Camp Update

Well, I didn't expect it to be 8 days before we got our first news out of camp, but here we are.  The Rapids released its first camp overview today and it has some interesting information.

Lets start with the injuries.  You never want to see two sure starters (Ford and Kamara) and a regular member of the rotation (Nicholson) injured this early into camp but the good news is that they're all expected to be healthy by opening day.  I'm actually more concerned about Ford and Nicholson than I am Kamara.  A pulmonary contusion is not a normal injury and certainly not one related to his age,  There's some bad luck there.  Ford and Nicholson's injures continue a pattern for them and its concerning to see them dealing with them so early in the season.  Especially for Nicholson as back injuries are notoriously hard to get over.

Outside of the injury news we also got information about who's been invited to camp.  Our three unsigned draft picks have been joined by three Academy players (Anderson, Larraz, Rodriguez), former Academy and Colorado Rush player Enoch Mushagalusa, Colorado Switchbacks player Jordan Schweitzer, and Kofi Opare.  Now this just lists the invites, it doesn't say who accepted them, though I expect all but one are there for sure.

The rumors about Opare signing were running fast last week but have died down since then.  When queried about it Steven Goff, one of the sources of the rumors, tweeted that the deal was done and they must be waiting for a physical or something.  That tweet was responded to by Opare himself:

Who says I’m going to Colorado? I haven’t agreed a deal with them.

So, yeah.  That's not an ideal response.  So he may be in camp or he may not.

My bet is that the three Academy players are in camp more to get them exposed to how things work on the first team and not really as a trial for a roster spot in 2019.  The other six are trying to win spots on the team.

Below is my updated camp roster with the trialists:

Goalkeepers:

Tim Howard - Designated Player

Clint Irwin

Andre Rawls

Defenders:

Kortne Ford - Homegrown Player

Sam Raben - Homegrown Player

Keegan Rosenberry

Axel Sjoberg

Tommy Smith - International

Sam Vines - Homegrown Player

Danny Wilson - International

Deklan Wynne

Midfielders:

Kellyn Acosta

Nana Boateng

Cole Bassett - Homegrown Player

Johan Blomberg - International

Benny Feilhaber

Shkelzen Gashi - Designated Player, International

Nicolas Mezquida - International

Sam Nicholson - International

Jack Price - International

Dillon Serna - Homegrown Player

Forwards:

Matt Hundley - Homegrown Player

Niki Jackson

Kei Kamara

Diego Rubio

Andre Shinyashiki

Trialists:

Abe Rodriguez - Goalkeeper (Academy)
Sebastian Anderson - Defender (Academy)
Marcello Borges - Defender

Jacob Hauser-Ramsey - Defender
Kofi Opare - Defender
Oliver Larraz - Midfielder (Academy)

Robbie Mertz - Midfielder
Jordan Schweitzer - Midfielder
Enoch Mushagalusa - Forward

News and Notes 1/22/19

Ok, a few news and notes from today.

Starting with the big one.  Tim Howard announced he's retiring at the end of 2019 today.  I don't think anyone was surprised by the news, but it calls the end to a great career.  From the Metrostars to Everton to the 'Secretary of Defense' to the Colorado Rapids he's been the top keeper everywhere he plays.  While age, and that injury at the end of 2016, have taken their toll his leadership on and off the field has been key.  Enjoy one last season with arguably the best keeper in American history (I'd argue Friedel was better ;) ).

Secondly if you didn't see my revision to yesterday's post, I was wrong about the international statuses.  We only have 6 slots, not 7, and Boateng got his green card last season.  So we currently have 7 internationals and that assumes Shinyashiki does have his green card.  So we still need to make a move.

On the schedule front the Rapids announced that the Wednesday July 17th home game against Minnesota will now be played on Saturday June 8th.  This will push the game into the gold Cup window so some players may be missing, but I'm all for that trade off to get another Saturday night game and remove a weeknight game.

Lastly the final rosters for the upcoming U.S. friendlies were announced and Keegan Rosenberry will be part of them.  Kellyn Acosta did not make the cut and will leave u.S. camp in California to join up with the Rapids in Florida.

Missing Comments

So I just found out that Blogger hasn't been notifying me of all comments, some of them going back close to a year.  I've verified all of them at this point.  My apologies to everyone, I have not intentionally been ignoring you.

Welcome To Preseason 2019!

Its official, preseason opened today out in Commerce City.  The team reported for physicals and such which will be conducted over the next couple of days, then the team will head to Bradenton, FL for a week of training and a scrimmage against Cincinnati FC.  As is traditional I'm going to track our roster and the trialists in camp over preseason, and the initial list is below.  Major credit to the Front Office for starting camp with 26 signed players and a rumor of a 27th, which might be an all time high for this team.

That 27th player, Kofi Opare, hasn't been announced but it heavily rumored.  He's a central defender originally from Ghana but who is now an American citizen.  After 4 years at Michigan he was drafted by the Galaxy and after a season and a half he was traded to DC.  He was a sometimes starter in Dc, making 65 appearances in 4.5 years, including 25 in 2017, but had his season cut short last year due to foot surgery.  He probably won't be 100% at the start of the season, but by the end of April he's expected to be fully recovered.  He'll be a good solid depth signing behind Ford, Smith, and Sjoberg if we do sign him.

Two interesting notes, the updated roster on the Rapids site no longer show Boateng or Shinyashiki as internationals which would get us down to 7 internationals, which matches the number of slots we have.

EDIT: Looks like I got confused, Boateng got his green card last year (he missed the second leg of the CCL because he couldn't travel to Canada) so that's not a new change. And we only have 6 international slots, not 7. I keep thinking we traded for another one for this year but we haven't yet. So we're one over even without Shinyashiki.

Roster as of 1/21/19

Goalkeepers:

Tim Howard - Designated Player

Clint Irwin

Andre Rawls

Defenders:

Kortne Ford - Homegrown Player

Sam Raben - Homegrown Player

Keegan Rosenberry

Axel Sjoberg

Tommy Smith - International

Sam Vines - Homegrown Player

Danny Wilson - International

Deklan Wynne

Midfielders:

Kellyn Acosta

Nana Boateng

Cole Bassett - Homegrown Player

Johan Blomberg - International

Benny Feilhaber

Shkelzen Gashi - Designated Player, International

Nicolas Mezquida - International

Sam Nicholson - International

Jack Price - International

Dillon Serna - Homegrown Player

Forwards:

Matt Hundley - Homegrown Player

Niki Jackson

Kei Kamara

Diego Rubio

Andre Shinyashiki

Trialists:

Marcello Borges - Defender

Jacob Hauser-Ramsey - Defender

Robbie Mertz - Midfielder

A Talk With GM Padraig Smith, and schedule updates

Tonight Burgundy Wave posted a great article about a conversation Abbie Mood had with GM Padraig Smith.  I encourage every Rapids fan to go read it.  In fact go read it now, then come back and finish reading this.

Back?  Great.  One of the reasons I highlight the article is that I had the same one on one talk with Smith the week before Christmas.  We agreed at the start that it was all technically off-the-record, which is why I didn't mention it at all here, but I've used some of the information I've gotten to help round out articles about the Rapids moves in the last month.  Everything Abbie writes about tracks exactly with the conversation I had with him.
First of all I want to say personally that he's a great person to talk to and somebody who's passionate about the sport in a way some prior Rapids leadership has not been.  When I got the invite I figured it was just a courtesy, in fact being the week before Christmas I was too busy to trek out to Commerce City after work (or to take a couple our off in the middle of the day) but Smith went out of his way to agree to meet after work hours and to drive over to Olde Town Arvada to make it easier for me to meet with him.  Even then I figured it would be a 30-45 minute discussion over a drink, instead it turned into 3 hours of discussion where he answered every question I asked and didn't try to duck anything.

Also, fun note, he completed the Edgar Castillo-Kellyn Rowe trade while he was sitting at the table with me.  He told me not to get excited about Rowe though as we weren't planning to keep him.  Sure enough the next day we announced the Castillo-Rowe-Rubio 3-team deal.

I came out of the meeting believing, for the first time in a long time, that the Rapids had a clear logical plan they were working towards.  Now having a plan and executing to that plan are two different things.  I have yet to believe they can do the latter.  But given some of the discussions I've had over the year with people like Tim Hinchey and Paul Bravo (and going all the way back to Jeff Plush) there was a different feel about what Smith laid out and his explanations for the failures of last season.  I have one question I always like to ask when I meet with Rapids leadership (since its usually after another poor season) either publicly or privately.  Essentially its "what did we learn from our failures last season and what are we doing different to avoid them again?".  This is the really the first time I've ever got a concrete answer to the question.  You see some of it in the discussion on BW, his talk about getting players already acclimated to the league.  I think you also see a difference in getting the roster set before camp opens on Monday instead of things like meeting Mason for the first time in the Boston airport the day before the season opener.

I'm not going to say everything was sunshine and rainbows though.  I don't fully agree with his comments about there being standards and playing players that meet those standards over better players who didn't.  While I understand the logic, you're asking a hell of a lot out of a fanbase that suffered through the Pablo years to watch Jack McBean get start after start when there were clearly better options on the bench.  Obviously situations like Aigner can't be rewarded but it is possible to take that too far and I think they may have done so last season.  But if it pays off this year and into next year maybe it will have been worth it.  In the end he and I both agreed on one thing.  Talk is fine, but the proof is in the pudding.  All these plans and standards and learned lessons are for not if the results don't improve this season.

Anyway, if you didn't read the article yet, go read it now.  Its good information and it will be important to understand their viewpoint as we go through the 2019 season, and judge their results accordingly.

Unrelated to this discussion, the Rapids announced two schedule changes today.

• Sat. Mar. 23 @ Dallas will now be at 2:30pm (was 1:30pm)
• The home game against the Galaxy will now be Wed. Sept. 11th at 7pm (was Thurs Sept. 12th at 7pm)

Rapids Sign Homegrowns Matt Hundley and Sam Raben

Today Colorado announced the signings of homegrown players M/F Matt Hundley out of UCLA and D Sam Raben out of Wake Forest.

Hundley is 19 years old and has an outside chance of being named to the U-2 World Cup roster this summer, depending on how many players are prevented by their clubs from joining the team (the tournament does not take place in a FIFA window so teams are not required to release players for it).  He started 14 games for UCLA this year and lead the team in scoring with 5 goals.  He signed a 4 year contract today.

Raben is 22 years old and finished his senior season at Wake Forest this year.  He's played for the Rapids U-23 PDL team the last two years along side his time at Wake Forest.  He made 91 starts in college, tied for 3rd most in Demon Deacons history.

They were joined at today's press conference by first round (and #5 overall) draft pick Andre Shinyashiki, who has also signed a contract with the league.  The three of them will join the ranks of younger players with the Rapids, including the likes of Nikki Jackson, Sam Vines, Cole Bassett, and the relatively speaking grizzled veteran Kortne Ford when camp opens on Monday.

I would expect Raben to be a candidate for a loan to Colorado Springs.  On a one year deal the team is going to want to see him get as much playing time as possible to evaluate him for the future.  Hundley could bounce between the two teams depending on the needs of the Rapids.  His positions is currently somewhat cluttered, with Mezquida, Feilhaber, Gashi, Nicholson, and Shinyashiki all playing somewhat in that in-between position.  I expect, of the young guys, Shinyashiki to get the first look and the most playing time with the first-team to start the season.

Draftee Today, Homegrowns Tomorrow

The 3rd and 4th round of the draft was held today, by teleconference.  Enjoy it while its here because if today was any indication, those rounds won't be along much longer.  Of the 48 picks, 21 of them were PASS.  The Rapids had one pick, the 4th in the 4th round, and took midfielder Robbie Mertz out of Michigan, teammate of one of our 2nd round picks Marcello Borges.  Our four draft picks will join the team at training camp when it opens a week from today.

They're going to be joined by two new homegrown signings who will be announced at a press conference at 11am tomorrow.  One of them is expected to be midfielder Matt Hundley out of UCLA, there have been rumors of his signing for a week or so.  The second signing is kind of up in the air, nobody is real sure who its going to be.

Regardless, with their signings and the fact that Shinyashiki signed a contract before the draft the Rapids will enter camp with 26 signed players.  That might be an all time high.

Recapping A Busy Day

Ok, lots of stuff happened today.  Lets break down the details, then we'll talk end result.

• Made the Beeny Feilhaber signing official
• Traded Marlon Hairston for $175K in GAM ($125K this year and $50K next year)
• Traded the #15 pick and $100K of GAM to Chicago for the #5 pick
• Used the #5 pick on DU forward Andre Shinyashiki
• Used their two second round picks on defenders Marcello Borges and Jacob Hauser-Ramsey

So at the end of the day we ended up with two signed players, two trialists, and $75K in GAM.  We did had to lose Hairston to do it.

All in all, a really good day.  We covered Feilhaber last night.  Shinyashiki comes to us from across town at DU where he played with Kort Ford and Sam Hamilton.  He had 28 goals and 4 assists in 21 games last year and 51 goals with 15 assists over his four years with the Pioneers.  He plays a bit in-between attacking mid and full striker.  As a Brazilian he does require an international slot (more on that later) but he already signed a deal with MLS so he's pretty much assured of making the roster.  It will be interesting to see how much time he spends in Commerce City compared to Colorado Springs, given that he has Kamara, Rubio, Feilhaber, Jackson, Gashi, Nicholson, and Mezquida battling for minutes in similar positions.

Borges is an outside back that, if he makes the roster, I expect to spend most of the season in the Springs and be an emergency backup behind Rosenberry, Vines, and Wynne.  Hauser-Ramsey is a tall centerback that's probably a long-shot to make the roster but given that we're a little thin there he'll have a shot.

One interesting point with the roster right now is that we've got a bit of an issue with international slots.  Right now we've traded for one and traded three away, leaving us with 6.  We currently have 8 internationals though.  Blomberg, Gashi, Mezquida, Nicholson, Price, Shinyashiki, Smith, and Wilson.  I'm not particularly worried about this, we've got plenty of time to figure it out.  There are a few options.  The most obvious one is Ena Patel's work getting green cards for some of these players.  Shinyashiki has been here for at least four years going to school, Blomberg and Nicholson are entering their third season in MLS, and of course Gashi has been here since 2016, though he may not be too interested given that he's probably leaving at the end of the season.  Other than that there's the always the unlikely possibility of trading one of them away, or the more likely scenario that we trade for an international slot or two.  They tend to go for around $100-$150K of GAM.  Lastly, we could always buy somebody like Blomberg or Boateng out of their contract before the season starts (that would only work for one of our two extra internationals).  Regardless we have 7 weeks to figure it out so no need to panic.

Live-ish Superdraft Post

I will update this as soon as my work allows as news breaks.

11:00am MT - Sources report that Cicago has dealt the #5 pick to Colorado for $100K of GAM and the #15 pick.  Moving up for Sinyashiki?

11:45am MT: The Rapids and Fire make the trade official and the Rapids select Andre Shinyashiki out of DU.  A great get for the Rapids.  Now its a long run until our next pick, the 4th pick in the 2nd round.

1:30pm MT: More on Shinyashiki here.

1:40pm MT: Not draft related, but Marlon Hairston was just traded to Houston for $175K in GAM.  $125K this year and $50K next year.

1:50pm MT: With the 4th pick in the 2nd round the Rapids select defender Marcello Borges out of Michigan.  Next pick (and last currently scheduled for today) is at #18.

2:45pm MT: With the 18th pick in the 2nd round the Rapids select defender Jacob Hauser-Ramsey out of U Conn.  That's our last pick for the day barring another trade.  Rounds 3 and 4 will be held on Monday but the Rapids only pick, currently, is the 4th pick of the 4th round.  Later tonight or this weekend I'll post a better recap of today's moves.  If we do make another move in the 2nd round I'll update this post.

Rapids Sign Benny Feilhaber

I'm unexpectedly making a second post tonight.  MLSsoccer.com just broke news that the Rapids have agreed to terms with National team midfielder Benny Feilhaber.   The report is a one year deal at just below max salary with a team option for a second year.

For the first three years of his career Benny played in Germany, England, and Denmark before returning to the U.S. and joining New England in 2011.  After two seasons there he was traded to Kansas City where he played for 5 years before being traded to LAFC last year where he played in every match, starting all but 2.

Feilhaber has been a iron man in MLS, playing in almost every game in his 8 seasons in the league, averaging just under 30 appearances a season.  In that time he has 37 goals and 56 assists.  As a #10 he's known for passes that can pick a defense apart and a mouth that can get in their heads.  He's particularly hated by FSL fans, which, bonus!

I like this move by the Rapids.  There's no long term commitment and it fills a 2019 hole, namely that we won't be expecting Mezquida to be "the man" to run the attack yet.  I'm not expecting a MVP season from Benny at his age, but if he can put in 60-70 minutes in each of his starts, make 25+ appearances, and total a combined 8-10 goals and assists over the season it will be a solid move for the year.  I think those numbers are reasonable, if a bit of a stretch.

If I can manager not to misspell his name more than 5 times this year I'll be pretty happy too.

Superdraft Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the annual Superdraft which has been less and less meaningful in recent years.  I wrote an article about the Rapids recent draft history for Burgundy Wave earlier this week so I'm not going to spend a ton of time here rehashing the same article.  I'll quote the end of it though as it sums up what I expect to happen tomorrow, with one caveat:

So where does that leave the Rapids this year? We traded the 4th pick in the draft to Dallas as part of the Acosta/Badji trade and got their 15th pick in exchange. I don’t know about you but I’d rather have Acosta and the 15th pick than not have Acosta and hope to find a quality player with the 4thpick. Beyond that, we have the 28th, 42nd, and 76th picks (for now at least). That’s two in the 2ndround and one in the 4th round. Our best-case scenario is probably finding a diamond in the rough like Jackson. We should not expect to pick up an MLS-ready player on Friday.

The caveat that I didn't cover is the possibility of trading up to acquire DU's Andre Shinyashiki, a forward from Brazil.  He played with the Rapids U-23s in the 2017-18 season so presumably the Front Office has a pretty good scouting report on him.  I would not be shocked to see the Rapids move into the top 5 to get him, especially since there are rumors that the Crew are willing to trade their spot for $100K in GAM/TAM.  Some combination of Hairston, draft picks, and $$$ should get the Rapids high enough to get him, if that's what they want.

As much as possible I'll try to update here in real-time during the draft tomorrow, with a full recap tomorrow night.

Schedule Day!

The most interesting day of the offseason happened today as the league release the 2019 schedule.  With a new team this year (Cincinnati) it means that everyone in the conference plays the same schedule, 2 games (home and away) against the teams in your conference and 1 game (home or away) against the teams in the other conference for a total of 34 games.  That means only 2 games in the Rocky Mountain Cup this year, not the 3 of the last few years.

This year the schedule makers were not kind to the Rapids.  The first 2.5 months are balanced, either alternating home and away or two home followed by two away.  After the home Rocky Mountain Cup game on May 11th though things start getting out of whack with the schedule being heavily tilted to the Rapids being at home for a while.  Between June 1st and Aug 10th the Rapids play 7 of 10 games at home.  Not surprisingly, this has to be balanced out in the remainder of the season, with only 2 of the final 9 games after that being at home.  One of those is the home finale on Sept. 29th, which means between Aug. 11th and Sept. 28th the Rapids play one home game (LA on Sept. 12th).

Not only that, but the Rapids play 2 home games each on Wednesday, Thursday (one of which is 4th of July), and Friday nights, tied for 2nd most in the league.  NYCFC has the most due to having to schedule around the Yankees, but then Colorado, Toronto, and Vancouver all play 6.  3 each of Toronto's and Vancouver's are Friday nights, which I think is for the Canadian TV contract.

The result of all that is that the Rapids only have 8 home games at their traditional 7pm Saturday time, and the last one is August 10th.  They play one home Saturday afternoon home game (the season opener at 4pm) and two Sunday games (St Patricks Day and the home finale on Sept. 29th).

Getting beyond the day of the games lets look at the spacing.  Generally we came out OK with 3 3-game weeks and a 2-game short rest week (Wed/Sat) coming out of a international break in September.  The first 3 game week is the first week of April where we go to Orlando on Saturday and then host Seattle and DC on Wednesday and Saturday respectively.  The second 3-game week is the last week of May where a trip to Philly is sandwiched between home games against Columbus and Cincinnati.  The last one is in mid-July where we go to Portland and then come home and host Minnesota and NYCFC.  All of those, with 2 of the 3 being at home, are pretty reasonable.

The big haul is in August where we're on the road for 4 straight weeks.  Between the 14th and the 31st we go to, in order, Minnesota, Houston, FSL to finish the Rocky Mountain Cup, and then to play RBNY.  That's a lot of miles in the air.  That FSL game starts the final run of 7 games which could be a murderer's row if we need points to make the playoffs.  @FSL, @RBNY, LA at home, @Toronto, @KC, Dallas at home, and finishing the season @LAFC.  Getting just 7 points and the RMC out of that run would be considered fairly successful I think.

A couple of random notes to finish the analysis off.  July 4th will be the continuation of one of the longest traditions among the Rapids fan base, Jameson Night!, as New England comes to town.  As long-time readers know I never attend the 4th of July game, instead choosing to spend time with my wife celebrating our anniversary that day, but I'll be sure to get a bottle of Jameson to the tailgate crew for that one.  The Rapids have two nationally televised games, both on UniMas, one on Sunday and one on Friday (at home).  The other Friday home game is against Vancouver, which I expect is on Friday due to Canadian television.  The non-4th of July Thursday game is Sept 12th, coming out of an international break, which is probably why its Thursday and not Wednesday.

All in all its a pretty lousy home schedule.  Some of that was forced by the newly compressed schedule this year resulting in more weekday games but a lot of it was just getting the short end of the stick from the schedulers.  I don't expect our attendance to be very good this year so its up to the die-hards to bring it every game to show our support.