So this gave me the idea - did teams previously use the expansion draft for depth? How many starters were recruited via the expansion draft ? Do good expansion draft picks lead to first year success? I have summarized my findings in the table below, but before that couple of points: First, if a player recruited via expansion draft has played more than 2000 minutes, I consider him to be a starter; if a player has played more than 1000 minutes, I consider added depth. Any player who has not played 1000 minutes, is probably waste of a draft pick.
Note: I've used PPG as a measure of success because of the number of games in a season varies
| Year | Team | Total minutes | # of players who played 1000+ mins | # of players who played 2000+ mins | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Real Salt Lake | ~7000 | 6 | 1 | 0.63 |
| 2007 | Toronto | 354 | 0 | 0 | 0.83 |
| 2008 | San Jose | 8964 | 5 | 2 | 1.10 |
| 2009 | Seattle | 9412 | 3 | 3 | 1.57 |
| 2010 | Philadelphia | 12146 | 5 | 3 | 1.03 |
| 2011 | Portland | 4211 | 2 | 1 | 1.24 |
| 2011 | Vancouver | 6519 | 3 | 0 | 0.82 |
| 2012 | Montreal | 9633 | 5 | 2 | 1.24 |
Clearly, not many starters were recruited via expansion draft, in fact not many depth players either - only 4 (out of 8) expansion teams were able to recruit 5 or more of their depth players via expansion draft.
Seattle was clearly the most successful team, recruiting three starters via expansion draft - James Riley, Nate Jaqua and Brad Evans. Philadelphia, on the other hand, was just middle of the pack in terms of PPG, though they also recruited 3 starters - Stefani Miglioranzi, Jordan Harvey and Alejandro Moreno. Philadelphia recruited depth players too from the draft; they were clear leaders in terms of minutes played by their expansion draft recruits. Portland managed to find only one starter and just one more depth player, still they did pretty well in their first year, second behind Seattle and tied with Montreal, who did a decent draft (2 starters and 3 depth). So, clearly, recruiting via expansion draft is not the deciding factor of putting together a new team.
Seattle depended on overseas recruitment for their starters including prominent stars as Freddie Ljungberg and Fredy Montero and used their USL team as well for a few starters like Sebastian LeToux. Seems Orlando also believes in that strategy with signings like Kaka and Bryan Rochez in addition to USL star Kevin Molino.
