We should get whoever we think will get better and not wash out. If that happens to be a forward, great.
While I agree in principle with the "best player available" strategy, do we really believe we have the "fidelity" to tell who will wash out and who won't, when we're talking about say the top 10-25 players in the draft (let alone do we even have the fidelity to determine "top 25"). If it seems clear somehow, then sure you make a call based on your evaluation. But I think there is a lot of gray area and it is very, very difficult to rank the chances that player A will wash out and player B will not, when let's say those players are ranked, hypothetically 12th and 13th. You might have your head of scouting, your coach, Leitch, and Jesse looking at the players. What are the chances that you're going to reach agreement on "best player available"? If they all had to pick and write the player on a sheet of paper so that they can't see what the other wrote, I doubt they'd all come up with the same player. So it will probably come down to who is the most forceful with their point of view.
That's why this idea of tanking to get at or near the top pick in NFL or NBA never quite made sense to me. How many times does the #1 player actually turn out to be "the #1 player"? I think in the NBA maybe it makes more sense because 1 player can have so much impact and you get a better sense of the player's value when he's 1 in 5. But NFL, not so much, and I'd say the same for MLS, especially now that a lot of the real prodigies are coming out of the academy systems.
It's as simple as this...send Jesse to the combine and he'll identify somebody good for the team...done deal.
No way to be certain who will wash out especially since a lot of that depends on what happens to the player after the draft. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to evaluate the talent available.
Sure you have to evaluate and give it your best shot. But I think you also have to be realistic. You may have a handful of targets, but you may not feel completely confident in getting the stack ranking just right in terms of "best player available". So at that point maybe you start to consider need. That's all I'm saying. We've got a lot of 5'7" - 5'8" attacking or center mids with average speed, and we have very few 1) guys who can play wing back, 2) #9's, 3) young CB's (though if we get the Uruguayan guy that will help).
You don't know he's better than Tarbell. Tarbell was good enough to take his spot away. And besides, at the time he was drafted, they thought Bingham would go to Europe. They knew him far better than you do. If your keeper is threatening to leave, you take it seriously. LOL...no. Not. But if that really were true, a player that mentally weak is not a player you'd want anyway. We didn't think so at the time maybe. But it turned out to be the case. It may be tough to admit after the fact that we posters were wrong at the time of that draft; but we were.
Morton wasn't signed by the Quakes to a homegrown contract, but was just added to the combine: https://www.prosoccerusa.com/other/mls-player-combine-begins-in-orlando/ MLS announced the signing of University of Virginia junior Edward Opoku to the 2018 Generation adidas class, making him the seventh player in the class. The league also signed Notre Dame forward Jon Gallagher ahead of the combine. Also added to the Combine are seven college seniors – Luis Argudo (Wake Forest University), Alex Bumpus (University of Kentucky), Jose Carrera-Garcia (University of California), Diego Campos (Clemson University), Xavier Gomez (University of Nebraska Omaha), Josh Morton (University of California) and Thomas Vancaeyezeele (University of Charleston) – and youth International Issaka Nyemewero. Jake Rozhansky and Rafael Sanchez withdrew from the combine. Rozhansky signed with Israeli side Maccabi Netanya FC. Stanford’s Drew Skundrich also withdrew due to injury, but he is still eligible for selection in the SuperDraft.
Obviously if things all come together like that then yeah you are lucky and you pick a position where you are weak but willing to wait as you develop a player. What I'm saying beyond that, if the "best" wing back is a guy who has excellent speed but never picks up his head and doesn't know how to combine, cross or shoot (i.e. Cato), then you don't look at that guy . Same for an aggressive young CB who was dominant in college but not supreme in the air, not calm with the ball under pressure, not able to anticipate or isn't a clean tackler/blocker. Or for that matter a #9 who can't find space (to receive a pass or to take shots), etc. The thing is, many "top" speedy wingers don't look up, dominant young CBs don't anticipate/win challenges by other than brute force, and #9s couldn't find space in literally outer space. So usually you can eliminate a lot of guys right off the bat.
Presumably you wouldn't have guys with major flaws in their game that you don't think are correctable in the top 25 or even 50.
The sort of things I described (not exhaustive) are fundamental and typically not correctable although there are exceptions (younger players, players with more balanced skill sets vs. relying on just one or two superior skills, etc.). Yes you can eliminate many of the guys in the top 50, and a lot in the top 25 as well.
I would say that your chances of learning to look up or find space are better than your chances of getting faster or taller. Of course you need both, but if your aim was to pick a player with pace on the wings, and you had only 2 players to choose from, one with raw speed who might be a little rough around the edges and one with his head up who can't run, I'd take the former. Paul Arriola is an example of the former, and his stock has risen steadily over the last 3-4 years.
I wouldn't take either, not as a winger. The player with the head up could develop for another position though, and perhaps (but less so) the player with speed could as well. But as a winger? We have two good local examples in Salinas and Cato to argue against your point. All other things being equal, you do want somebody with speed for most positions, but somebody with speed has often learned to rely on it too exclusively and this trait gets harder and harder to unlearn.
Part of the argument for taking the GA guys is that they don't count against the cap, and are in that sense, free. So whether or not they pan out, the hit to the salary cap is lower, and in some sense, the risk is lower. Of course, a lot of the draftees go on one of the salary exempt spots, so those guys are lower risk also. And I get that the draft is a crap shoot. You have to evaluate skill, ability to get better, attitude, personality (will the guy fit into our team?), and then there's the random factor of whether or not they get hurt. But the questions and comments about the GA players were less about whether or not they pan out, and more about their hit to the salary cap, which is none. Go Quakes!! - Mark
I was setting specific parameters on my example to make a point. These are the parameters. 1) You want to sign the player as a winger, and 2) these two players are your choices. As for examples, Paul Arriola is the example I used for the former. Certainly there are many examples of the former who did not pan out. Despite his limitations, Salinas has had a reasonably successful MLS career.
Don't you mean Stahre? Jesse represents the business end of the franchise, and I don't know that he has a proven track record of judging horseflesh...
Ah, it's nice when someone else helps me make my point. I don't advocate taking someone ranked 44th by the "experts" when you're picking 12th because he fits a need. BUT, when you're picking 12th, you no doubt have a list of guys who might be available that you want, you go with who's on your list. So what if the "experts" rank him 15th? That's close enough, and it's not like we get another pick until 30th. It's not a science. And taking a guy at a position of need means that you'll actually give him minutes and a shot at making the team. Whereas if you draft "the best available dude" at a position where you are deep, you're not going to see much of him, even in practice. And, we need to be more confident that we can mold guys into the kind of player we want. The guys we draft should have the necessary physical skills, and be soccer smart enough to learn our system and what we need of them. And of course, cool names like Bumpus should be considered. Go Quakes!! - Mark
Armchair Analyst: Five big questions to answer at the 2018 Combine I'll be honest, I haven't read this yet, and my gut feeling is that anything Bobby Warshaw has to say on soccer is about 80% bulls**t, but since the combine starts tomorrow here it is: Warshaw: Watching the Combine? Here are 4 clues to spotting the MLS talents
Combine rosters Here's the full schedule of combine games and links to the live streams: Saturday, Jan. 13 Team Nemeziz vs. Team Predator 12:30 p.m. ET Watch Stream Team X vs. Team Tango 2:30 p.m. ET Watch Stream Monday, Jan. 15 Team Nemeziz vs. Team X 12:30 p.m. ET Watch Stream Team Predator vs. Team Tango 2:30 p.m. ET Watch Stream Wednesday, Jan. 17 Team X vs. Team Predator 10 a.m. ET Watch Stream Team Nemeziz vs. Team Tango 12 p.m. ET Watch Stream
Since some people dismiss the draft entirely, I think Doyle makes a good point about its usefulness. It's becoming less relevant over time, but the smartest teams will use every mechanism they can to acquire talent. There is a danger in reading too much into the Combine. Sometimes an otherwise good player will play like garbage for a week, see his stock drop, and then everybody who passed on him gets sad. We'll go ahead and call that "The Cristian Roldan Corollary." There is a danger in reading too little into the Combine. Sometimes an otherwise overlooked player will set foot on the field, light all comers on fire, and teams still think "meh, we can pass on him and still be OK." We'll go ahead and call that "The Julian Gressel Corollary." This next week is a useful tool that teams can use to scout potential difference-makers. It's not the end-all be-all, and the truth is that we're nearing the point where teams can probably blow off the Combine and SuperDraft entirely and still put together a good and deep roster. But smart teams – like Roldan's Sounders and Gressel's Five Stripes – tend to care more about practicality than dogma, and tend not to turn their noses up at any particular chance to acquire talent. And yes, folks, there's talent at the Combine and talent in the draft.
I see Doyle's post as kind of a big "duh". The draft is less relevant every year (duh). That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to find a good player or two (duh), Sometimes it's a bad sign when a guy has a bad combine and sometimes it's not (duh) - out of the universe of guys who had poor combines of course it will be an anomaly for some. It is, after all, a relatively small sample size and thus a measurement of limited value - some value but only so much.
https://public.tableau.com/profile/...SuperdraftAnalysisPart1/ThousandMinRulebyPick This was done in 2015/2016 so its a bit dated but is still useful. Looks like we're probably gonna get around 8 contributing players this year if the trends hold. A little more than 60% of the contributing players are in the top 12 picks so there are ~5 contributing players in the top 12 and ~3 outside. This almost holds for the 2016 and 2017 drafts: 2016: Pick 1 Harrison Pick 2 Yaro Pick 3 Rosenberry Pick 4 Vincent Pick 6 Herbers Pick 8 Tarbell Pick 12 Campbell 7 contributing players in top 12 Pick 14 Fischer Pick 27 Alfaro 2 contributing players outside top 12 2017: Pick 1 Danladi Pick 3 Lewis Pick 6 Yueill Pick 7 Nerwinski Pick 8 Gressel 5 contributing players in top 12, 6 if you count Abubakar(Pick 5) Pick 77 Elliott 1 contributing players outside top 12, 2 if you count J.Smith(Pick 75) Looking through this https://public.tableau.com/profile/gautam.sarkar#!/vizhome/MLSSuperdraftAnalysisPart2/General GAs have ~70% success drafted in the top 12 and 10% success drafted outside Roughly 55% GAs succeed in total This is also proven with 2016 and 2017 2016: Harrison contributor Yaro contributor Holness not Herbers contributor Laryea not Tarbell contributor Buescher not 4/7 2017: Danladi contributor Robinson not Lewis contributor Ebobisse not Yueill contributor 3/5 So we know already that there'll be 7-9 contributors with ~4 coming from the GA class and ~2/3 more coming from the regular senior pool and ~2 sleepers. Judging by this I think 7-9 would be good spots to trade for, guaranteeing us one of the 6 good GAs(I'm excluding Wild) or Hilliard-Arce(won't happen but he'll take up a draft slot above us). One team'll probably go against the grain and draft Mueller, Bakero, or Gallagher probably.
Agreed, it would show some competence to have somebody from our coaching staff at the combine doing some hardcore scouting.