MLS SuperDraft 2017

As I've said many times in the past, I'm not of the belief that you should use the draft to try to fill a particular position. Instead, you should go for the best available player at that time. If he fills a need, great. If not you have the option of trading to some team that needs that player or trading draft picks.

Also, with the MLS draft these days, anything beyond the first 10 is a crapshoot. With TFC's picks, I'd consider it a bonus if they're able to get someone who makes the first team.

 

A very big bonus. As you say, this should be seen as an opportunity to grab the best player we can with the idea that he'll develop at TFC2 until he's ready.

 

I've never really understood why MLS goes as far as they do into the draft. It was perhaps meaningful back in the early days of MLS, but of TFC's 7 picks, only 2-3 of them are likely going to be still with the organization once training camp is over. And they'll all very likely be starting with TFC II.

I remember the early days of TFC, when in some years, they'd just pass on their lower draft picks rather than picking someone that they know they'd only be cutting from the team a few weeks later.

 

With 20+ and growing teams in the league, this only emphasizes the need for a great academy system. The useful draft picks now realistically run out before even the first round of selections is complete.

 

With their first pick, TFC picks Brandon Aubrey, CB, Notre Dame.

The writeup on him seems to be that he was originally one of the top CB picks, but did terribly at the combine so he's going much lower in the draft than originally expected. I guess TFC is gambling that his combine performance was just an anomaly.

 

TFC traded their 26th and 27th picks to Chicago

 

For $75k in TAM.

For the first time, MLS yesterday started announcing the amount of allocation money involved in trades.

http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017/...es-publicly-revealed-1st-time-2017-superdraft

 

Good stuff MLS, we needed no transparency. Now I can ask if TFC got swindled a bit with only 75k when Minne got 50k in GAM and another pick in the 2nd round for trading just one pick just a few picks earlier (I've never used pick so much in my life)

I like the Aubrey pick mostly because I think it's dangerous to read too much into the combine, particularly when it's only a fraction of a player's work. Hopefully he shows more of whatever made him a good prospect before the combine

 

Maybe, maybe not. The way that I look at it, TFC is now a strong team with a good academy program, so they don't need to use the draft to fill positions as much as other teams do. Their first time line up is close to being set for 2017 and their academy is supplying the people they need for TFCII. TFC probably figured that they were going to get anybody useful with those two picks and so just tried to get anything they could for them.

 

^ Yes. They looked at Aubrey and thought, "Here's a guy with a reasonable chance of working out in the future. Let's grab him." Then they looked at the rest of the draft pool and said, "We'd rather have $75k that we can apply to some other player we find in the future than on one of the guys still available in this particular, limited draft." That seems reasonable to me and is the kind of thing you can do when you've invested the necessary resources in your academy system.

 

I don't deny that we're better off with TAM then the two draft picks based on our squad (and TFC II and III as well), so it was still a decent move. I just wonder if the market value for those two picks was higher than 75k in TAM, but since the only thing I'm going off of is the 50k alone in GAM that Minne got with the previous pick, it's not exactly a large enough sample to determine what the actual worth is.

In time playing armchair manager will be easier once there are a few more examples of actual amounts of allocation raded

 

I understand your question. Frankly, given how few players from the second round actually end up playing in MLS in any meaningful way, I suspect $75k is a pretty good deal for TFC.

 

I don't think you'll likely find a straightforward relationship between a certain draft pick and a market value because there are too many factors:

• The market value will largely depend on the talent available at the time of the pick. And the talent level drops off very quickly after the first round
• It will also depend on the supply: i.e. if 10 teams are looking to trade off their picks, the value will be different than if only 1 team is looking to trade off picks
• Draft picks will be worth more to some teams than others. i.e. teams that are rebuilding and don't have a strong academy will likely value draft picks over TAM. Teams that are more developed will value TAM over draft picks.
• As well, there are always these behind-the-scenes deals that we don't hear about. i.e. we'll trade you our pick, but you can't use it to pick a certain player. That sort of thing.

So, you could conceivably get situations where a team plays $50k in TAM for a 20th pick and then another team pays $50k for a 30th pick

 

Isn't TAM more valuable than GAM? If so, $75k of TAM may actually be significantly more than $50k of GAM....heck, even on a dollar to dollar basis it is already 50% more

 

^ I'd say it's the other way around. GAM can be used more freely while TAM has more restrictions on what it can be used for.

(Of course, if you use TAM for something that potentially frees up GAM or even just salary cap money to use elsewhere so it does become a bit of a shell game.)

 

With the 52nd pick in the 2017 @MLS #SuperDraft, Toronto FC selects goalkeeper Robert Moewes.

— Toronto FC (@TorontoFC) January 17, 2017

With the 65th pick in the 2017 @MLS #SuperDraft, Toronto FC selects Oyvind Alseth.

— Toronto FC (@TorontoFC) January 17, 2017

With the 83rd pick in the 2017 @MLS #SuperDraft, Toronto FC selects defender Lars Eckenrode.

— Toronto FC (@TorontoFC) January 17, 2017

With the 87th pick in the 2017 @MLS #SuperDraft, Toronto FC selects defender Juan Pablo Saavedra.

— Toronto FC (@TorontoFC) January 17, 2017

 

This was one thing I thought, could be plenty of other reasons though, ArteLabore brings up some good ones.

Of course, this is all speculation. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm too worked up over this!

 

we all geek out over this stuff. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

 

Nope....I think you were showing the natural progression that comes from the league being more transparent about the amounts of allocation in a trade.

there was no point of discussion before because we as interested fans had no idea what we were discussing.

To some it may seem "geeking out" but soon, I think, the league will find itself with a far more engaged fan base as more people will have "hot stove" type discussions in the off season. For some reasons we fans like to talk about/analyze roster moves.....it was near impossible to do in MLS before and, therefore, the league has had far less off season discussion than other leagues have.....it can only have a positive effect on the league as each season will feel less like a complete start over than it used to.

 

That's just the TFC fan in you talking.