Doesn't matter. Schellotto wasn't a DP in 2008. DeRosario, Donovan, Taylor Twellman and a few other non-DP players have also made more than the non-DP salary cap as well, yet they weren't labeled as DPs at the time.
I'm going to be a little disingenuous here and point out that we do in fact know the opposite is true but of course you are being MLS specific. I accept the premise of your argument even though I don't know how many actual dollars make up the next 11 to 14 (those that can expect to see at least some first team soccer) players after the DP's for LA or New England. I still think it is impossible to say with any certainty though that these two factors are a perfect counterbalance or even if we felt they were that they would always remain so with the wage ceiling much higher. Also it is probably fair to say that Henry and Beckham are over priced for their value to the team on the field and part of their wage goes toward paying for their brand. Maybe when MLS buys players purely on their current playing ability (rather than past glory) and how they will fit into their team structure and tactics correlation will increase. Henry is still RBNY best player but he is not even a half of what he was but he is paid as if he were still in his prime. I'm not sure that plotting charts is not over analysing things - data alone can be misleading, especially with a small sample size and it seems counter intuitive to me to attempt any analysis based on dollars spent per team when we have two distinct outliers such as LA and NYRB. Surely it makes more sense to separate these two franchises and compare them to the two lowest paying franchises if we are looking for any correlation. The differences between the rest are simply too small to overcome all the noise of other variables involved and show any kind of clear signal. LAG and NYRB salaries provide the amplification needed to see if their is any signal at all.
No, but unless you think the DP status has some effect on LA's ability to make PK's you're splitting a very fine hair on the Salt Lake-LA MLS Cup. I would also agree with superdave that for the point of this discussion (salary vs. results, particularly salary cap hit vs. results) GBS was a DP when they won.
Fair enough. So the argument is NOT about the impact of a DP on the salary cap. The argument is about roster designation. Having a player named as a DP causes his teammates to not play as well as they would if the player makes the exact same salary but is not named as a DP. How does that causation work, by the way?
MLS cup has a randomizing effect IMO but then we get into an argument about whether a regular season provides more valuable data on a teams ability than an end of season tournament. If we narrow the argument to correlation between MLS cup winners and DP's then I think it fair to say there is none but I don't think that has any value, especially since every MLS team will probably have at least one DP eventually.
Its weak, but there does appear to be a correlation between points and salary. There are, however, surely other factors that are more important - quality of coaching, games lost to injury, etc. Someday, it might be on the number of homegrown players. In any case, I do hope MLS results show even more positive correlations between spending and winning. If only to prove Robert Kraft wrong.
True enough, but even if we go with salary levels, then the argument holds even less water because Columbus was dead last in total salary in 2008 (assuming the Player's union is correct).
You are quite literally having an argument based solely on semantics in regards to GBS. And to be honest it is somewhat silly. Only his title changed not his salary the following year. But even with that the reality is that this year I think you are going to see a team with a DP win the title. The only team that currently does not have a DP and has any shot what so ever of winning the MLS cup is the Dynamo and that is a slim chance. Philly and Colorado are all but done at this point, which will leave 3 teams with DPs and only one with out. And the reality is that you will probably see a team with 2 or more DPs win it this year. LA and NY both have 3, Seattle and I believe KC (is Jeferson a DP?) have 2 and RSL have one. So on the face of it you will see at lest 1 DP in the final this year, but I think you will see an LA vs KC final which will feature either 4 or 5 DPs. Also as the cap goes up around ~100k every year for the next few years under the current cba the impact of the DP becomes less and less. I think teams with DPs will start to have an advantage. Not a huge advantage mind you but an advantage none the less.
*sigh* It should be pointed out that I'm not the one that started the whole argument that a DP makes the world go round. Take that up with superdave. If we go purely by salary, in 2007 DCU was 9th and the Dynamo were 7th, Columbus was dead last in salary in 2008, Columbus was 8th and RSL dead last in 2009, LA was 2nd and Colorado was 12th in 2010. Even if you want to argue that the important factor is salary not the designation the fact is that the only time the Supporters Shield winner or MLS Cup winner has been in the top half of salary rankings since 2007 is this year and last year with the Galaxy.
I guess next time instead of writing "DP" I'll write "player with a disproportionate impact on the salary cap" or "PWADIOTSC" for short. In all seriousness, from now on I'll just call it MS or max salary player. Happy now?
Thanks for the link and the discussion. I need to bookmark it, and remember it's bookmarked, for the inevitable discussion during the off season about if only the owner would loosen up his wallet and / or get a DP the team could do better.
Fair enough. MSP it is. Doesn't change the fact that your initial comment is either A) Wrong B) Myopic in that it ignores the teams at the bottom that also have MSPs. The important factors in determining whether a team does well isn't the presence of a MSP, it is the supporting cast around the MSP and, if there is a MSP, who the MSP is. NYRB has had three MSPs most of this season, but since the rest of the supporting cast has been questionable, they are 10th in the league. Vancouver has two MSPs, NER has one, TFC has three.
But a team with a DP has won the Supporter's Shield three years in a row. (GBS was a DP in 2009, right?)
And DPs don't take to the field buck naked. What the hell are you doing? MSs don't mean you'll win, but not having them means you probably won't win hardware. Stop pulling the wookie defense.
Yoshou has this one exactly right, and the data in this article clearly shows that there is little to no correlation between salary expenditure and PPG. (Would like to see the data for a wider sample size like the last 3 seasons). And besides it just seems like common sense. Spend $410k on a lousy DP and you've burned 15% of your salary. You are behind the curve. You'd be much better off spreading out $150-200K to 2-3 quality players. OTOH get a really effective DP and it could be worth it. LA is successful not just because they have 3 DPs but because they have 2 if not 3 good to really good DPs, and they have a coach who knows how to win in MLS and who also found a way to get quality players around his DPs. Because a DP comes at a high cost to the cap, it's also high risk. Get the right player and it can help your team. Get the wrong player and not only does it burn a good chunk of your cap space, it's not all that good for team morale and the next thing you know your "real" best player is making check signing gestures after scoring goals, wondering why he is not making DP money when he is clearly way more effective in MLS than the DP. If you were to acquire say 3 $150k players instead, if one of them is a bust it has little effect on your cap position because the cost is relatively small. SJ had Geovanni as a DP last year and he was just sort of OK. They declined to offer him a contract this year, but wound up offering a contract instead to a young Tottenham player, Simon Dawkins, who has been on loan and injured for much of his young career. I would say that Dawkins has clearly been a more effective player for the Quakes than Geovanni was. You wouldn't necessarily expect this given their relative trajectories and history in EPL, but that's how it turned out. Don't know what they are paying for Dawkins, with transfer fee, but it is probably a fraction of what they would have had to pay Geovanni. Data point of one, I know, but just an example of how these 150-200k players can turn out to be more effective than DPs.
I see few problems with the arguments being presented. One is that in the beginning there were very few DPs in the league. By my count and someone correct me if I am wrong here, there were by my count only 7 possible 8 DPs in the league, which were playing on maybe 4 teams, though again I might be wrong and I might be missing a team. But that was the first 2 years of the rule. It went up slightly in 2009, but by 2010 the number skyrocketed. This is partly do to the expansion of the cap, and partly how players 20 through 30 count against it. That is a big reason why a team with a DP has never won the title. Though the 09 Galaxy came within a poorly taken PK from doing so with 2 DPs. And again with the cap going up the impact of DPs is going to be negated even more. Though that is not to say with clever signings a team with out a DP cant win, but I think you are going to see a shift to a positive correlation in spending and winning. Not a huge shift but a shift none the less. Also "MSPs" have been around forever and teams have won with them even with their overall impact against the cap. The difference is that they were managed better on the whole. I think some of the problem was that the league as a whole did a very poor job of integrating DPs into the league system. They were so excited to have a big name they forgot about how to build teams. And you can see this the first two years or so when LAG had 3 players that were just about half their cap. That is bad management plain and simple. And it was a lesson learned. But just look how LAG has changed. Yes they still have 3 MSP/DPs but the team as a whole is just built better top to bottom. And teams in general with DPs have are built better than they were just two years ago. Now I am sure people will point both NYRB and TFC as examples of teams with DPs floundering badly. And whilst that is technically true there are outside factors that I do not think people are taking into account. NYRB for example through injury and the gold cup call ups were missing at times half of their starters. All you have to do is look at what happened at the beginning of the season vs what happened from the GC on. Its almost as if they are two separate teams. Though to be fair I think they did make some desperate roster moves that maybe should not have been made. Also until Rost showed up they arguably had the worst keeper in the league. TFC is interesting in that they two seem to be a tail of two halves when it comes to the season. Winter had a month to fix and rebuild a ship that was badly damaged from years of mismanagement. As the year when on TFC with some good roster moves have gotten much better and given a full off season to evaluate and sign new players and remove the dead weight, I seem them making the playoff for the first time ever next year. TL;DR The issue has always been cap mismanagement not the DP/MSP cap impact.
this seems like a good place to put this. i did a bit of math using the published player salaries and the stats from mlssoccer.com to come up with a couple of "bargain" lists. the first is $ per minute played. basically the total compensation divided by minutes played. the minutes played were going to be just for the regular season but since the mls website cannot seem to get its statistics correct (selecting the "regular season" button returns stats for both the regular season and the playoffs) it is total minutes played in both the regular season & playoffs so far: TOP 25 BARGAINS ($/MIN) Code: RNK NAME TEAM POS SAL MIN $/MIN 1 Williams, S PHI D $42,000.00 2,918 $14.39 2 John, George FCD D $42,000.00 2,781 $15.10 3 Zusi, Graham SKC M $42,000.00 2,419 $17.36 4 Sinovic, Seth SKC D $32,604.00 1,827 $17.85 5 Sapong, CJ SKC F $42,000.00 2,186 $19.21 6 Schuler, Chris RSL D $32,604.00 1,696 $19.22 7 McDonald, B DCU D $45,000.00 2,294 $19.62 8 Chavez, Marvin FCD M $50,000.00 2,521 $19.83 9 Kimura, Kosuke COL D $63,525.00 3,122 $20.35 10 Burling, Bobby SJE D $42,000.00 2,041 $20.58 11 Zemanski, Ben CHV M $44,000.00 2,056 $21.40 12 Kennedy, Dan CHV GK $62,496.00 2,880 $21.70 13 Woolard, Daniel DCU D $50,000.00 2,254 $22.18 14 Rosales, Mauro SEA M $42,000.00 1,870 $22.46 15 Leathers, J VAN D $42,000.00 1,840 $22.83 16 Ream, Tim NYR D $62,625.00 2,700 $23.19 17 Besler, Matt SKC D $69,660.00 2,970 $23.45 18 Nyassi, Sanna COL M/F $42,000.00 1,765 $23.80 19 Plata, Joao TFC F $42,000.00 1,753 $23.96 20 Jacobson, A FCD M $45,000.00 1,850 $24.32 21 Farfan, Gabriel PHI D/M $42,000.00 1,699 $24.72 22 Borman, D TFC D $42,000.00 1,697 $24.75 23 Harvey, Jordan VAN D $63,125.00 2,498 $25.27 24 Beitashour, S SJE D $42,000.00 1,655 $25.38 25 James, Julius CLB D $72,169.00 2,790 $25.87 and then there is $/Point ... where points are calculated in that old-fashioned 2 for a goal, 1 for an assist (not that i agree with this necessarily but it has been around a while and seemed like the thing to use). TOP 25 BARGAINS ($/PT) Code: RNK NAME TEAM POS SAL G A PTS $/PT 1 Rosales, Mauro SEA M $42,000.00 5 13 23 $1,826.09 2 Zusi, Graham SKC M $42,000.00 5 7 17 $2,470.59 3 Neagle, Lamar SEA M $32,604.00 5 2 12 $2,717.00 4 Sapong, CJ SKC F $42,000.00 5 5 15 $2,800.00 4 Nyassi, Sanna COL M/F $42,000.00 5 5 15 $2,800.00 6 Chavez, Marvin FCD M $50,000.00 6 4 16 $3,125.00 7 Espindola, F RSL F $75,000.00 10 3 23 $3,260.87 8 Grazzini, S CHI M $48,000.00 5 4 14 $3,428.57 9 Chavez, Diego CHI F $45,000.00 6 1 13 $3,461.54 10 Lenhart, Steven SJE F $47,333.34 5 3 13 $3,641.03 11 Oduro, Domnic CHI F $97,004.00 12 2 26 $3,730.92 12 Plata, Joao TFC F $42,000.00 3 5 11 $3,818.18 13 LaBrocca, Nick CHV M $87,200.00 8 6 22 $3,963.64 14 Braun, Justin CHV F $87,500.00 8 5 21 $4,166.67 15 Dawkins, Simon SJE M $60,000.00 6 2 14 $4,285.71 16 Shea, Brek FCD M $128,000.00 11 4 26 $4,923.08 17 Camilo VAN F $133,545.00 12 3 27 $4,946.11 18 Wondolowski, C SJE F $175,000.00 16 3 35 $5,000.00 19 Le Toux, S PHI F $179,000.00 12 9 33 $5,424.24 20 Barouch, Orr CHI F $32,604.00 2 2 6 $5,434.00 21 Lindpere, Joel NYR M $125,000.00 8 7 23 $5,434.78 22 Levesque, Roger SEA F $44,000.00 3 2 8 $5,500.00 22 Zemanski, Ben CHV M $44,000.00 2 4 8 $5,500.00 24 Mondaini, M CHV F $45,000.00 3 2 8 $5,625.00 25 Beitashour, S SJE D $42,000.00 0 7 7 $6,000.00 25 John, George FCD D $42,000.00 3 1 7 $6,000.00 25 Castillo, F FCD F $42,000.00 2 3 7 $6,000.00 25 Heinemann, T CLB F $42,000.00 3 1 7 $6,000.00
Fair enough but I am not really arguing that there was a correlation in the past, just how it may be best to go about finding it given the skewed salary structure within MLS and thinking about it lowest salary is unimportant since the difference between the lowest and the 3rd highest is almost negligible. It would probably be better to compare the salary of the top 2 finishing teams (because we only have two teams, NYRB and LAG to really meaningfully differentiate against) with the bottom 2 teams and adapt this to other seasons wherre there are significant differences in salary expenditure. Again there is a lot of noise because there are so many variables such as coach, injuries, ) etc I do think that the only way to do this is by total wage rather than how many DP's though the wage structure should be taken note of - how well spread the top salaries are (evenly between 3 DP's or heavily skewed toward 1 DP) LAG with the highest wage bill were comfortably the best team in regular season play this season while the Red Bulls with a comparable salary only managed mediocrity. The argument should be do we dismiss that single data point or is it a sign that as the salary gap widens(in $ if not percentage terms) so there will be greater correlation between high salary franchises and on field success. When phrased in such a way it seems a no brainer so as I originally asked what is the argument here? Perhaps it is when the tipping point will come and there will be a clearer correlation between wage and PPG? I don't believe that franchises will always be limited to 3 DP's or that those franchises will spread their spending so unevenly upon their top talent in the future but even if that were the case I still feel we will see a clear signal develop that higher spending teams have greater on field success within MLS just as we do in every other soccer league or major sports league for that matter. Pre MLS season, as a counter to those that say the EPL is too predictable (valid argument) I suggested that MLS was rapidly becoming no different when one takes away randomizing effect of the playoffs and that only 3 or 4 teams could be reasonably considered capable of winning the SS this year, one of those being LAG. Currently the beauty of MLS is that those top 4 teams are much more likely to change than in the EPL but even before all the trades and transfers etc get under way for next season is anyone expecting NER to even have a chance of being the top team or LAG of not being at the top? Someone made a good argument that parity is about being able to compete on a level playing field and not having all teams of equal ability and I accept that but in the real world is that what we really see or are MLS rule changes allowing for more and more disparity as they grow the league? Maybe it is better for the league if there is no correlation between spending and on field success because the more that becomes a reality the more strained the parity model of MLS will become.
Beckham was the only Galaxy DP whom I'd categorize as a "glamor" DP. His value is partly on the field, partly off the field. In contrast, both Henry and Marquez are glamor DPs, and their non-glamor DP is a freakin' goalkeeper. If I had to sum up the problem is just a short paragraph, that would be it. NYRB's DPs are mostly for marketing, LA's are mostly for winning.
I didn't miss 2008. Galaxy finished bottom. I believe that was their worst season. You suggesting that Donovan was a defacto DP between 07 and 09, doesn't help your argument much. I'm saying that LA have done well regardless of their salary spend. 6.5 million of their spend goes on Beckham. 9m currently goes on Donovan and Keane. Beckham wasn't present for much of '07 (missed playoffs) or '10 (Supporters Shield), was gone for half of '09 (MLS Cup final, penalty SO loss) and was everpresent in '08 (joint worst record in the league). He's been a great benefit to the team this season, but before that, they've had to cope without him and done well. Indeed, they had an awful season during his only other full campaign in MLS. Given that aside from Beckham and Donovan, LA operated under the same cap as the rest of the league, where is your evidence that the salary has equated to better results?