Roster Turnover

Posted in xn--kfs74mzzid01b.com edit by mike on January 9th, 2009

I'm interested in looking at how rosters are changing in MLS from year to year; it's not really a question of whether or not teams win games (I doubt we'd see much correlation), but of how the league is changing. However, I'm having some doubts about what would be the best way to do this, so I thought I'd solicit the opinion of the board.

I can think of two ways to look at how rosters are changing, though I'd imagine there are more. One would be comparing the rosters (or, because I don't have that information, the players who have played at least one minute) of the teams from different years.

To illustrate, here's how Columbus's 2002 and 2003 rosters would look:

Player Name 2002 2003 Both
Dunseth, Brian 1 1 2
M'neuve, Brian 1 1 2
Torres, Daniel 1 1 2
C'ham, Jeff 1 1 2
West, Brian 1 1 2
Denton, Eric 1 1 2
Oughton, Duncan 1 1 2
Clark, Mike 1 1 2
Martino, Kyle 1 1 2
Presthus, Tom 1 1 2
Buddle, Edson 1 1 2
Perez, John 1 0 1
Mcbride, Brian 1 1 2
Busch, Jon...... 1 1 2
McCarty, Chad 1 1 2
W'ton, Dante 1 0 1
Leitch, Chris 1 0 1
Harkes, John 1 0 1
Warzycha, Robert 1 0 1
Garcia, Freddy 1 1 2
Lapper, Mike 1 0 1
Yeagley, Todd 1 0 1
Matteo, Jeff 1 1 2
Paule, Ross 0 1 1
Hejduk, Frankie 0 1 1
Walsh, Diego 0 1 1
Akwari, Nelson 0 1 1
Williams, Mark 0 1 1
Chacon, Alex 0 1 1
Perea, Trevor 0 1 1
Ritch, Michael 0 1 1
Traeger, Jake 0 1 1
Number playing 23 25 16

So, if you look it this as from 2002 to 2003, you have 16 of 23 players playing both years, 7 new players. However, if you look at it from 2003 to 2002, you get 16 of 25 players playing both years, 9 new players. I'd imagine it would be obvious that you want to use 9, but I have no idea how to quantify this.

Things get significantly harder when you use minutes played instead of rostered players:

Columbus team 2002 2003 2002-2003 2003-2002
Dunseth, Brian 2436 1589 847 0
M'neuve, Brian 2238 1730 508 0
Torres, Daniel 2085 562 1523 0
C'ham, Jeff 1962 1405 557 0
West, Brian 1944 1543 401 0
Denton, Eric 1875 2336 0 461
Oughton, Duncan 1608 1717 0 109
Clark, Mike 1599 2673 0 1074
Martino, Kyle 1455 1765 0 310
Presthus, Tom 1365 613 752 0
Buddle, Edson 1304 1509 0 205
W. Perez, John 1256 0 1256 0
Mcbride, Brian 1239 2183 0 944
Busch, Jon...... 1236 2194 0 958
McCarty, Chad 1176 1226 0 50
W'ngton, Dante 1122 0 1122 0
Leitch, Chris 989 0 989 0
Harkes, John 739 0 739 0
Warzycha, Robert 495 0 495 0
Garcia, Freddy 215 1278 0 1063
Lapper, Mike 141 0 141 0
Yeagley, Todd 74 0 74 0
Matteo, Jeff 14 286 0 272
Paule, Ross 0 2212 0 2212
Hejduk, Frankie 0 2128 0 2128
Walsh, Diego 0 612 0 612
Akwari, Nelson 0 488 0 488
Williams, Mark 0 391 0 391
P. Chacon, Alex 0 325 0 325
Perea, Trevor 0 34 0 34
Ritch, Michael 0 21 0 21
Traeger, Jake 0 12 0 12
28567 30832 9404 11669

Hopefully this is clear. The first two rows are the minutes played by player x in 2002 and 2003. The third row is their 2002 minutes - their 2003 minutes; if the number is less than 0, though, it simply becomes 0; otherwise, you end up with just +/- 28567-30832. I'm not sure that is the right way to do this at all, however (in fact, I really doubt it).

A better way might be to take whichever is the lower number between the two, which would obviously be the minutes that the player played in both years, summing them up, and dividing by one (or both??) year's total minutes. In this case, we get 19163, which, divided by 28576+30832 gives us 32.2%.

I assume it's pretty clear that I'm completely at a loss here, any suggestions would be appreciated.

it is hard to fathom still the amount of player turnovers in leagues around the world. I mean here in the NSL the 13 teams had their squad changed completely.

Whoa ... pretty atypical year, I hope?

Incidentally, this reminds me that I once looked briefly at roster turnover for a few NASL teams while that league was at its peak. I remember seeing a pretty good team that only retained 1/3 of its players the next year. From Chris's "number of players carried over," only one team in MLS history (Metros 03) has had such extreme turnover.

Doing it by minutes would obviously be a lot more precise, but I'm not sure how you would group that in terms of minutes played from one year to the next in any kind of understandable way. I think however that trying to get that percise may be muddying the issue. Maybe try and look at it this way... Any player on a roster has the potential of being used, that is pretty signifigant. Any player not on the roster obviously does not have the potential of being used. Whether or not they're being used I think is somewhat insignifigant. However, of course if ou do it that way then your numbers are goign to get muddied by guy swho sit on the roster as a developmental player. Perhaps an easier way to do this would be looking at Games Started. That way you have some idea of who's made a signifigant contrabution to the team, but don't get bogged down by minutes played. Games started to might get you around the problem of those extra guys too that use up DV spots etc.

Furthermore, I did the second part of this investigation, looking at the number of players who carried over from year to year. I divided that number by the average number of players who played for the team in those two years (I suspect I should have used the max...). The numbers hew quite closely to each other, with a .862 correlation (Beineke or somebody will have to explain exactly what that number means). Here's the table:

Ratio 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Club
Chicago ------ ------ 0.680 0.549 0.627 0.642 0.549 0.609
Colorado 0.409 0.591 0.558 0.458 0.453 0.490 0.609 0.508
Columbus 0.556 0.560 0.756 0.636 0.609 0.609 0.667 0.625
D.C. 0.692 0.600 0.720 0.692 0.471 0.440 0.449 0.582
Dallas 0.468 0.706 0.653 0.723 0.578 0.545 0.640 0.619
K. City 0.465 0.667 0.583 0.500 0.622 0.558 0.727 0.589
L.Angeles 0.625 0.654 0.694 0.706 0.625 0.667 0.612 0.655
Metros 0.424 0.441 0.464 0.481 0.577 0.364 0.250 0.427
N. Eng 0.436 0.340 0.566 0.481 0.566 0.415 0.471 0.468
San Jose 0.553 0.490 0.360 0.500 0.426 0.750 0.600 0.517
Miami ------ ------ 0.426 0.607 0.471 ------ ------ 0.500
Tampa Bay 0.622 0.453 0.526 0.571 0.542 ------ ------ 0.540
Yearly 0.523 0.545 0.576 0.574 0.546 0.539 0.550 0.552
Min 0.409 0.340 0.360 0.458 0.426 0.364 0.250 0.427
Max 0.692 0.706 0.756 0.723 0.627 0.750 0.727 0.655

moving on...

I decided to use the minimum of minutes for any player between the two years. That, I suppose, is the minutes they played in common those two years. I don't really think the subtraction thing makes sense after all, though I'm not wholly convinced of this method either. Additionally, I averaged the total minutes available in the two years being averaged. For turnover, I just divided the minimum minutes sum by the averaged available minutes. I'll post those numbers (or share the file) if anybody likes, but they don't really seem necessary, so here I've only included the ratios.

The numbers ended up being a great deal higher than I had expected, considering that this seems to be a relatively stringent way of determining turnover.

Turnover 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Club
Chicago ------ ------ 0.759 0.622 0.679 0.627 0.565 0.652
Colorado 0.392 0.657 0.521 0.419 0.412 0.333 0.623 0.480
Columbus 0.472 0.473 0.698 0.594 0.525 0.562 0.645 0.567
D.C 0.667 0.568 0.664 0.675 0.389 0.349 0.479 0.542
Dallas 0.436 0.633 0.671 0.695 0.687 0.646 0.543 0.616
K. City 0.548 0.677 0.398 0.441 0.604 0.561 0.676 0.558
L.Angeles 0.648 0.597 0.744 0.685 0.670 0.639 0.712 0.671
M'stars 0.444 0.392 0.385 0.431 0.599 0.441 0.257 0.421
N. Eng 0.384 0.317 0.433 0.360 0.532 0.308 0.582 0.417
San Jose 0.511 0.456 0.406 0.418 0.290 0.693 0.480 0.465
Miami ------ ------ 0.408 0.580 0.451 ------ ------ 0.480
Tampa Bay 0.581 0.385 0.388 0.521 0.526 ------ ------- 0.480
Yearly 0.508 0.515 0.540 0.537 0.531 0.516 0.557 0.530
Min 0.384 0.317 0.385 0.360 0.290 0.308 0.257 0.257
Max 0.667 0.677 0.759 0.695 0.687 0.693 0.712 0.759

The all-time most stable MLS teams have been, unsurprisingly, the two best, Chicago and Los Angeles. The teams with the all-time highest turnover have been, unsurprisingly, the two worst (I believe), New England and NY/NJ Metrostars. However, there have been several teams that seriously made over the roster and found great success, most notably 2001's Earthquakes and 2002's New England. The Metrostars of this year were the all-time leaders in turnover, while Chicago's 1999 championship successor was the least turned-over. Perhaps the most surprising result is that MLS turnover ratios appear to change very little by year.

edit: 1997, e.g., refers to the combination of 1996 and 1997.

BTW, this is an interesting question ... I'd also like to see comparisons across multiple seasons. Quite a few of the current Quakes are entering their fourth year together. Not sure if that's a good thing, though -- last year, quite a few Crew players had been together for a long time, too.

I was surprised, looking back through this thread, to see that I hadn't done this. I was sure I had. So anyway, here's what I got:

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Club
Chicago 0.495 0.469 0.612 0.500 0.519
Colorado 0.219 0.356 0.305 0.189 0.056 0.263 0.231
Columbus 0.415 0.529 0.431 0.420 0.316 0.374 0.414
D.C. 0.460 0.422 0.530 0.319 0.301 0.239 0.378
Dallas 0.505 0.415 0.439 0.570 0.468 0.376 0.462
K. City 0.524 0.352 0.231 0.228 0.503 0.373 0.368
L.Angeles 0.340 0.460 0.553 0.452 0.482 0.471 0.460
Metros 0.239 0.194 0.189 0.266 0.323 0.223 0.239
N. Eng 0.164 0.314 0.284 0.166 0.192 0.219 0.223
San Jose 0.312 0.271 0.092 0.326 0.285 0.433 0.287
Miami 0.288 0.292 0.290
Tampa Bay 0.226 0.160 0.149 0.319 0.213
Yearly 0.340 0.347 0.332 0.335 0.354 0.347 0.340
Min 0.164 0.160 0.092 0.166 0.056 0.219 0.213
Max 0.524 0.529 0.553 0.570 0.612 0.500 0.519

There were two ways of doing this: 1. take the minimum across all three seasons, and 2. take the minimum across season x and season x+2. I did the latter, which I sort of regret now, but I doubt it made too much difference.

For me, Colorado 2002, .056 stands out. They had three guys play minutes in both seasons, Wes Hart, David Kramer, and Seth Trembly. Quite the amazing turnover.

What else? I'm still baffled that Bob Bradley's teams were so stable in Chicago, and yet he gets to New York and uproots everything. Too sleepy to say anything else.

The numbers hew quite closely to each other, with a .862 correlation (Beineke or somebody will have to explain exactly what that number means).
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Resurrecting an old thread ...
I'm not sure which numbers you're referring to, but I expect that it means that some teams have consistently high (and low) rates of turnover. In any case, that's certainly true.

Looking at pre-season rosters, my impression is that 2004 is shaping up to be a very low turnover season ... for instance, I believe that every one of the top 20 2003 draft picks is still in the league, and 18 of them are with their original teams. Is that impression easy for you to confirm/refute?

If beineke were still around I'd leave the interpreting to the more qualified, but since he's absolutely nowhere to be found...

Good thing, that -- it'd be kind of disturbing if I ever got into a disagreement with him.

By the way, I think it's interesting that using the two-year lag, Chicago jumps from 4th to a clear 1st in player retention. It means that they've tinkered with some fringe players while keeping a nucleus together.

Thanks for the clarification on the correlation, BTW.

it is hard to fathom still the amount of player turnovers in leagues around the world. I mean here in the NSL the 13 teams had their squad changed completely.

Yeah, I can imagine that doing something like this for the A-league would be tremendously depressing.

it is hard to fathom still the amount of player turnovers in leagues around the world. I mean here in the NSL the 13 teams had their squad changed completely.

If we want to predict turnover, we've got to know what causes it. A lot of things result in new players being brought in, but probably the easiest to track is trades. In MLS's history, there have been 151 players who have played for more than one team in a season (two who have played for three, Orlando Perez and Winston Griffiths). Nobody needs to see a chart, but I like em, so here it is:

Year Teams Players Ratio
1996 10 7 0.70
1997 10 20 2.00
1998 12 23 1.92
1999 12 27 2.25
2000 12 20 1.67
2001 12 26 2.17
2002 10 14 1.40
2003 10 14 1.40
Total 88 151 1.72

If beineke were still around I'd leave the interpreting to the more qualified, but since he's absolutely nowhere to be found, I'll just assume that we ought to expect something around 1.7 players added to each team's roster via mid-season trade.

I would define turnover somewhat differently. Say I wanted to calculate the turnover of the 2003 Earthquakes compared to the 2002 squad. I would take all the players who played minutes in 2003, and calculate the percentage of team minutes they played in 2002, then define the turnover as 1 minus that percentage. For example, if the members of the 2003 Earthquakes played 75% of the 2002 minutes, the turnover would 25%. Of course, by the same definition, the turnover of the 2002 Earthquakes relative to the 2003 squad would be a different quantity. Nothing wrong with that, you just need to be clear in specifying which year is the reference.

So the amount of minutes that a player played in 2003 has no effect?

Hypothetical situation: Ian Russell and Arturo Alvarez split left wing duties in 2004 and 2005. In 2004, Russell plays 2000 minutes, Alvarez plays 500. In 2005, Russell plays 300 minutes, Alvarez plays 2200. You say that there's 0% turnover respective of these guys? (I wouldn't, although perhaps my use of the word 'turnover' is imprecise.) I think unfortunately it's a topic that does not have a clear treatment.

(Also, and thanks for pointing this out, the numbers I've been using have all been team stability, not turnover at all.)

Yes, I would. Turnover in my mind refers to a change in squad players. What you describe sounds to me more like utilization.

You're probably right, your suggestion is a better measure of turnover than mine (why didn't you show up earlier :)). Anyway, I don't think the problem with 2003-2002 having a different number than 2002-2003 is really such a problem; if you're actually looking for turnover, going backwards in time from 2003 to 2002 doesn't make much sense.

Originally posted by maxim-1
Doing it by minutes would obviously be a lot more precise, but I'm not sure how you would group that in terms of minutes played from one year to the next in any kind of understandable way. I think however that trying to get that percise may be muddying the issue. Maybe try and look at it this way... Any player on a roster has the potential of being used, that is pretty signifigant. Any player not on the roster obviously does not have the potential of being used. Whether or not they're being used I think is somewhat insignifigant.

I really disagree here, Maxim. There's no particularly good example here, but for Dallas (e.g.) D.J. Countess went from playing 100 minutes in 2002 to playing over 2000 in 2003, while Chivas Martinez went from 1700 to 560. If you just use whether these guys are on the roster or not, you're ignoring the fact that Martinez got replaced by a superior player and Dallas had a significant change at goalkeeper. I admit, it may be possible that you're going to run into other problems here (nats call-ups, injuries) but I'd at least like to try something more complicated than simply counting the rostered players.

Perhaps an easier way to do this would be looking at Games Started. That way you have some idea of who's made a signifigant contrabution to the team, but don't get bogged down by minutes played. Games started to might get you around the problem of those extra guys too that use up DV spots etc. [/B]

This is a good idea, I feel sort of silly for having thought of it, but it runs into the same kinds of problems as minutes played. Teams haven't generally played the same number of games from year to year, and even if they had, I don't run into this problem of not really knowing what I'm supposed to be adding up.

(an additional problem with just counting players is that I don't have info for these developmental players like Andres Murriagui or Johanes Maliza or even Brian Carroll who didn't get into any games this year. Some developmental players may get credited for a season because they got 5 minutes, while guys who didn't play at all will necessarily be ignored)

Resurrecting an old thread ...
I'm not sure which numbers you're referring to, but I expect that it means that some teams have consistently high (and low) rates of turnover. In any case, that's certainly true.

That's not what I meant. I was comparing turnover-by-players to turnover-by-minutes, which unsurprisingly are very strongly related to each other.

Although I'm sure the Metros have a higher turnover than the Galaxy (e.g.), I'm confident it wouldn't be anywhere near that high (doing a quick calculation, I got around .38 for both).

Looking at pre-season rosters, my impression is that 2004 is shaping up to be a very low turnover season ... for instance, I believe that every one of the top 20 2003 draft picks is still in the league, and 18 of them are with their original teams. Is that impression easy for you to confirm/refute?

I get the same impression, but I really have no idea, I don't have any other preseason rosters to compare to (if anybody has any old media guides/season previews...). I'll see what I can do to look at offseason turnover, but I'd rather wait until the season starts. The reason being, I'm not really confident in the rosters that MLS has given us yet (I'm pretty sure you're right about last year's rookies, but MLS's preview doesn't list Scot Thompson on LA's roster), and several teams still have developmental slots available.

Good thing, that -- it'd be kind of disturbing if I ever got into a disagreement with him.

By the way, I think it's interesting that using the two-year lag, Chicago jumps from 4th to a clear 1st in player retention. It means that they've tinkered with some fringe players while keeping a nucleus together.

Thanks for the clarification on the correlation, BTW.

It might not be so much that they're trying out new players, but that they've been suffering from injuries.

Yeah the counting of it has me a bit stumped too but I'm kinda on overdrive with this stuff right now. Your point about minutes being important is valid, just would make it infinately more complicated. There has to be some kind of plus/minus percentage change and then lump 'em all together but if anything my little project has told it's that I should've studied harder in math.

Hypothetical situation: Ian Russell and Arturo Alvarez split left wing duties in 2004 and 2005. In 2004, Russell plays 2000 minutes, Alvarez plays 500. In 2005, Russell plays 300 minutes, Alvarez plays 2200. You say that there's 0% turnover respective of these guys?

Yes, I would. Turnover in my mind refers to a change in squad players. What you describe sounds to me more like utilization.

Regardless of which numbers you plug into the two columns, I think you'd do pretty well by taking their correlation. I think the excel command is correl().

BTW, this is an interesting question ... I'd also like to see comparisons across multiple seasons. Quite a few of the current Quakes are entering their fourth year together. Not sure if that's a good thing, though -- last year, quite a few Crew players had been together for a long time, too.

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