to research from the superdraft; unfortunately, nothing I've done has really seemed interesting enough to put up here. So I'm going to start by simply trying to compile a list of the P-40's drafted, but will try to use this thread for a number of things.

Code:

2004 Club Number Round Age Min. Adu, Freddy F P-40 D.C. 1 1 14.62 Marshall, Chad D Stanford Columbus 2 1 19.40 Cochrane, Ryan D S. Clara San Jose 5 1 20.44 Nunez, Ramon M SMU Dallas 6 1 18.17 Goodson, Clarence D Maryland Dallas 7 1 21.66 Dempsey, Clint M Furman New Eng. 8 1 20.85 Cronin, Steve GK S. Clara San Jose 10 1 20.63 Gardner, Josh M Cincinnati L.A. 13 2 21.34 Grabavoy, Ned M Indiana L.A. 14 2 20.54 Bradley, Michael M P-40 Metrostars 36 4 16.46 2003 Eskandarian, Alecko F Virginia D.C. 1 1 20.52 728 Clark, Ricardo M Furman Metrostars 2 1 19.93 2590 Jaqua, Nate F Portland Chicago 3 1 21.22 712 Magee, Mike F P-40 Metrostars 4 1 18.37 1709 Stokes, David D UNC D.C. 5 1 20.63 0 Gonzalez, Guillermo M P-40 L.A. 8 1 17.03 129 Carroll, Brian M Wake D.C. 11 2 21.49 0 Gaven, Eddie M P-40 Metrostars 12 2 16.23 691 Alvarez, Arturo M P-40 San Jose 13 2 17.55 655 Thompson, Jason F E. Ill. Dallas 15 2 21.15 0 Lewis, Ricky D Clemson L.A. 20 2 20.63 798 Pause, Logan M UNC Chicago 24 3 21.40 1354 LeBlanc, Jacob M Virginia Metrostars 42 5 21.96 225 2002 Davis, Brad M St. Louis Metrostars 3 1 20.19 1246 Mapp, Justin M P-40 D.C. 4 1 17.24 28 Gray, Kelly M Portland Chicago 5 1 20.77 1780 Martino, Kyle M Virginia Columbus 8 1 20.91 1455 Stone, Jordan M P-40 Dallas 15 2 17.83 91 Capano, Craig M P-40 Chicago 17 2 16.52 92 2001 Carrieri, Chris F UNC San Jose 1 1 20.72 1081 Quaranta, Santino F P-40 D.C. 8 1 16.26 949 Bardales, Isaias F S.J. St. L.A. 11 1 21.41 270 Burciaga, Jose D P-40 K.C. 12 1 19.17 93 Barclay, Devin F P-40 Tampa Bay 14 2 17.77 1324 Johnson, Edward F P-40 Dallas 19 2 16.79 263 Downing, Nick D Maryland New Eng. 21 2 20.98 279 Buddle, Edson F L. Island Columbus 27 3 19.65 556 Saavedra, Miguel M P-40 Dallas 67 6 17.54 0 2000 Garcia, Nick D Indiana K.C. 2 1 20.77 2916 Bocanegra, Carlos D UCLA Chicago 4 1 20.64 2402 Califf, Danny D Maryland L.A. 6 1 19.83 1518 Convey, Bobby M P-40 D.C. 12 1 16.64 1614 Pierce, Rusty D UNC-G'b. New Eng. 14 2 20.48 2600 Salas, Sergio F P-40 D.C. 27 3 18.82 18 Asad, Shaker M N.C. State New Eng. 31 3 20.41 246 Cooks, Micah M P-40 D.C. 60 5 18.54 165

(Age refers to their age as of 1/16, whatever year they were drafted; minutes refers to minutes played as a rookie)

(P.S. Is this chart legible to everyone? I did my best to line up the rows, but I'm always suspicious.)

beineke · 05 Feb 2004, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ChrisE
P.S. Is this chart legible to everyone? I did my best to line up the rows, but I'm always suspicious.

Chart looks good to me.

By the way, do you have a list of P-40's by year of birth handy? There seem to have been few born in 1980, and I'm wondering how pronounced that pattern is.

Thx.

beineke · 05 Feb 2004, 12:08 PM

Here's what I came up with. From 2000 on, there really were very few P-40's born in 1980. I don't think there were many '80s who came into the league before 2000, either ... maybe one from Trinidad?

Code:

Year Drafted Name 89 1-04 Adu, Freddy 87 36-04 Bradley, Michael 86 8-03 Gonzalez, Memo 12-03 Gaven, Eddie 85 6-04 Nunez, Ramon 13-03 Alvarez, Arturo 17-02 Capano, Craig 84 2-04 Marshall, Chad 4-03 Magee, Mike 4-02 Mapp, Justin 15-02 Stone, Jordan 8-01 Quaranta, Santino 19-01 Johnson, Eddie 83 5-04 Cochrane, Ryan 8-04 Dempsey, Clint 10-04 Cronin, Steve 14-04 Grabavoy, Ned 2-03 Clark, Ricardo ND-03 Baumstark, Clint? 14-01 Barclay, Devin 67-01 Saavedra, Miguel 12-00 Convey, Bobby 82 7-04 Goodson, Clarence 13-04 Gardner, Josh 1-03 Eskandarian, Alecko 5-03 Stokes, David 20-03 Lewis, Ricky ND-02 Akwari, Nelson ND-01 Countess, D.J. ND-99 Trembly, Seth ND-99 Beckerman, Kyle ND-99 Beasley, Damarcus 81 3-03 Jaqua, Nate 11-03 Carroll, Brian 15-03 Thompson, Jason 24-03 Pause, Logan 42-03 LeBlanc, Jacob 3-02 Davis, Brad 5-02 Gray, Kelly 8-02 Martino, Kyle 12-01 Burciaga, Jose 27-01 Buddle, Edson 27-01 Salas, Sergio 60-00 Cooks, Micah 80 1-01 Carrieri, Chris 21-01 Downing, Nick 6-00 Califf, Dan 79 11-01 Bardales, Isaias 2-00 Garcia, Nick 4-00 Bocanegra, Carlos 14-00 Pierce, Rusty 31-00 Asad, Shaker

beineke · 05 Feb 2004, 04:28 PM

With some help from ussoccer.com, this should be a full list. Prior to Bradenton, there wasn't much even-year P-40 talent ... this is probably because the U-20 and U-23 youth events both have odd-year cut-off dates.

Code:

Year Drafted Name 89 1-04 Adu, Freddy 87 36-04 Bradley, Michael 86 8-03 Gonzalez, Memo 12-03 Gaven, Eddie 85 6-04 Nunez, Ramon 13-03 Alvarez, Arturo 17-02 Capano, Craig 84 2-04 Marshall, Chad 4-03 Magee, Mike 4-02 Mapp, Justin 15-02 Stone, Jordan 8-01 Quaranta, Santino 19-01 Johnson, Eddie 83 5-04 Cochrane, Ryan 8-04 Dempsey, Clint 10-04 Cronin, Steve 14-04 Grabavoy, Ned 2-03 Clark, Ricardo ND-03 Baumstark, Clint? 14-01 Barclay, Devin 67-01 Saavedra, Miguel 12-00 Convey, Bobby 82 7-04 Goodson, Clarence 13-04 Gardner, Josh 1-03 Eskandarian, Alecko 5-03 Stokes, David 20-03 Lewis, Ricky ND-02 Akwari, Nelson ND-01 Countess, D.J. ND-99 Trembly, Seth ND-99 Beckerman, Kyle ND-99 Beasley, Damarcus 81 3-03 Jaqua, Nate 11-03 Carroll, Brian 15-03 Thompson, Jason 24-03 Pause, Logan 42-03 LeBlanc, Jacob 3-02 Davis, Brad 5-02 Gray, Kelly 8-02 Martino, Kyle 12-01 Burciaga, Jose 27-01 Buddle, Edson 27-01 Salas, Sergio 60-00 Cooks, Micah 80 1-01 Carrieri, Chris 21-01 Downing, Nick 6-00 Califf, Dan ND Klinger, Martin ND Longo, Mario 79 11-01 Bardales, Isaias 2-00 Garcia, Nick 4-00 Bocanegra, Carlos 14-00 Pierce, Rusty 31-00 Asad, Shaker ND Albright, Chris ND Beasley, Jamar ND Da Silva, Nino ND Gomez, Francisco ND Howard, Tim ND Quijano, Marvin ND Rimando, Nick 78 ND Bower, Scott Green, Michael Quill, Eric West, Brian 77 ND Abukusumo, Ubusuku DiGiamarino, Joey Dunseth, Brian Kirk, Andy Kovalenko, Dema McCarty, Chad Napoleon, Matt Olsen, Ben Otero, Antonio Parra, Carlos Rodriguez, Esmundo Sahaydak, Tim Sastoque, Juan Vallow, Scott Wolff, Josh 76 ND Botello, Jose ND Cooks, Judah ND Kozic, Alen ND Nyman, Matt ND Rocha, Maurizio ND Swift, Barry ND Vermillion, Scott 75 ND Daniv, Sergi

ChrisE · 06 Feb 2004, 02:02 AM

Great job, beineke, thanks a lot. What would be interesting to look at, I think, would be the players that could potentially have been P-40's but were overlooked because of this odd year bias (if possible).

On a different note, I'm interested in where and how different positions get drafted in the Superdraft. To begin with, here is how the various positions broke down, by year:

Code:

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Total Average F 18 22 15 17 9 81 0.25 M 24 26 25 22 27 124 0.38 D 22 16 20 13 19 90 0.28 GK 6 7 4 6 5 28 0.09 Total 70 71 64 58 60 323

I don't think the various years are particularly important. Most interesting, here, is that forwards seem to be a little bit overrepresented, and defenders a little bit underrepresented (if you assume most teams play a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2).

This may, however, simply be a result of the players being listed by their college positions, which would presumably be more offensively-oriented...

ChrisE · 06 Feb 2004, 02:10 AM

Now, positions broken down by round:

Code:

1 2 3 4 5 6 F 15 10 18 17 12 9 M 20 25 19 18 26 16 D 19 15 13 17 12 14 GK 2 6 6 4 2 8 Total 56 56 56 56 52 47

And broken down proportionally:

Code:

Round 1 2 3 4 5 6 F 0.27 0.18 0.32 0.30 0.23 0.19 M 0.36 0.45 0.34 0.32 0.50 0.34 D 0.34 0.27 0.23 0.30 0.23 0.30 GK 0.04 0.11 0.11 0.07 0.04 0.17

What I found most surprising here is the fact that there doesn't seem to be much of a bias by position. I would have suspected that the 'glamour' players, forwards and midfielders, would have been picked more often in early rounds, while defenders went heavily in the later rounds. This doesn't seem to be the case, though; forwards are picked slightly more often in later rounds than in earlier, defenders slightly more early than late, and midfielders very much constant. The only hard and fast rule seems to be don't pick goalies in the first round.

ChrisE · 06 Feb 2004, 02:40 AM

Unfortunately, any sort of analysis of the superdraft is seriously hampered by the fact that it's only existed for five years now, and we've only got four years worth of information from it. Nevertheless, I tried to come up with a little bit of an analysis based on what we've seen.

First, a lit of rookie minutes by position by round, from 2000 to 2003:

Code:

R. Minutes 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total F 13028 5760 2219 1304 2323 0 24634 M 18245 10156 1711 2368 513 1719 34712 D 17540 8742 5921 4207 149 0 36559 GK 1146 1640 2561 90 0 0 5437

And Sophomore minutes, 2000-2002:

Code:

S minutes 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total F 7458 2932 3258 422 3034 0 17104 M 15391 10818 2917 1948 28 0 31102 D 12787 6832 7090 2902 0 729 30340 GK 2018 2194 2480 938 0 0 7630

More useful are the minutes per draftee numbers, so first, rookie minutes/draftee, through 2003:

Code:

R m/ind. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Average F 1086 576 139 82 211 0 342 M 1073 484 132 182 26 132 358 D 1096 795 493 324 17 0 515 GK 1146 410 512 23 0 0 236

And sophomore minutes per draftee:

Code:

S m/ind. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Average F 932 367 272 35 303 0 311 M 1099 636 265 195 2 0 415 D 984 854 709 264 0 81 523 GK 2018 731 827 313 0 0 449

Not much to say here, really. Regardless of what position you play, you seem to get about the same amount of minutes if you're drafted in the first round. However, as you get further into the draft, especially into the 3rd and 4th rounds, defenders (and, to a lesser extent, goalkeepers) are getting a much larger proportion of minutes than are forwards and midfielders. So it seems, although my feelings about where players are getting drafted may have been wrong, they may have been informed by the fact that late-round defenders tend to do a good deal better than late-round attacking players.

ChrisE · 07 Feb 2004, 04:49 PM

Beineke brought up the fact that not a lot of P-40's in the early years were from even year numbers; the other side of this argument is that players born early in the year, particularly January and February, are advantaged in the P-40 setup and talent identification, etc. I thought I'd take a look to see how this bled over into college; I broke things down by month, but since those are extremely small samples, I'm just going to present this in quarters, by year:

Code:

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Total 1Q 0.333 0.279 0.381 0.224 0.183 0.282 2Q 0.242 0.230 0.190 0.276 0.300 0.247 3Q 0.227 0.246 0.222 0.276 0.250 0.244 4Q 0.197 0.246 0.206 0.224 0.267 0.227

And the totals, by month are:

Code:

1 0.107 2 0.084 3 0.091 4 0.078 5 0.075 6 0.094 7 0.094 8 0.084 9 0.065 10 0.104 11 0.062 12 0.062

Where expected would have been .0825. So, clearly, we're seeing a little bit of a bias here towards the first quarter, and a little bit of a disadvantage toward the last; I was a little bit surprised, because I thought that the fact that college runs on a fall to spring schedule would (thus breaking up previous age groups, e.g. 82's) get rid of the advantage. Nevertheless, this doesn't seem to be a serious problem when it comes to college age players.

Equally surprisingly, the P-40's drafted didn't exhibit any kind of earlier-birthdate trend. Dividided into quarters, they were:

Code:

Q # % 1 10 0.217 2 13 0.283 3 15 0.326 4 8 0.174

beineke · 07 Feb 2004, 05:48 PM

If we break the P-40's down by Bradenton alumni and others, we get:

Bradenton
Q1-6
Q2-5
Q3-5
Q4-2

Other
Q1-4
Q2-8
Q3-10
Q4-6

The Bradenton kids do seem to exhibit a bit of a trend. BTW, at least in some regions, club soccer uses an August 1 cutoff date. That may help to favor Q3 players. (I'd also be interested in seeing data split out for the players who join P-40 after their junior year in college.)

ChrisE · 01 Apr 2004, 08:30 PM

Dredging up another old thread, I thought, with the season approaching, it was time for some predictions. I don't purport to know how well any individual rookie is going to do, but I think it should be possible to discern some trends. There are some pretty clear trends that arise from the first four years of the superdraft. Among the simplest, first round picks play about twice as many minutes as second round picks, who play about twice as much as third round picks, down on the line.

In the four years of the draft, rookies have always accounted for under 10% of available league minutes, but above 5%. By year:

Code:


Year	Av. Min	Min.	Proportion
2000	387215	36483	9.4
2001	318993	26098	8.2
2002	282540	17089	6.0
2003	306758	21672	7.1

The drop between 2001 and 2002 was almost certainly caused by contraction, but several sophomores got their first meaningful minutes in 2003, so I think we can expect a bit more recovery and rookies to play somewhere between 7 and 8% of available minutes this year. Since MLS has eliminated overtime, we can say that they'll play 7-8% of 30*90*10*11, or somewhere between 20790 and 23760 minutes.

Here's how minutes have been distributed by round (I readjusted 2002's rounds into groups of 10):

Code:


Round	2000	2001	2002	2003	Total
1	3.92	4.34	2.82	3.96	3.76
2	2.45	2.32	1.05	1.83	1.91
3	1.51	1.07	1.20	0.47	1.06
4	0.97	0.44	0.08	0.52	0.50
5	0.53	0.02	0.38	0.21	0.29
6	0.05	0.00	0.52	0.07	0.16
Total	9.42	8.18	6.05	7.06	7.68

If we take expect them to play 7.5% of minutes, using those distributions, that means we're looking at about 10903 minutes for 1st rounders, 5542 for 2nds, 3075 for 3rds, 1452 for 4ths, 834 for 5ths, and 466 for 6ths.

You obviously can't just average out those numbers to get individual expectations, but I'm going to do that anyway. In reverse order:

2 6th rounders, Jeff Parke and Chris Aloisi, made the opening day rosters.
4 5th rounders (Dombrowski, Pilarski, Detter, Sullivan) made it.
5 4th rounders (Clanton, Bradley, Gros, Sutton, Wagenfuhr)
3 3rd rounders (Maurin, Ara, Wells; White and Occean poached)
9 2nd rounders (Gregorio to Wigan)
10 1st rounders

I guess that's about it. I'd expect the high expectations for Wagenfuhr, Gros, Sutton, Dombrowski, Detter, and Parke are going to be at least largely unsatisfied, as in the last three years, all players from the 4th round onwards have totalled 6724 minutes, 2241 per season, although there should be more room than usual since the third round crop was terrible. If any of the late round picks are to succeed, I'd bet on Parke and Wagenfuhr continuing the tradition of late-round defenders doing disproportionately well.

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