I'm cribbing this post that was done over in the Rev's forum by Coach Barry. I thought it was interesting enough to put in here as well. If not only for a point of refference.
I'd be interesting to see the same analysis for 1998's expansion, and compare 1997 with 1998 records. Is there a substantial change or problems for the team or in the hurley-squirrely world of MLS does it not matter?
Chicago 2230-D Danny Pena (Los Angeles) 483-GK Kevin Hartman (Los Angeles) 1216-M Manuel Lagos (MetroStars) 1027-F/M Jason Farrell (Columbus) 2240-M Jorge Salcedo (Columbus) 197-GK Zach Thornton (MetroStars) 2528-D Francis Okaroh (New England) 0-M/D Diego Gutierrez (Kansas City) 1421-D Andrew Lewis (MetroStars) 540-D Brian Bates (Colorado) 1835-F A.J. Wood (Columbus) (559 with Metros) 0-F Steve Patterson (Colorado) Miami 1790-D David Vaudreuil (D.C. United) 2008-M John Maessner (D.C. United) 910-M Kris Kelderman (D.C. United) 1503-D Joey Martinez (Dallas) 0-GK Jeff Cassar (Dallas) 967-M Nelson Vargas (Tampa Bay) 2296-D Cle Kooiman (Tampa Bay) 1033-D Ramiro Corrales (San Jose) 2760-D Matt Kmosko (Colorado) 737-GK Scott Budnick (Tampa Bay) 1588-D Wade Webber (Dallas) 413-F Brian Taylor (Los Angeles) Minutes lost by team: CLB: 5102 (or 4543) DC: 4708 TB: 4000 COL: 3300 LA: 3126 DAL: 3091 MET: 2834 NE: 2528 SJ: 1033 KC: 0 Point difference from 1997 to 1998: LA: 24 DC: 9 CLB: 6 COL: 6 MET: 4 SJ: 3 DAL: -5 NE: -8 TB: -11 KC: -17 Conclusion: The four teams that improved the most were in the top five for losing minutes. Interesting, and also great news for the Fire.
Appreciate the work, scaryice, but I'm not really convinced. I don't think that you can just run down the expansion draft listing. The Galaxy, after all, didn't lose Danny Pena or Kevin Hartman, they lost Chris Armas and Jorge Campos. To really account for the effects, it would be necessary to have a more accurate listing. It's also unfair to look at changes in record without accounting to some degree for the strong regression towards the mean effect seen in the league.
One thing that's curious is that the improvements by DC and LA swung away from the mean. Given that those teams were the preferred targets of that expansion draft, it is sort of intriguing. More generally, I wonder if there might be some way to measure "depth," and to see how it predicts future performance.
The fairest thing to do would be to go through each year of MLS, and determine at the start of each season which players haven't returned, and add up the minutes to get a percentage. Then you could compare it for each year for the whole history of the league. Of course that's a lot of work. But then you could see if the expansion year really changed anything.
Interestingly, Chris has already done something quite similar to that. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95790&page=1&pp=15