Expansion Draft Causes Trade

Full MLS Cup review coming later tonight, but I wanted to get this news posted.

On Wednesday Portland and Vancouver will have their expansion draft. They'll each get 10 picks from the current MLS rosters. Teams are allowed to protect 11 players, plus after a player gets picked they can protect one more. No team can lose more than two players. Teams must protect 3 internationals unless they have 3 or less, then they must protect all but 1.

At the end of last night's game the Rapids had 4 internationals. Baudet, Earls, Lopez, and Smith. Protecting 3 of them would have required us to leave sombody like Matt Pickens or Mac Kandji unprotected. To deal with this the Rapids amde a trade this afternoon. They sent Julian Baudet and Danny Earls to Seattle for Pete Vagenas. This move was purely to get our number of internationals doen, I doubt that the coaching staff even really cares that much about what Vagenas can bring to the team.

That allowed the Rapids to protect the following players:
Conor Casey
Omar Cummings
Mac Kandji
Kosuke Kimura
Jeff Larentowicz
Pablo Mastroeni
Drew Moor
Brian Mullan
Matt Pickens
Jamie Smith
Marvell Wynne

Anthony Wallace was the only starter last night unprotected. I'm guessing the coaching staff is hoping that Vancouver or Portland will go over Wells Thompson or Scott Palguta and they can use that extra protection slot on Wallace.