Previously we’ve looked at which teams tend to do well in the MLS Superdraft so I thought it would be fun to look at the relation between managers and the universities that are developing the players.  I’m using percentage minutes played as a proxy for the quality of the draft pick.  I’ve restricted the data to draft picks from the first two rounds from the last 5 years.  There isn’t enough data yet for the 2011 season (rookies tend to see more playing time later in the season) so I have excluded that from the set. Also, to facilitate displaying the graph, I’ve restricted the set down to the current set of managers, not all of whom have draft picks from the first two rounds prior to 2011.  I used to previous linear regression to set a baseline for whether or not a draft pick is under-performing based on their selection number.  The color and size of the nodes indicates on average if draft picks for that entity under or over perform (red=under, white=average, blue=over perform).  The color and size of the edge represents a single draft pick (for example, the thick line between Hans Backe and St. Louis University is Tim Ream).

Some key takeaways:

• Bruce Arena is pretty good at early round draft picks.  He is 3/3 for over-performing picks whereas only Frank Yallop has more than 1 over-performing pick.
• Steve Nicol seems to have lost his touch. Sharlie Joseph, Clint Dempsey and Michael Parkhurt were all drafted prior to the 5 year window we’re examining.
• Jason Kreis is really bad at drafting.  This could be because RSL has been relatively successful over the last few seasons and have gotten low first round picks.  It is harder to identify good talent in the later stages of the first two rounds than it is in the first 5-10 spots.  What’s remarkable is that RSL have found ways to assemble a talented team outside of the draft.
• Sigi Schmid is also really bad at drafting.  The only pick he’s had from the first two rounds that has over-performed was Steve Zakuani, the 2009 #1 pick (about as easy a choice as they come).  Technically Schmid wasn’t even the manager of the Sounders when that decision was made so his true numbers are even worse than they appear.