Trying to put a statistical measure on the importance of the SuperDraft has become an annual tradition at The 24th Minute and, now, CSN. With many people predicting that the draft will reduce in importance in coming years, we will continue to look for a statistical representation to analyse that theory.
It’s an ongoing thing – we are always looking for ways to improve how we look at the numbers and welcome and encourage feedback.
We will publish a full analysis of the last 13 drafts in the first week of January. You can read how we did it in 2012 here.
However, as a preview to that article (and, as a way to call for the statistically inclined to lend a hand) we are providing a look back at the 2012 draft.
Who were the winners and losers? Find out below the jump.
To see just how useful the draft is at finding players we used the objective stat of total appearances. Although there is more to a player than just simply getting on the field, appearances are fully objective – either you’re playing, or not. And, you are of no use to a team if you’re not.
Over the course of a career these numbers become more relevant. So, this in no way attempts to predict what will happen to the 2012 picks in the future. Rather, it looks at how strong the pick was for 2012.
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We categorized the players into four levels of success – exceptional, solid, poor and failure. An exceptional player appeared in at least 75 per cent of games last year. Solid players appeared in 50 to 74 per cent of games, poor picks appeared in 25 to 49 per cent and failures appeared in less than 25 per cent.
In real numbers:
2012 - More than 22 (exceptional), 15-22 (solid), 8-14 (poor), less than 8 (failure)
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1 Montreal Impact Andrew Wenger 23
- 2 Vancouver Whitecaps FC Darren Mattocks 21
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3 New England Revolution Kelyn Rowe 30
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4 Toronto FC Luis Silva 30
- 5 Chivas USA Casey Townsend 17
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6 San Jose Earthquakes Sam Garza 3
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7 D.C. United Nick DeLeon 28
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8 Portland Timbers Andrew Jean-Baptiste 5
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9 Chicago Fire Austin Berry 28
- 10 Columbus Crew Ethan Finlay 15
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11 FC Dallas Matt Hedges 28
- 12 Toronto FC Aaron Maund 15
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13 Philadelphia Union Chandler Hoffman 7
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14 Colorado Rapids Tony Cascio 29
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15 Seattle Sounders FC Andrew Duran 0
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16 Sporting Kansas City Dom Dwyer 1
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17 Real Salt Lake Enzo Martinez 0
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18 Houston Dynamo Colin Rolfe 0
- 19 Los Angeles Galaxy Tommy Meyer 8
Bold = Exceptional
Italics = failure
The numbers:
7 Exceptional picks
4 Solid picks
1 Poor pick
7 Failure picks
Again, these are early stats. Some of these players will switch designations moving forward – Mattocks is an obvious pick that jumps out – but the numbers are in line with what we found by looking at the historical data. Namely, it’s as likely that you will pick a failure as it is you’ll get an exceptional player.
The exception is the top five. There, this past year’s 60 percent success rate was above the historic data that showed 43.3 per cent of top five picks turning out to be exceptional (the results have now bumped it up to 46.1 percent).
Over the first 11 years picks 6-10 yielded a 28.3 per cent (17/60) and just four picks, or 12.5 per cent (4/32) above 10th overall turned out to be exceptional in the past.
This year we saw better results across the board – 2/5 (40%) and 2/9 (22%).
Can we expect that trend to continue next year? Lets look at the 2011 stats and add 2012 data to them to draw some conclusions
P - Omar Salgado – 14 – Vancouver (2012 appearances – 7)–(total – 21) P
E - Darlington Nagbe – 28 – Portland (33) (61) - E
E - Perry Kitchen – 31 – DC United (32) (63) - E
E - Zarek Valentin – 25 – Chivas (15) (40) - S
P - Zach MacMath – 8 – Philly (32) (40) - S
E - A. J. Soares – 28 – New England (30) (58) - E
F - Kofi Sarkodie – 7 – Houston (10) (17) - P
F - Michael Nanchoff – 5 – Vancouver (8) (13)- F
E - Jalil Anibaba – 29 – Chicago (33) (62) - E
E - C. J. Sapong – 34 – Kansas City (31) (65) - E
E - Will Bruin – 27 – Houston (30) (57) - E
S - Rich Balchan – 19 – Columbus (0) (19) - P
F - Corey Hertzog – 5 – New York (0)(5) - F
P - Víctor Mairongo – 9 – Chivas (0) (9) - F
S - Justin Meram – 17 – Columbus (18)(35) - S
S - Paolo Cardozo – 18 – Los Angeles (9) (27) - P
S - Bobby Warshaw – 17 – Dallas (6) (23) - P
F - Eddie Ababio – 0 – Colorado (0) (0) - F
The numbers for two-year players are:
More than 44 (exceptional), 30-44 (solid), 15-29 (poor), less than 15 (failure)
When we did this last year there were 7 Exceptional picks, 4 Solid picks, 3 Poor picks and 4 failures. Now, there are 6 exceptional picks dropped down to a solid pick), 3 solid picks, 5 poor picks and 4 failures.
In total, seven players move distinctions, but only two either moved up from a poor pick or down from an exceptional. Four went either from solid to poor, or poor to failure. That would seem to indicate that if you have picked a potential star, you should know fairly quickly and that if a player isn’t contributing right away it seems unlikely that he’s going to quickly turn that around.
As said, this is just an early look at the numbers. We will go into it much deeper in January. If you have any insight into how to look at the data differetly, please contact me at duanegrollins@gmail.com.