Trading scorecard of MLS teams

In the previous post, I mentioned that I would go in-depth about the anomalies behind the performance of MLS teams and their player recruitment scorecard - Superdraft and overseas combined. I think I have found why teams like Real Salt lake and San Jose have done so well even though they did not recruit that many quality players through Superdraft and overseas recruitment.

Let's take a look at the third source of player recruitment - trade, specially the trades that have resulted in the receiving team having a player in the top 100 PAR list from 2011 onwards. Both Real Salt Lake and San Jose Earthquake have managed to lure away 5 elite players from other teams! RSL's best trade is Kyle Beckerman from Colorado and Earthquake's best trade is Chris Wondolowski  from Houston! By comparison, Dallas has gained 3 players via trade and two of them have not made any contribution in last two years. They are sort of middle of the pack (11th in points earned last 3 seasons) even though their combined Superdraft and overseas recruitment scorecard is pretty good - 5 th.

Team	Number of players recruited via trades who have made the top 150 list at least  one of the seasons 2011 or 2012 or 2013	Player (highest PAR position, best year) - year of trade
Chicago	3	Mike Magee (4, 2013)  - 2013 Dominic Oduro (19, 2011) - 2011 Dilly Duka (54, 2013) - 2013
Chivas	3	Juan Pablo Angel (41, 2011) - 2011 Nick LaBrocca (48, 2011) - 2011 Heath Pearce (75, 2011) - 2011
Colorado	5	Drew Moor (2, 2011) - 2009 Marvell Wynne (30, 2011) - 2010 Jeff Larentowicz (45, 2011) - 2010 Nathan Sturgis (61, 2013) - 2013 Matt Pickens (67, 2012) - 2009
Columbus	2	Dominic Oduro (23, 2013) - 2013 Eddie Gaven (47, 2011) - 2006
DC United	2	Dwayne DeRosario (26, 2011) - 2011 Maicon Santos (58, 2012) - 2012
Dallas	3	Ugo Ihemelu (9, 2011) - 2009 Kevin Hartman (41, 2012) - 2010 Maicon Santos (53, 2011) - 2011
Houston	4	Bobby Boswell (6, 2011) - 2008 Macoumba Kandji (44, 2012) - 2012 Brad Davis (44, 2011) - 2005 Calen Carr (57, 2012) - 2011
LA Galaxy	2	Todd Dunivant (27, 2011) - 2009 Edson Buddle (96, 2012) - 2012
Montreal	1	Troy Perkins (54, 2012) - 2012
New England	0
New York	3	Kenny Cooper (14, 2012) - 2012 Fabian Espindola (64, 2013) - 2013 Jamison Olave (68, 2013) - 2013
Philadelphia	2	Conor Casey (30, 2013) - 2013 Sebastien Le Toux (69, 2013) - 2012
Portland	5	Donovan Ricketts(1, 2013) - 2012 Ryan Johnson (24, 2013) - 2013 Rodney Wallace (60, 2013) - 2011 Will Johnson (65, 2013) - 2013 Jack Jewsbury (80, 2011) - 2011
Real Salt Lake	5	Nick Rimando (5, 2013) - 2006 Kyle Beckerman (50, 2013) - 2007 Will Johnson (59, 2011) - 2008 Robbie Findley (71, 2013) - 2007 Chris Wingert (98, 2011) - 2007
San Jose Earthquakes	5	Chris Wondolowski (2, 2012) - 2009 Steven Lenhart (4, 2012) - 2011 Alan Gordon (8, 2012) - 2011 Shea Salinas (52, 2013) - 2012 Marvin Chavez (100, 2012) - 2012
Seattle	2	Eddie Johnson (13, 2013) - 2012 Lamar Neagle (22, 2013) - 2013
Sporting Kansas City	3	Kei Kamara (6, 2012) - 2009 Ike Opara (35, 2013) - 2013 Benny Feilhaber (39, 2013) - 2013
Toronto	2	Ryan Johnson (39, 2012) - 2011 Milos Kocic (66, 2011) - 2010
Vancouver	1	Brad Knighton (57, 2013) - 2012

3 Year team performance and combined (Superdraft plus overseas) recruitment scorecard of MLS teams

First, here is a table I made to rank the overall team performance of all MLS teams over the last three years. Excluded Montreal since they joined only in 2012.

Team	Points 2011+12+13	Rank
Chicago	43 + 57 + 49 = 149	8
Chivas	36 + 30 + 26 = 92	17
Colorado	49 + 37 + 51 = 137	10
Columbus	47 + 52 + 41 = 140	9
DC United	38 + 59 + 16 = 113	16
Dallas	52 + 39 + 44 = 135	11
Houston	49 + 53 + 51 = 153	7
LA Galaxy	67 + 54 + 53 = 174	1
New England	28 + 35 + 51 = 114	15
New York	46 + 57 + 59 = 162	5
Philadelphia	48 + 36 + 46 = 130	13
Portland	42 + 34 + 57 = 133	12
Real Salt Lake	53 + 57 + 56 = 166	4
San Jose Earthquakes	38 + 66 + 51 = 155	6
Seattle	63 + 56 + 52 = 171	3
Sporting Kansas City	51 + 63 + 58 =172	2
Toronto	33 + 23 + 29 = 85	18
Vancouver	28 + 43 + 48 =  119	14

Next, I added the quality players (based on PAR rating) recruited from Drafts and overseas. I included players drafted via Superdraft and overseas since 2009, for Portland and Vancouver, since 2011. The first row in the table is of course no surprise - LA Galaxy has twice won MLS Cup in last 3 years and they managed to recruit 15 top quality players via Superdraft or overseas, including players like Omar Gonzalvez and Robbie Keane. In the top one third of the table, (1-6), there are couple of surprises though. Performance rank of Real Salt Lake is 4th, but their combined recruitment scorecard is 12th! Even stranger anomaly is 6th position holder San Jose Earthquakes, their combined recruitment score card is 17th of 18 teams, only recruited 6 quality players via Superdraft and from overseas clubs!

I will look at this anomaly at a future post.

Team	Superdraft players + overseas recruits = Total	Rank(Total)
1. LA Galaxy	6 + 9  = 15	1-T
2. Sporting Kansas City	6 + 6  = 12	7-T
3. Seattle	2 + 12 = 14	3-T
4. Real Salt Lake	3 + 6 = 9	12-T
5. New York	4 + 11 = 15	1-T
6. San Jose Earthquakes	4 + 2 = 6	17-T
7. Houston	4 + 5 = 9	12-T
8. Chicago Fire	4 + 6 = 10	9-T
9. Columbus	3 + 6 = 9	12-T
10. Colorado	3 + 3 = 6	17-T
11. Dallas	4 + 9 = 13	5-T
12. Portland	2 + 6 = 8	15
13. Philadelphia	7 + 3 = 10	9-T
14. Vancouver	2 + 10 = 12	7-T
15. New England	9 + 5  = 14	3-T
16. DC United	6 + 1 = 7	16
17. Chivas	6 + 4 = 10	9-T
18. Toronto	6 + 7  = 13	5-T

A lot of things stand out from this list. San Jose is in the top third but are tied for last in overall player recruits. Dallas is tied for fifth but is stuck in the second third and New England are tied for third but dwell in the bottom third. I'll address these issues in the next post.

Overseas player recruitment scorecard of MLS teams

In my previous post about the Superdraft, I showed that some teams drafted better than others based on Superdrafts from 2010 to 2012. But, some teams like Seattle have done very well even though they did not find any gems in Superdrafts between 2010 to 2012; only one of their recruits (Alex Caskey) has played more than 1000 minutes in his first two years So why is that? There are multiple ways to acquire talent and now I'll take a look at another source - international players.

I'll take a look at another source of talent - overseas clubs. Most clubs have at least couple of their starters recruited internationally, mostly from CONCACAF countries or South American countries though rich clubs like LA and New York have recruited some of the top players from Europe.

Not all overseas recruits make an impact for their MLS clubs though, in fact less than half have done it. I have made a list of overseas players who have made to either  Castrol Index or PAR list in at least one of the years from 2011 to 2013. PAR list is not widely known, so let me tell a bit about it. It stands for Points Above Replacement and was created by Dave Laidig, and is modeled after baseball’s Wins Above Replacement  (WAR) stats. More details can be found at www.par-stat.com. I found that the list of names are mostly common but a few players who have played very well for few games but didn't play much did not make it to the Castrol Index list but made it to the PAR list. This is because Castrol Index gives high weight to number of minutes played. One example is Vancouver's Kekuta Manneh (recruited via Superdraft)

Team	Number of overseas recruits who has made the top 150 list at least  one of the seasons 2011 or 2012 or 2013	Three best overseas recruits
Chicago	6	Marco Pappa Arne Friedrich Alex
Chivas	4	Maicon Santos Erick Torres Michael Umana
Colorado	3	Hendry Thomas Jaime Castrillon Jamie Smith
Columbus	6	Federico Higuaín Jairo Arrieta Emilio Renteria
DC United	1	Hamdi Salihi
Dallas	9	David Ferreira Jair Benitez Marvin Chavez
Houston	5	Oscar Boniek García Jermaine Taylor Lovel Palmer
LA Galaxy	9	Robbie Keane David Beckham Juninho
Montreal	6	Marco Di Vaio Felipe Martins Alessandro Nesta
New England	5	Jose Gonçalves Saer Sene Jerry Bengtson
New York	11	Tim Cahill Thierry Henry Juan Pablo Angel
Philadelphia	3	Lionard Pajoy Keon Daniel Carlos Valdes
Portland	6	Diego Valeri Pa-Modou Kah Diego Chara
Real Salt Lake	6	Javier Morales Fabian Espindola Jamison Olave
San Jose Earthquakes	2	Victor Bernardez Simon Dawkins
Seattle	12	Osvaldo Alonso Mauro Rosales Fredy Montero
Sporting Kansas City	6	Aurelien Collin Jimmy Nielsen Oriol Rosell
Toronto	7	Danny Kovermans Adrian Cann Robert Earnshaw
Vancouver	10	Camilo Gershon Koffie Lee Young-Pyo

-One of the tools many MLS clubs utilize is agent Alejandro Taraciuk. Taracuik is a former MLS intern-turned-agent who helped establish Real Salt Lake's 2009 championship team by recommending Fabian Espindola, Javier Morales, and Jamison Olave. Taracuik pratically represents MLS in South America; he also brought Jorge Perlaza, Diego Chara, and Diego Valeri to Portland as well as Fredy Montero and Jhon Kennedy Hurtado to Seattle. Taraciuk also said, "I have been responsible for bringing approximately 70 players to the league and without doubt Diego Valeri is one of the best players I have placed in MLS." It would be interesting to find the role of agents in international players coming in. Teams also seem to focus around certain regions like Montreal in Italy.

-It is worth noting that there is no direct co-relation between recruiting quality players from overseas clubs and success in MLS. Dallas has recruited 9 international players and  Vancouver has 10 players who have been starters for them, still they had far less success than San Jose, who have just two significant overseas recruits during the same period - and Simon Dawkins of them was on loan from parent club Tottenham. So really they just have Victor Bernardez to show for.

So, there are more ways to assemble a good team, than drafting and overseas scouting. I'll cover it in a future post.