Off-Season Roster Moves: Trades, Free Agents, MLS Draft and Academy

Consider this:

• If one of Henry or BWP go down, Cahill can step in.
• If one of Dax or Cahill goes down, Alexander can step in.
• Alexander is in a battle with Sam.
• Steele and Miller are in a battle with Convey.
• Robles is in a battle with Meara.

The only 2 spots where there isn't any real competition (or where we aren't covered with a proven player in case of injury) is at CB and RB.

Thus the draft should be used to shore up these areas and increase competition. The draft this year is centerback heavy, but I'm afraid by the time we're on the clock the best prospects will have been taken. 7 of the first 20 picks in Ives' latest mock up are centerbacks. That's a LOT. However, that may also work in our favor. If the CB's are picked over and with teams more likely in general to select attacking players with a high pick Petke may be able to find a diamond in the rough at RB. In the first 20 picks Ives has only 1 true RB and 1 CB/RB going off the board.

And of course there is always the distinct possibility of a Meara or Ream type talent falling into our laps.

Lastly, I'm sure Roxburgh and Petke have a good plan in how to go about this. If they're already in advanced talks with a RB maybe they go for a CB in the draft. Or vice versa. And if they already have plans for BOTH CB and RB then of course they should take the best talent available once they're on the clock.

 

Well essentially they did already find a starting quality player (I hope) by picking up Convey and trading down.

Exactly.

Olave and Sekagya aren't spring chickens. We are going to need CB's very soon and now we don't have any proven CB's behind them. This draft is full of them and maybe one will fall a few spots and be picked up by us.

 

I agree. I'm saying in ADDITION to signing a pro RB we might be able to steal a quality one in this particular draft.

BECAUSE HE CAN'T STAY HEALTHY. He can't be counted on.

 

Gooch is only 31. The problem is that he's been in the unfortunate position of bouncing around to a few clubs who didn't play him so no one knows what his game currently looks like. It's possible (but unlikely) that he's actually in good shape and simply hasn't been able to break into a team for whatever reason(s).

Major injuries and on the wrong side of 30...I agree with you. I wouldn't gamble big money on him, but he's one of those guys that just might be worth a 75k-100k gamble. Doubt we could get him for that though. I'd imagine a team in Europe would be able to shell out more cash to gamble on him. At 31 he's still got some good years left in him...if he's healthy...and you get him for the right price.

Agreed. Again, this is where Petke and Roxburgh have to make their paychecks. They need to dig up some guy who has been ignored by other teams, isn't making tons of money, but is going to be a very serviceable MLS backup at the very least. If that type of player exists when their draft number comes up maybe they'll grab him.

 

http://www.rslsoapbox.com/2012/5/16...league-soccers-collective-bargining-agreement

"2014 (salary cap) = $3,100,000
...we know that for players that make under $125,000 a year that if they play in 66% of their teams matches they will get at a 10% raise, and if they play in 75% of a their teams matches they will get a 12.5% increase..."

Again, MLS makes it very hard to be accurate in our understanding of where we are in the cap. However, I'll interpret "play in" to mean "make an appearance in regular season games". In that case:

68k Akpan
80k Alexander (appeared in 75% of regular season games in 2013)
35k Bover
47k Bustamante
369k Cahill
35k Castano
47k Christianson
215k Convey
369k Henry
110k Kimura (appeared in 66% of regular season games in 2013)
59k Lade
88k Luyindula (appeared in 66% of regular season games in 2013)
223k McCarty
66k Meara
66k Miazga
124k Miller
35k Moreno
35k Obekop
325k Olave
88k Robles (appeared in 75% of regular season games in 2013)
130k Sam
159k Sekagya
122k Steele (appeared in 75% of regular season games in 2013)
93k BWP

Roster spots 21-30 don't count against the cap.

The current top 20 earners on our team come in at $2,848,000 (based on LAST YEAR'S SALARIES and salary increases due via the collective bargaining agreement).

Now there are still a LOT of variables that we don't know the specifics of. For instance weren't Sekagya's and BWP's salaries for a HALF season? Shouldn't their numbers be doubled? That would mean Sekagya is at 318k. NO WAY. He must have REALLY renegotiated down otherwise they would have let him go and Hulk would have stayed.

Some players renegotiated at a lower salary, some got raises, etc. so lets call it all a wash and just go with the numbers above.

$3,100,000 (2014 salary cap) - $2,848,000 (2014 salaries) + $100,000 (Champions League allocation) =

$352,000

That's enough to get 1 star player (VERY close to a DP), 2 VERY good MLS players, or 3 VERY good backups (or possibly 3 MLS quality starters if you pick the right guys).

If we had paid Hulk the 250k owed to him we would be sitting on $102k left. That simply isn't enough money to play with in an off season. A couple guys with a high salaries had to go to give us some financial flexibility this off season and Espindola, Carney, Pearce, and Hulk were the victims. Their salaries would have CRUSHED us. Now...when the official 2014 players salaries are release and we see Sekagya making $250k then we can start to question the decision making behind letting Hulk go, but like I said above I can't imagine management letting Hulk go unless Sekagya was due to make much less that him.

 

There is no reason to show Kimura's numbers here. He played when Barklage couldn't. NOT because Kimura was injured.

As iced stated above you need more durability out of your starting RB. He had been injured his entire pro career. We took a gamble on bringing him from DC (where...you guessed it, he was injured). In 2012 he got injured and missed 30% of our games. This past year he got injured again, and when we needed him most he missed practically the entire stretch run. Petke has talked about building continuity with the team and how a defense needs time to gel. You can't do that if a player is perpetually injured.

In 2 seasons with DC he played 11 games. In 2 with NY he played 45. Better numbers with us mind you, but he has LITERALLY been injured and missed significant playing time in all 4 years of his pro career. That isn't a good trend and a smart front office isn't going to invest more time in an injury prone player. If you say that each MLS season has 34 games then in 4 years he's played 56 times in 136 games or 42%. Not good.