Gettin' Drafty | Part 2 - What Can We Get?

Apologies for the missing piece in the middle of this series. I had meant to do an analysis of the contributions, round by round, that last year's draft class made to MLS, but life broadsided me a bit. Not that it would have been any spectacular revelation or sage analysis anyway. The post would have boiled down to the obvious conclusion that it's a miserable system with regular contributors popping up all along the draft spectrum, though not in any significant numbers.

Naturally, the higher numbers of those garnering first-team playing time were concentrated in the first 2 rounds, but successful contributors were well under 50% of the players drafted in those rounds anyway, which is either a condemnation of MLS college scouting or an indication of the kiddie-pool depth of the talent on offer that's willing to stick around and play for sub-McDonald's MLS developmental salaries.

Which naturally leads us to the following: what the hell can DC United hope to get out of this draft anyway? Based on last year's miserable record of zero minutes for any draftee, it can't get any worse. To recap . . .

1. Round 1 - Arguez rotted in the reserves, spent some time with the U-20's, and now looks to be bound for the Bundesliga.
   
2. Round 2 - North played reserve ball and got dropped at the end of the season.
3. Round 3 - Needham and Schramm both turned up for training camp, but were gone by the end of it--Needham rejected United for the USL and Schramm wasn't offered a deal.
4. Round 4 - Robles jumped ship for the Bundesliga 2 without bothering to spend the year in the United reserves.
   

Ouch.

This year, we've got 24 (late 2nd round), 33 (early 3rd round), and 52 (late fourth round), barring any trading action. Combine this miserable set of picks with United's awful record in the draft, and I'm finding it tremendously difficult to care about the SuperDraft. I'm more excited to see what's coming off the South American pipeline and what's coming out of the Supplemental Draft, as that's where we seem to pick 'em fairly well. Regardless, I'll be keeping an eye on the Draft Tracker and weighing in with my own terrifyingly uninformed opinions in the wake of the big day. So there's that then. Meh?