2019 Roster Discussion

[ZYanksRule]

It's sell high time with Sweat. Call up one of the many teams in the league with limited player evaluation resources and go how would you like a guy that started all last year for a playoff team and just got his first USMNT call up? Even if you're in the Sweat is good value camp it's time to pull the trigger as the guy's about to get a substantial raise that's going to price him way beyond what his actual skill warrants.

You would also think his spot is going to be one Reyna looks at upgrading. Certainly would seem to make sense.

 

[Christopher Jee]

Remember when we were linked with Ruidiaz? He has 13 goals in 16 matches. We need to bring in somebody of that caliber to hedge against David's production falling off.

 

[dummyrun]

Remember when we were linked with Ruidiaz? He has 13 goals in 16 matches. We need to bring in somebody of that caliber to hedge against David's production falling off.

Ruidíaz was a great signing but I don't see us shelling out that kind of $7.5m transfer fee for a guy with no sell-on prospects. I wouldn't be surprised to see us replace Villa with a Young DP, even though that would leave some big questions at striker (and in the marketing department).

 

[Kjbert]

Will be exciting to see who we protect in the expansion draft

 

[Marito]

Ruidíaz was a great signing but I don't see us shelling out that kind of $7.5m transfer fee for a guy with no sell-on prospects. I wouldn't be surprised to see us replace Villa with a Young DP, even though that would leave some big questions at striker (and in the marketing department).

Ruidiaz just turned 28, so if he keeps scoring in MLS like he did this season and for the 2 previous years in Liga MX, I think you could sell him at 31 or 32, maybe not for 7.5 Million, but for 4M or 5M. If PSG and the rest of the big boys keep on inflating the market you may break even or make a slight profit selling him in 2021. He's no flash in the pan. He's a proven scorer at this level. Of course he's not available, but buying somebody certifiable and in his prime for 7 to 10 million (somebody whose ceiling for stardom is probably MLS or Liga MX) could net the same or slightly less if the player does well with us and his reputation doesn't diminish. The value loss between 26 and 31 is not great. The problem is after 31 or 32 y.o. Of course there are no guarantees and somebody who starred in MX may not do the same here, but the risk isn't great. IMHO

 

[dummyrun]

Ruidiaz just turned 28, so if he keeps scoring in MLS like he did this season and for the 2 previous years in Liga MX, I think you could sell him at 31 or 32, maybe not for 7.5 Million, but for 4M or 5M. If PSG and the rest of the big boys keep on inflating the market you may break even or make a slight profit selling him in 2021. He's no flash in the pan. He's a proven scorer at this level. Of course he's not available, but buying somebody certifiable and in his prime for 7 to 10 million (somebody whose ceiling for stardom is probably MLS or Liga MX) could net the same or slightly less if the player does well with us and his reputation doesn't diminish. The value loss between 26 and 31 is not great. The problem is after 31 or 32 y.o. Of course there are no guarantees and somebody who starred in MX may not do the same here, but the risk isn't great. IMHO

Not a knock on Ruidíaz but I'm not sure the market you're describing exists. The only remotely comparable sales in MLS history are Jermain Defoe and Obafemi Martins. One's obviously different because of his history with England and the Premier League, and the other was a one-off to a Chinese market that's been cooling off lately. The other leagues in our tier are selling leagues, and it's just hard to imagine who's going to pay a $5m fee right now on a 30+ player who spent his prime in MLS. Maybe that changes in five or ten years, I don't know.

 

[Christopher Jee]

Ruidíaz was a great signing but I don't see us shelling out that kind of $7.5m transfer fee for a guy with no sell-on prospects. I wouldn't be surprised to see us replace Villa with a Young DP, even though that would leave some big questions at striker (and in the marketing department).

Can we not massage the figures to indicate that the success that a signing of that caliber would bring >= the depreciation in their value? Are players even handled that way on the books and if so, isn't also tax deductible?

If we sign another so-so young DP who gets bodied off the ball unconscionably often, I worry about what it would do for our support. Football as a business is fine as long as you remember that the whole thing falls apart if you aren't creating a product that can win the hearts and minds of its audience. I'm also not sure how well our cheaply-bought assets will appreciate if they aren't associated with a winning team.

 

[SoupInNYC]

Can we not massage the figures to indicate that the success that a signing of that caliber would bring >= the depreciation in their value? Are players even handled that way on the books and if so, isn't also tax deductible?

If we sign another so-so young DP who gets bodied off the ball unconscionably often, I worry about what it would do for our support. Football as a business is fine as long as you remember that the whole thing falls apart if you aren't creating a product that can win the hearts and minds of its audience. I'm also not sure how well our cheaply-bought assets will appreciate if they aren't associated with a winning team.

I'm not certain dummyrun was massaging any figures or saying that pursuing a guy like Ruidiaz would be a bad option. Just that he doesn't see NYCFC making a move like that.

Also, financially, player's transfer fees are amortized over the life of the contract, and ultimately, that is "tax deductible", but so are salaries as those are all expenses the club is incurring. It seems like your question is about a player's market value and that depreciating and whether that is deductible or not and I don't see how that would be.

Fully agree on your last paragraph.

 

[Christopher Jee]

I'm not certain dummyrun was massaging any figures or saying that pursuing a guy like Ruidiaz would be a bad option. Just that he doesn't see NYCFC making a move like that.

Also, financially, player's transfer fees are amortized over the life of the contract, and ultimately, that is "tax deductible", but so are salaries as those are all expenses the club is incurring. It seems like your question is about a player's market value and that depreciating and whether that is deductible or not and I don't see how that would be.

Fully agree on your last paragraph.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that dummyrun was massaging figures. I was imploring somebody at NYCFC to massage the figures in favor of a bigger acquisition.

It sounds like financially, things work more or less as I thought, which I think softens the blow of spending a bit more money.

With attendance dropping at an alarming rate and a new stadium some years away, I wouldn't think it would be that hard to make the case. Unless the club are just straight up pessimistic that the audience cares about how the team plays.

 

[dummyrun]

Can we not massage the figures to indicate that the success that a signing of that caliber would bring >= the depreciation in their value?

Sure, let's toss around some figures.

Say you're looking at two players:

Player A is a veteran DP, 29 years old, coming to us from a midtable Serie A side. His transfer fee is $7m and his annual wage is $2m. He's looking at a 3-year contract.

Player B is a young DP, 20 years old, coming from Uruguay. He costs $4m and his annual wage is $1m. He'd also come on a 3-year contract.

Player A is a known quantity. Imagine, just to simplify this hypo, that soccer has a workable Wins Above Replacement stat. You've crunched the numbers and expect that his performance curve looks something like a 25% chance of 4 WAR per season, 50% 5 WAR, 25% 6 WAR, for an average of 5 WAR per season or 15 WAR over the 3 years of his deal. At $13m over the life of his contract, you're paying $0.9m per win.

Player B is more of a gamble. You expect he'll get better as time goes on, but your projections for him look something like 10% 0 WAR, 20% 1, 25% 2, 20% 3, 15% 4, 10% 5, for an average of 2.4 WAR per season or 7.2 WAR over 3 years. At $7m over the life of his contract, that's $1.0m per win.

So far Player A looks like the clear winner. But now you start doing some math on your exit options. Let's say there's a 10% chance you sell on your 32-year-old DP at $2m, 30% you get $1m, and 60% you get nothing. That offsets his expected cost by $0.5m, so you figure you're paying $12.5m for those 15 WAR, or $0.8m per win.

But Player B's already had some interest from Europe. By age 23, after a few solid seasons developing in MLS, you expect there's a 20% chance you've doubled his fee to $8m, a 50% chance you can sell him on at a break-even $4m, and a 30% chance he's stagnated and is effectively worthless. You've offset his expected cost by $3.6m, bringing his rate down to $3.4m for 7.2 WAR, or $0.5m per win.

Now your Uruguayan kid's looking like a real bargain, even factoring in the uncertainty. You've left 7.8 wins over 3 seasons on the table, but you've also got $8.6m left in the bank. Even if you purchased those remaining wins at Player A's sure-thing vet rate, they'd cost you $6.5m, leaving you a $2.1m surplus. So go with Player B, right?

Maybe. Like you pointed out, there are still some complicating factors beyond the uncertainty around performance and transfer fees. One big one is the salary cap, which makes it hard to spend that extra $6.5m over 3 years to make up the projected WAR gap. Here the Young DP rule helps, since under the current roster rules you'd get an extra $1.0m in cap space over 3 years if you went with Player B. But you'd still really have to stretch your allocation money to find room to spend another $5.5m to balance out the WAR.

The part that's harder to put a number on is your concern about support. Is Player A going to put more butts in seats because he's a better, more proven player? Or will people turn out to see Player B to say they knew him when? And what's the ballpark range for a single player's drawing power in dollars? If we use Maxi and Medina as the closest analogues on our roster right now, it seems to me people care more about Maxi, but that could change if Medina grows over the next year or two, and neither's much of a draw compared to Villa anyway.

Here's my thinking on all this: Player A and Player B are both solid options. Maxi and Ruidíaz are good, Medina and Diego Rossi are good, and MLS could use more signings like all of these guys. Since we've already got one Player B type on the roster, I might be inclined to take the higher WAR guy. On the other hand, it's risky to put all your eggs, etc. etc., and maybe you want to spread the WAR around when Dome does a rebuild. Plus it's super fun to root for kids and watch them grow and maybe see them become that midtable Serie A player in the future. I guess I'm good with whatever. But given what we've seen from NYCFC lately, I think they'd want to try to snag the bonus $2.1m that comes with Player B in our made up scenario. Just seems like where we're headed.

So anyway, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see us replace Villa with a Young DP.

 

[Christopher Jee]

Sure, let's toss around some figures.

Say you're looking at two players:

Player A is a veteran DP, 29 years old, coming to us from a midtable Serie A side. His transfer fee is $7m and his annual wage is $2m. He's looking at a 3-year contract.

Player B is a young DP, 20 years old, coming from Uruguay. He costs $4m and his annual wage is $1m. He'd also come on a 3-year contract.

Player A is a known quantity. Imagine, just to simplify this hypo, that soccer has a workable Wins Above Replacement stat. You've crunched the numbers and expect that his performance curve looks something like a 25% chance of 4 WAR per season, 50% 5 WAR, 25% 6 WAR, for an average of 5 WAR per season or 15 WAR over the 3 years of his deal. At $13m over the life of his contract, you're paying $0.9m per win.

Player B is more of a gamble. You expect he'll get better as time goes on, but your projections for him look something like 10% 0 WAR, 20% 1, 25% 2, 20% 3, 15% 4, 10% 5, for an average of 2.4 WAR per season or 7.2 WAR over 3 years. At $7m over the life of his contract, that's $1.0m per win.

So far Player A looks like the clear winner. But now you start doing some math on your exit options. Let's say there's a 10% chance you sell on your 32-year-old DP at $2m, 30% you get $1m, and 60% you get nothing. That offsets his expected cost by $0.5m, so you figure you're paying $12.5m for those 15 WAR, or $0.8m per win.

But Player B's already had some interest from Europe. By age 23, after a few solid seasons developing in MLS, you expect there's a 20% chance you've doubled his fee to $8m, a 50% chance you can sell him on at a break-even $4m, and a 30% chance he's stagnated and is effectively worthless. You've offset his expected cost by $3.6m, bringing his rate down to $3.4m for 7.2 WAR, or $0.5m per win.

Now your Uruguayan kid's looking like a real bargain, even factoring in the uncertainty. You've left 7.8 wins over 3 seasons on the table, but you've also got $8.6m left in the bank. Even if you purchased those remaining wins at Player A's sure-thing vet rate, they'd cost you $6.5m, leaving you a $2.1m surplus. So go with Player B, right?

Maybe. Like you pointed out, there are still some complicating factors beyond the uncertainty around performance and transfer fees. One big one is the salary cap, which makes it hard to spend that extra $6.5m over 3 years to make up the projected WAR gap. Here the Young DP rule helps, since under the current roster rules you'd get an extra $1.0m in cap space over 3 years if you went with Player B. But you'd still really have to stretch your allocation money to find room to spend another $5.5m to balance out the WAR.

The part that's harder to put a number on is your concern about support. Is Player A going to put more butts in seats because he's a better, more proven player? Or will people turn out to see Player B to say they knew him when? And what's the ballpark range for a single player's drawing power in dollars? If we use Maxi and Medina as the closest analogues on our roster right now, it seems to me people care more about Maxi, but that could change if Medina grows over the next year or two, and neither's much of a draw compared to Villa anyway.

Here's my thinking on all this: Player A and Player B are both solid options. Maxi and Ruidíaz are good, Medina and Diego Rossi are good, and MLS could use more signings like all of these guys. Since we've already got one Player B type on the roster, I might be inclined to take the higher WAR guy. On the other hand, it's risky to put all your eggs, etc. etc., and maybe you want to spread the WAR around when Dome does a rebuild. Plus it's super fun to root for kids and watch them grow and maybe see them become that midtable Serie A player in the future. I guess I'm good with whatever. But given what we've seen from NYCFC lately, I think they'd want to try to snag the bonus $2.1m that comes with Player B in our made up scenario. Just seems like where we're headed.

So anyway, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see us replace Villa with a Young DP.

This is a great write-up. IMO a few caveats:

1) I don't blame you for not trying to model the revenue attached to wins. Especially since the relationship isn't likely to be linear. But without this, we aren't able to compare apples to apples ($ due to WAR and $ outlaid) and are trading off blindly between WAR and $. My suspicion is that WAR are much scarcer than $ for our particular ownership group, though

2) We also assume that WAR per player is independent of WAR for another player.

3) We assume that $ is independent of WAR. I imagine that incoming transfer fees increase with increasing WAR.

At this point the analysis probably becomes too much effort.

 

[Marito]

It's important to note also that neither Maxi nor Medina put butts on seats out of name recognition, which is probably the only factor that guarantees an immediate, glamour bump. Over time, if they perform great, they might. But probably not (case in point is our first half of the season, when we were playing our best soccer and still attendance was down compared to the losing days of Pirlo and Lampard)
MLS cannot afford elite stars in their prime with transfer fees of $40 million or more, the ones that casual fans want to see. So the only route to glamorization is aging stars, which is a proposition that has a 25% chance of soccer success, at best. The only other route I can think of is National Team stars from smaller teams (Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, etc) that have a substantial fanbase in the region. Most recognized names in a starting lineup for Mexico or Colombia would probably be too expensive. Chicharito for example is kind of an in-between, not totally finished but aging, super popular, probably expensive.
Then again, ORL has known nothing but failure and still brings more people to their stadium than us, so...

 

[EganSoccerWords]

Will be exciting to see who we protect in the expansion draft

You mean not protect.

 

[dummyrun]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1061358852246044672

 

[Ulrich]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1061358852246044672

Considering how cheap he’s been for two years as a starter, he’s more than earned that raise (and it’s probably nearly-automatic per the CBA).

He’s gonna look great playing in Cincy when they trade for him.

 

[adam]

Considering how cheap he’s been for two years as a starter, he’s more than earned that raise (and it’s probably nearly-automatic per the CBA).

He’s gonna look great playing in Cincy when they trade for him.

Or take him in the expansion draft. $50k in GAM for a $200k LB looks pretty fair now.

 

[dummyrun]

Or take him in the expansion draft. $50k in GAM for a $200k LB looks pretty fair now.

Still think we could probably trade him for more, but yeah, this makes him more likely to be left unprotected and it could be a good deal for all parties if Cincy took him.

 

[canchon]

Still think we could probably trade him for more, but yeah, this makes him more likely to be left unprotected and it could be a good deal for all parties if Cincy took him.

Bingo. If Mata is still with the team at the time of the expansion draft you protect him and not Sweat.

 

[dummyrun]

Bingo. If Mata is still with the team at the time of the expansion draft you protect him and not Sweat.

There was some conversation about expansion draft protection lists here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NYCFC/comments/9vlxk9/fc_cincinnati_expansion_draft_who_will_nycfc/

derek_villa suggested we don't need to protect our loanees. That sort of makes sense, but I think Ofori and Taty are buy options and it's not clear to me when that would kick in. It's also up in the air what's going to happen with Herrera. Depending on how the pieces fall, it looks like there's a good chance we'll be able to protect both Mata and Sweat, but if we do that I expect we'll trade one of them.

 

[SoupInNYC]

There was some conversation about expansion draft protection lists here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NYCFC/comments/9vlxk9/fc_cincinnati_expansion_draft_who_will_nycfc/

derek_villa suggested we don't need to protect our loanees. That sort of makes sense, but I think Ofori and Taty are buy options and it's not clear to me when that would kick in. It's also up in the air what's going to happen with Herrera. Depending on how the pieces fall, it looks like there's a good chance we'll be able to protect both Mata and Sweat, but if we do that I still think we'll trade one of them.

I put some thoughts on who we may and may not protect here:
http://nycfcforums.com/index.php?threads/2018-mls-expansion-draft.6436/#post-264299