Rapids Waive Pickens

The Rapids announced late today that they've waved Matt Pickens.  After breaking his arm against FSL a year ago last weekend he was never able to reclaim the starting role, and his $190K salary was too much to invest in a backup keeper.  The Rapids tried to trade him up until the end, per the Denver Post last night, but there was, not surprisingly, no takers since the Rapids were obviously desperate.

You have to wonder if the Rapids could have managed this better.  By the time Pickens healed from his injury it was fairly obvious that Irwin had supplanted him and both keepers weren't going to be on the roster this season.  In those 9 months it wasn't possible to make a deal?  We saw a number of keepers move inside MLS this offseason.  Maybe Pickens' salary was too large to get a deal done, but this was pretty much the worst-case scenario to resolving this situation.

Pickens leaves as one of the top two keepers in team history, with his only competition for that title being Joe Cannon.  The team had more success with Pickens, but Cannon might have had better individual performances.  You couldn't go wrong choosing either one of them.  Pickens, of course, was in the nets for the MLS Cup victory and had a huge blind save very late in extra time to preserve the 2-1 score.  The only remaining players from the MLS Cup team are now Moor, Mullan, and Wynne, but of course we've got Pablo as head coach and Smith as an Academy coach.

Colorado now has 4 open roster slots, 2 of which can be filled by internationals.