Jake Carlisle is worth pick 5

Jake Carlisle points value: 1600 (20.3 games per year, age 24, 12 Brownlow votes 2013-15, 62.7% career remaining)

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One of the biggest looming player movements this off-season is St Kilda’s attempt to bring in Jake Carlisle. There has been debate about what he’s worth, with Essendon convinced he’s worth pick 5 and St Kilda disagreeing and looking for a cheaper alternative trade.

Given Essendon’s history of demanding massive overs at the trade table, many have assumed this must be an excessive demand we well. However, we think Essendon in this instance are right, and using our future output based formula, Jake Carlisle turns out to be worth almost exactly pick 5 (1600 points for Carlisle, the same for pick 5). Lower picks still sit well within the “fair” range, but 5 seems to be right on the mark.

We note that Essendon have currently knocked back an offer of 12 plus next year’s ~31 from Richmond, which turns out to be worth MORE than pick 5 in terms of expected future output (1130+870=2000 vs pick 5 = 1600) as well as being equal value to 5 (1878 vs 1268+606=1874) on the AFL’s own draft pick value chart which gives lower values than we do for second round picks. Essendon clearly want that high pick even though the offer of 12 and 31 looks like it’d give them slightly better drafting chances. (UPDATE: this rumour was swiftly denied by the Tigers, so might instead be the Bombers trying to drive up the price)

During their rebuild plan, St Kilda have sought to hoard high draft picks, making multiple high selections in a proven (by them, circa 2000) strategy to bring in enough talented players that several work out well for them despite unavoidable risk of dud selections. This makes them understandably reluctant to trade pick 5, hoping to continue that strategy a little longer.

However, let’s remember why they’ve been hoarding those picks and trading out players to acquire more – an explicit goal of targetting a premiership around 2020. Jake Carlisle is a 24 year old established key position defender (who admittedly has been forced to play forward and has been a bit of a sook about it in 2015). He’s the guy St Kilda must think can be the key defender in their next premiership side. He rarely misses games, he’s got nearly two thirds of his career value remaining to him. He can be there when St Kilda’s draft crop hit their prime. That’s got to be worth the pick 5 our formula tells us is value.

If not, we’ve looked at some alternative scenarios offering roughly equivalent value but involving St Kilda’s second round pick of 24. Carlisle for pick 24 (930 points, ie, an expected 93-game career from that pick) leaves a 670 point gap. The most obvious player around that mark is Tom Hickey (727 points on the back of a record of about 10 games per year) who would further strengthen Essendon’s ruck division. Brodie Murdoch (676 points) is a 21 year old 187cm utility whose 6.7 games per year also put him in the same projected future value range. Blake Acres (885 points), a recent former pick 19 still most valuable on his draft pick, also looks to be about that range. Alternatively, perhaps St Kilda should look at trading their 2016 first round pick.

Options exist and the negotiations will be interesting, but the point we seek to make here is that Carlisle is a low-risk ready made option to fill a key post for years to come in a side with a self-imposed five-year time horizon for premiership contention. That’s worth plenty, and we project it as worth the output of the average pick 5.

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Best/Worst players chosen at each draft position

Pick 5: Luke Power (305 games), Jarrad McVeigh (266 games), Lance Franklin (221 games), Scott Pendlebury (216 games)

Pick 12: Shaun Burgoyne (294 games), Chris Scott (215 games), Nathan Jones (201 games), Cyril Rioli, James Frawley (156 games)

Pick 24: Steve Johnson (253 games), Jason Blake (202 games) Nathan Van Berlo (202 games)

Pick 31: Simon Black (322 games), Paul Chapman (280 games), Shane Wakelin (252 games)

Worst selections

Pick 5: Jason Spinks (0 games), Daniel McAlister (6 games), Andrew McDougall (43 games)

Pick 12: Andrew Gowling, Lucas Cook (0 games), Shane Sikora (3 games)

Pick 24: Cameron Bennett, Brett Jeffery (0 games), Matthew Manfield (11 games)

Pick 31: Allen Nash, Joshua Krueger (0 games), Clayton Collard (1 game)