http://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2...ct-options-five-players-re-sign-jalil-anibaba Houston Dynamo players currently under contract: Goalkeepers (3): Calle Brown, Tyler Deric, Joe Willis Defenders (4): Agus, Jalil Anibaba, Kevin Garcia, Sheanon Williams Midfielders (6): Alex, Eric Alexander, Ricardo Clark, Boniek García, Christian Lucatero, Andrew Wenger Forwards (3): Will Bruin, Mauro Manotas, Erick Torres*
Lima I am fine with. Anibaba at the old price was ok as cheap serviceable filler -- once he got his sea legs -- but at a fuller price I dunno. Trade Bruin, Clark, Willis, and Williams, mutually end Agus' and Torres' contracts, cut Garcia, no-option Alexander. Alexander and Garcia, that's idiotic. Garcia couldn't even make the lineup and Alexander was brutal. Garcia I assume is kept at Cabrera's request. Alexander made $178k last season and did squat. Yet another self-inflicted wound. I am fine with all the declined options, Maidana is the only one that even made me blink, but he didn't produce enough. If they are dumb enough to re-sign RR at any price they are screwed in the head. Ditto Beasley and Horst. You know that hasn't been working, and Beasley is too expensive. Warner is the only one I'd even consider and he's marginal, I'd be fine if he was gone just the same. Brown should be bought and leave the rest of the loan players curbside. I assume we will instead pull a Miranda and extend things out for at least one more. Arboleda was a Cabrera find. Escalante played a lot down on the farm. We might keep all three despite what it netted us in the fall. This is already looking too much like last season with all that implies.
The current 16 guys on the roster look like the bulk of an expansion draft roster plus Manotas & Deric. At least they didn't exercise the option on Rodriguez that would've been an absolute disaster.
This will cheer you up!! Matt Jordan said Dynamo are trying to negotiate contracts with DaMarcus Beasley, David Horst, Raul Rodriguez and Collen Warner.— Corey Roepken (@RipSports) November 28, 2016
why doesn't he just bring back last season's defense, at slightly reduced salary, how could that possibly go wrong. if you go to a bazaar and haggle the merchant down for a piece of junk you still have a piece of junk.
my suspicion tells me that Jordan is weighing in heavily on these moves on the older players and Cabrera on the newer ones. Obviously Alexander is attached to Matt from their time together in Montreal but REALLY? the guy looks like deer in the headlights do to being so slow from the RGV games Lovejoy made a difference offensively every game he played and looked better than several of the players still on loan - how could Cabrera let him go and keep Alexander? any injuries we don't know about? this smells like Jordan's doing
Dennis Miller has a comedy special from the late 80s where he talks about a Blue Light Special at Kmart and says "folks, two of s**t is still s**t - if they really wanted to f**k you they'd give you three of the items". Seems like Dynamo are using that principle in roster building. these moves reek of job security/insecurity - keep re-signing all the guys you bring in, even if they suck so it doesn't look like you as GM made bad moves; hope that Cabrera can coach them up and you get some breaks; and then try to sell it as another year of "building" the club. I recognize that for many of these players they are viable options as backup keepers, 5th/6th fullbacks, etc., but there's little imagination, creativity, or excitement bringing back a last-place roster and expecting some big jump in the standings. This feels like a movie studio that wants to remake a classic movie or reboot a movie franchise and chooses some Pauly Shore or Damon Wayans movie to remake - what are they thinking?
0G 1A from a non-leg-breaker Mid in 42 games over the last 2 seasons? The worst part is I thought this was deliberately trading for an expiring contract -- and we played him accordingly -- and then we re-up.
We used allocation money to get him too. Currency that probably (unless it was "use it or lose it") could have gotten us some better "asset" then an overpaid journeyman. Arguably, they could have packaged that allocation money with a player to help dump a bad deal like Bruin on another team. I recall on one of the radio shows (I think it was the team show on 650 AM) that Matt Jordan talked about how they used some analytics on the Alexander trade because he had a high completion rate on forward passes or some nonsense like that. He couldn't get on the field for the Dynamo IN A HISTORICALLY POOR YEAR for the team in terms of talent and performance. Would you pay $178k a year for a poor-man's Nathan Sturgis?
It's still "early" in the player movement period but these moves - especially the re-signs of some guys even at lower salaries - reek of delusion on behalf of the FO. I'm sure they'll sell the roster as a combination of a Colorado-type turnaround with Seattle hot streak potential (hey, we drew them on the road late in the season! we aren't that far off!!) but that is just baloney. The problem nearly the entire season with this team wasn't purely coaching, it was a talent deficiency that forced coaching tactics (along with not paying to replace assistants and mixed messages to Barrett) to be modified to try and squeeze out results because they talent was not good enough to play a competent two-way game. I dropped our season tickets for 2017 but I thought "you know, the odds are this team will get some moves made correctly and make the playoffs just due to the law of averages in MLS" but I can't see any of these moves or re-signs as anything other than rearranging the furniture in the crack house.
I don't think he was trying to talk about the cap, I think he was just assuming the team won't have total salaries (as published by the union) greater than they were in 2016. Looking at it from theoretical cash outlay not salary cap (presuming team can make salary cap moves to be in compliance with MLS salary budget). Or put another way, he is assuming the total wage bill ignorant of cap restrictions won't be more than $4.8 million. Other thing is we don't know how much (if any) TAM was blown (and lost) on the Giles Barnes contract extension they did last year. I keep seeing references to us using TAM to buy salaries down under DP level for some guys but TAM was limited to a certain amount over a few years. It's a healthy figure but we may not have that much remaining.
Exactly which is why his approach is wrong. You start with the big contracts ($575K or so in Maidana and Rodriguez) + 450K DP hit for Beasley + 350K hit for Barnes (bought down with allocation) + 200K or so others - 100K or so in raises Means Dynamo have approximately 1.5 million in cap space and one or two available DP spots (depending on Mantoas). They also have some GA dollars for sucking really well in MLS this year and acquired via trades. They may also have some TAM, but it's unclear how much.
I am rapidly losing faith in any possibility of competitiveness for 2017. The people at the helm are incompetent and worse unaccountable. There is the continuity argument that the more of the old team comes back the less chance it has to improve as a sporting enterprise. There is also the cap argument that to free up any money to change the components with any effect, you have to break some eggs to make the omelette. Based on last year, Jordan comes across to me as the sort who even given a year where he has the potential for cap turnover, goes back to the well and spends a substantial part of his resources to reconstitute what wasn't even working before. I am sure the decisions about players with RGV experience in part reflect Cabrera. I wouldn't be surprised if Jordan plays along to set up his next Great Escape From Accountability. Oh, well, x, y, and z are Cabrera Kids. He insisted. I get that the inside baseball of who wanted whom signed is factually interesting however from the standpoint of a fan who wants a winner, I am bored with excuses and not interested in sorting it out, I am standing at the end of the factory floor and they either bring me a constructed winner or not. I don't think any of the major figures are good at their job so playing the blame game portions out and delays accountability. The coaching has now been poor for several years, Jordan/personnel is clueless, and the organization/President seems tone deaf. Clean house.
The broader point (which I agree with) is that these owners are only gonna spend so much money if they don't sell Cubo so the cap issue is moot in a way because they aren't gonna spend $4 million on one player so the amount for cash and cap may be roughly equivalent to these cheapskates. On the cap, I think your figures are probably in the ballpark ($1.5 million cap space) which obviously is more in actual wages if we sign a DP, buy down some with allocation money, etc. The wild card to me is the TAM but you can't use it just to buy down salaries, it's more for using to acquire a player, buy down a DP to create another DP slot, etc.
I see 2 issues: (1) we won't spend but also (2) in an attempt to present a halfway competitive and salable product on that budget we work incrementally instead of stripping it to the studs. So we often use tools for filler like Alexander -- a veteran who has been called up, looks ok on paper but sucks in reality -- and despite sucking we sign back a good chunk of the veterans every year, and then act like we are crippled to work within the remaining cap. We back ourselves into a corner with our own fear of uncertainty and unwillingness to spend a couple years blowing up the team, maximizing cap space, and building around a new core. It's not just the cheapness, it's the risk aversion. I get not everyone can be released or traded and we may have to carry some contracts a period of time. Some mistakes a period of time. But at least blow up the part you can and rebuild that end, and then we can do the same with the next set of expirations and options next year. If you're too afraid to part with mediocre roster components for fear of getting worse, well, I think you're ironically getting what you feared from your own unwillingness to churn. We keep acting like we're a few players away and it gets worse and worse. It's also the lack of an effective mechanism to develop academy players into our own cheap talent source. The irony is the team would get better faster if it cleared house more definitively. It would get worse very quick, but it would then have more money faster to fix itself. I think they are scared what a stripdown would do to ticket sales, but, if this continues stinking, the end result of ticket sales will be the same. The fans aren't going to care long term if you're trying to be cautious and keep the team in games for now.
In other words, what kills us is not just the budget but (1) the lack of a youth system to stock the team cheaply with players for whom we don't have to fight hard and (2) the conservatism of the personnel management within that budget, where we not only are on a budget but are scared to take risks on the budget. It's like we'd rather turn out a bottom half budget team that can hustle and make an impression and be in the game, than risk being either worse (while we rebuild) or better (as it takes effect). To me if we want to compete on a budget we need an effective apparatus that churns out quality impact player internals we can sign for $60-100k, and sell for more.....and we need ruthlessness on the personnel end where, if we're going to be a shoestring team, we at least are going to be the DeRo and Boniek version of that, and not just a hustle player team. I get that doesn't fit our franchise concept of loyalty but little or nothing about current results has earned the loyalty we give. I don't want continuity from where this was last season.
I would agree that it seems we are making conscious AND unforced decisions to bring back players who you would only normally bring back if you had no other choice. I cut Jordan slack for 2015 and some of 2016 because I presumed some of the roster was made up of guys stuck on old Dom deals or roster filler. What baffles me is picking up the option on Eric Alexander like there aren't similar cheaper players than him out there - or do you even need him on the roster?
My guess is Cabrera will coach 'em up and increase point totals some but he's gonna have to do it using traditional hand tools while other teams use the power equipment.