If you want that extra bit of insight into Major League Soccer, you should be following Tutul Rahman on Twitter. One of the best sources for intriguing nuggets about the value of MLS players and draft picks, Rahman also writes for Pro Soccer USA about these same topics. About a year ago, he took a look at the value of MLS SuperDraft picks by going back through the past few drafts and examining who had succeeded and what level of success they had achieved.
So after Philadelphia Union dealt all five of their 2019 MLS SuperDraft picks to FC Cincinnati, I tracked Tutul down to get his thoughts on the deal, the value exchanged int he deal, and what it might signal about the SuperDraft and how MLS clubs acquire young talent. The interview that follows took place over email and is very lightly edited for clarity (I moved, like, one comma).
Again, I encourage you to follow Tutul on Twitter and track his great work at Pro Soccer USA.
Adam Cann: There have been rumblings that the MLS SuperDraft needs to be changed in some way for years, but the Union's decision to deal all five of their draft picks to Cincinnati in 2019 has led to questions about whether it's justifiable to build a strategy that treats the draft as mostly a way to acquire alternative roster-building mechanisms. In other words, it isn't that the draft has no value, but for certain clubs in certain positions, the flexibility gained avoiding college players may be greater than any value those players can bring. That seems to be the bet the Union made. You took a deep dive into the value of draft picks about a year ago, so I'm curious for your initial thoughts on how the Union approached it.
Tutul Rahman: I think there are two roles for a draft in MLS or any other league. First it’s a way to acquire young talent and secondly to promote parity by giving better assets to worse teams. So by definition, the value of the draft is diminished if there are other ways to acquire young talent like academies. This doesn’t necessarily the amount of talent coming through college has gone differently.
For example, the 2018 draft that’s been panned as being weak since Chris Mueller and maybe Mason Toye were the only ones who made impact for their clubs in year from the draft. But there were 12 college products that signed homegrown contracts in 2018, including Corey Baird, Aaron Harrera, Grant Lillard and Handwalla Bwanna.
So yes a draft pick is worth less, because it only allows you access to college prospects that haven’t gone through an MLS academy which will be less and less for top prospects.
Taking all of that under consideration, if you’re an MLS club that has a full academy pipeline for both your last few MLS slots and your USL side, then a draft pick is really only valuable if its in the top-15 or 20. I think this fits the Union’s strategy, so the trade made sense to me.
AC: After making the trade, the Union pointed fairly directly to its academy as a driver of their decision-making. The argument seems to boil down to: We have more information on academy players than we do on draft picks and academy players are often in an earlier stage of their development cycle than draft picks (and thus have more potential to accrue value over time), therefore the roster can be filled in with academy grads rather than draft picks. Even teams like FC Dallas and New York Red Bulls that have relied heavily on their academies for first team minutes still look at the draft for additional talent, so given the value past SuperDraft picks have provided and the way homegrown players' minutes have increased over recent seasons, how do you view this justification for the trade?
TR: I don’t think if a team has a well run academy necessarily means lower draft picks will be completely worthless. It comes down to if the pipeline has enough talent to cover the supplementary slots in the MLS roster and the USL rosters. New York, for example, has a lot of contributors in their first team from the academy, but they’ve acquired Jean-Christoph Koffi from DC to help supplement the pipeline and then spent draft picks from local colleges. To me, that’s a sign that they believe they can coach up these picks that they know fairly well and that the pipeline from the academy needs a bit of supplementing.
The message from the Philadelphia Union is the opposite, suggesting that their academy pipeline is stocked up fairly well.
AC: Beyond the strategy itself, the return -- $150,000 in GAM, with the potential for another $50,000 -- is interesting. This is the most draft picks that have ever changed hands in a single MLS deal -- how do you assess this return for five draft picks, with the two highest the #13 picks and the #29 pick?
TR: From a pure value standpoint, the #13 and the #29 picks are worth a max of $100k in total. This is basically what RBNY paid FCC for similar picks. The other three picks, #37, #61 and #85 have almost no value from an allocation standpoint. This is exemplified that Cincinnati passed on picking with their #61 and #85. So for Philadelphia to get $150k in GAM, they probably got more in value for their picks than what they’re worth monetarily.
The other way to look at it, $150k was traded to get Victor Ulloa. Statistically speaking, Ulloa is likely to be better than any of the players picked with those draft picks that FC Cincinnati acquired.
So either way you look at it, Philadelphia did well. But its worth mentioning, the amount Philadelphia “won” isn’t super meaningful in the bigger scope of things. $50k in allocation money won’t win a championship.
AC: our article in February 2018, you suggested the SuperDraft may be trending toward the NBA draft model, where the top few picks can still provide good value but there's a steeper drop off after that. A year on, has anything changed that makes you think that trend is changing? Either in the sense that it is accelerating or reversing?
TR: I think its been the NBA Draft model for a while. In the NBA Draft, the first 10 picks are coveted, the first 30 have some value, and picks 30-60 are sort of wildcards and long shots. If you look at the success of players in MLS that were drafted, I think that’s pretty consistent. I don’t think there’s been any MLS pick after #60 that has had meaningful impact in the league.
The difference is that back when the team had 12 teams, the 60th pick would mean 5 rounds. When it had 15 teams, it would mean 4 rounds. Now we’re at 24 teams, headed to 28 or more teams, there are too many picks if there are 4 full rounds. So it’s time to accept the draft should be about two or three rounds now.
AC: One argument for the value of the draft could be that the relationships MLS teams have with USL sides -- whether as team owners or as part of an affiliate relationship -- means that draft picks can now have more time to develop and won't necessarily be asked to make an immediate impact in Major League Soccer. What are your thoughts on this argument, and not necessarily as it relates to the Union so much as to how clubs in general can strategize about the value of the draft?
TR: I think the better question is how MLS teams look at college as a place to find or develop players. More and more top young players are going to go through MLS academies now. Some will be ready to sign into the pros before 18. Some players might be ready at 18 but don’t want to sign relatively cheap USL contracts.
This is where college can play a role to develop players for a year or two and MLS teams can still hold academy rights. Theoretically, college soccer could be the largest U-23 league in the world. So maybe there’s a world where an MLS club like RBNY has partnerships with local colleges where their academy products can get scholarships and the college team plays with the MLS style.
To me, this is has much more upside then spending too much resources on the draft. I think a top-10 pick will always have some value, but probably not much more than that.
