MLS Designated Players – Which teams are getting the most bang for their buck in 2021?

When the designated player rule (aka the “David Beckham Rule”) was introduced in 2007, it was designed to attract a superstar to MLS by offering lucrative salaries outside of teams’ modest budgets. And although some DPs have thrived in MLS — Beckham, Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimovic — there have also been some forgettable stints (Denilson in Dallas, anyone?).

MLS’ roster rules have since evolved, and while many players earn as much as — or in some cases, more than — DPs, there is still a higher sense of expectation when a player is given the tag. All teams have at least one DP and some have up to four, depending on the type of designation, but are teams getting the most value out of their DPs? Are they contributing to their team’s success, or are they overburdening the team with low contributions for high pay?

With just a couple of weeks remaining in an action-packed 2021 regular season, we’ve decided to find out. ESPN reporter/researcher Dan Hajducky takes the East, and ESPN editor Danny Guerra looks at the West.

Methodology: Is there a foolproof way to measure any player’s performance? Probably not, but we’ll use a couple of basic parameters to judge the DP field.

First of all, they’re expensive, they’re limited in number on each roster, and they’re overwhelmingly playmakers or goal/assist creators. We took the difference between all of a team DP’s actual contributions (total goals and assists) and their expected contributions, using TruMedia’s MLS statistics as of Oct. 25. That score is then divided by the DP’s total salary, according to the latest figures from the MLS Players Association released earlier in October.

For example, Atlanta’s Josef Martinez has 10 goals and 1 assist this (injury-affected) season. His expected assists are 1.13, and his expected goals are 8.54, totaling 9.68 expected contributions. As such, 11 – 9.68 = 1.32. Dividing his reported salary of $3.9 million by the difference of 1.32 gives Martinez a “Bang for Buck Grade” (we’ll call it…