Rapids Announce Roster Decisions

Following up on my predictions last night the Front Office announced their roster decisions today:

Options Exercised: Calvin Harris, Nate Jones, Oli Larraz, Keegan Rosenberry*

Options Declined: Lalas Abubakar, Sebastian Anderson, Ethan Bandré, Rémi Cabral, Michael Edwards

Out Of Contract: Jonathan Lewis

* - Burgundy Wave reported today that Rosenberry met a condition in his contract that automatically triggered his option

Miguel Navarro is still under contract on his loan to Talleres and his future will be evaluated at the end of the Argentinian season next month.  Colorado also announced that they're in negotiations with Abubakar, Anderson, Edwards, and Lewis to bring them back on new contracts.

This means Ethan Bandré and Rémi Cabral have been released with no new offer, everyone else is or could come back.

I didn't think Rosenberry would have his option picked up but I didn't know about the contract clause.  I expected Abubakar to be declined and everyone else was a bit of a tossup.  I'm slightly surprised about R. Cabral's option not being picked up and not being offered a new contract, I thought the team was higher on him than they apparently were.  Other than that none of this is unexpected.

My bet is that Abubakar re-signs, Lewis looks elsewhere just to see if a change of scenery helps him (he's also eligible for the Re-Entry Draft) and Anderson and Edwards depends on what interest they get from USL Championship clubs.  Is there room on the Switchbacks roster for a Colorado kid?

At the moment the Rapids have 24 players under contract.  When it comes to the expansion draft 10 of them will be automatically protected due to their GA/HG status and they'll be able to protect 12 others.  That leaves 2 that will need to be exposed.  (They can also protect any of the 4 that they're negotiating with but I don't see that as likely.)  This assumes Navarro doesn't need to be protected.  I think the twop most likely to be left exposed are Loffelsend and Amadou*.

* - Amadou signed a Rapids 2 contract last offseason that included an automatic escalation to Rapids 1 for the 2025 season.

The next big dates in the offseason calendar are the week of December 9th.  The 9th is a half-day trade window before the expansion draft, the 10th is the draw for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, the 11th is the Expansion Draft, the 12th is the opening of Free Agency and End-of-Year Waivers, and the 13th is Stage 1 of the Re-Entry Draft.

During the following week the 19th is Stage 2 of the Re-Entry Draft and the 20th is the Superdraft.  After that we cruise through the holidays up to the opening of training camp in January.

Roster Review and Expansion Draft Prediction

Ok, time to get to the nitty gritty of the roster.  Colorado has one player out of contract and 10 players in an option year.  Decisions will be made on the options players by tomorrow in advance of the expansion draft on December 11th.

The only player fully out of contract in Jonathan Lewis.  I expect that the Rapids won't be too upset about losing him.  They may give him a contract offer a a low number ($200K max) to make it clear he's coming back as a backup but they may just let him go without a new offer.

The 9 players who are on a option year:

GK - Ethan Bandre

D - Lalas Abubakar

D - Seb Anderson

D - Michael Edwards

D - Nate Jones

D - Miguel Navarro

D - Keegan Rosenberry

M - Remi Cabral

M - Calvin Harris

M - Oli Larraz

If you're wondering who Miguel Navarro is, we traded for him last offseason and then once we signed Vines we sent him on loan to Talleres in Argentina.  Apparently he's become a key component of the team down there and there's an option to purchase in the loan agreement so I expect a deal to get done transferring him there permanently.

I think its obvious that the team won't pick up Abubakar at his current number.  I think this might surprise some people but I don't think we pick up Rosenberry at his current number.  I know he's the team captain but I don't think the team signs Reggie Cannon, who's most natural spot is right back, if they planned to keep Rosenberry as a starter.

I do expect that both Lalas and Keegan will be offered contracts at a reduced number as they can be valuable stop starters and options off the bench but neither of them should be starting even half the games next season.  My guess is that Rosenberry can find a bigger role at another team in the league and moves on.

As to the rest of the group I can see all the options being exercised.  Larraz is a no-brainer.  Armas seems to like Harris so even though he hasn't nailed down a starting role I expect we bring him back for another season.  If for no other reason than to keep Kevin happy I think we pick up Remi's option, though has had a good year in Phoenix so I think he's earned it on his own.  For Bandre, Anderson Edwards, and Jones we have little or nothing to go on.  Edwards and Anderson have looked good in their limited minutes and at their numbers I think they come back.  I thought Jones might be the odd man out given that we only gave him a one year deal and we didn't see him at all this season but the reports since the end of the season are that the coaches are quite happy with his play with Rapids 2.  Bandre I have no idea but I assume we'll bring him back.

Once these decisions are made we move on to the expansion draft for San Diego.  The newcomers will get to choose 5 players from across the league, no more than one from any team.  Teams will get to protect 12 players and their under 26 year old Homegrowns and Generation Adidas players will be automatically protected.  For the Rapids that means the following are protected:

Calvin Harris - GA, Seb Anderson - HG, Cole Bassett - HG, Adam Beaudry - HG, Michael Edwards - HG, Omir Fernandez - HG, Oli Larraz - HG, Djordje Mihailovic - HG, Sam Vines - HG, Darren Yapi - HG

(Yes, Mihailovic still counts as an HG apparently)

So with the additional 12 protected slots this is who I predict the Rapids will protect.  I want to emphasize that this is who I predict they'll protect, not who I would protect if it were up to me.

The top 9 are obvious:

Zack Steffen

Keegan Rosenberry

Reggie Cannon

Andreas Maxso

Jackson Travis

Kevin Cabral

Conner Ronan

Rafael Navarro

After that it gets a little harder.  How much do they want Abubakar to come back on a lesser deal?  Same with Lewis.  Fernandez?  Remi Cabral?  Miguel Navarro (assuming they don't get a deal done before then)?.

My guess for the last 3 would be Fernandez, Remi Cabral, and Navarro if they need to do it to protect the transfer fee.  If they don't then he'd be replaced with Stewart-Baynes.

If it were me I'd consider leaving Kevin Cabral and Maxso unprotected.  The odds of San Diego taking on their contacts is pretty low and if they do take one of them that's a large contract off our books.  I doubt the Rapids are thinking that way, if for no other reason than the message it would send to those players.

MVP And Season Summary

Ok, now that we've had a couple of weeks to decompress from the season we have to ask the question.  Was it successful?

I think you have to say it was.  Yeah, it ended on a sour note with the team in a tailspin but in March if somebody had told you we'd win the Rocky Mountain Cup, finish 3rd in the Leagues Cup, claim a CCC spot, and clinch a playoff spot with 6 weeks to play you'd take that every time.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement.  When we lost we lost bad far too often.  And the reason we crashed and burned late was a lack of depth forcing us to play our top guys way too many minutes this season.

The main thing we need to work on though is our defense.  We actually gave up 6 more goals this season than we did last season.  No team that made it past the play-in round gave up more goals than we did.  The reason we were successful this year was scoring a full goal a game more than we did in 2023.  Whatever Armas' defensive strategy is, it doesn't work.  

Early in the season the manager gave an interview to one of the blogs (Burgundy Wave?) where he mentioned his tactical belief that that outside edges of the penalty box were the key areas where goals were created.  On the offense he seems to have created something that works, as we scored the second most goals in a season in our history (1998, 64 goals in only 32 games).  However defensively it appears the instructions to the outside backs were to pinch in and defend that space in the box.  But that let oppositions wingers stand off and whip crosses into the box without pressure which killed us.

Negatives aside though, having the best offensive season in our "modern" MLS history is a huge step forward.  There are plenty of positives to build on going into 2025.  We've got a good spine of Navarro, Maihailovic, Bassett, Larraz, Maxso, and if he can be more consistent, Steffen to build around.  More on the specifics of what we need in a later post but this is a team that should expect to make the playoffs again in 2025, and hopefully this time win a series.

Now on to the MVP of the season.

That's right, I'm going with Cole Bassett as the MVP.  I know that Mihailovic had the best offensive season in terms of goal contributions in team history.  If you want to name him the MVP I will not argue with that.  To me though what allowed Mihailovic to do what he did was having Bassett sitting in behind him.  We saw that when Cole was out to finish the season that the offense dried up.  Navarro had 1 goal and Mihailovic had 1 assist in the 6 games Bassett missed to finish the season.

This was a year that Cole could have mailed in after the disappointment of missing out on the Olympic Team (especially after he was told he was on the team and then had his spot taken away).  He put a lot into the making the team in the first half of the season and he could have let the mistake made by the coaching staff (IMO) send him into a spiral.  Instead he put all the frustration into the team and led them to the Rocky Mountain Cup (scoring the winning PK) and drove the team on their Leagues Cup run.

Bassett was in the talk for the leagues best XI and guys like Doyle and Bogert had him, if not in their first team, in their honorable mentions.  In a league with midfielder like Puig and Acosta and of course the GOAT to stand out like that is impressive.  Again, I won't argue against Mihailovic but I think Bassett was the most valuable player for the Rapids this season.

Season Ends With A Whimper

Sadly surprising nobody the Rapids were swept out of the playoffs Friday night by a 4-1 score line that isn't really a fair reflection of the game.  Really the teams were fairly even until LA was able to take advantage of a Rapids side desperately pushing for a late equalizer to score twice in second half stoppage time.

Before that a freak early goal is all the separated the teams.  In the very definition of #ThatsSoRapids a Steffen clearance from the edge of the box in the 8th minute went off an LA attacker and rebounded into the empty goal to give them an early lead.  Colorado clawed back into it with their first playoff goal in 8 years by of all people, Oli Larraz.  The last time the Rapids had scored a goal in the post season it was 33 year old Kevin Doyle doing it when, as a fellow C38 member pointed out, Larraz couldn't even drive yet.  LA would take the lead back right before half on a perfectly placed shot despite being defended well and Steffen having the goal well covered.

In then end this team ran out of gas after the Leagues Cup.  Combined with the Cole Bassett injury (something he unnecessarily apologized for on Twitter/X this weekend) and Mihailovic fighting through a bad ankle injury just to play in Game 2 there wasn't enough in the tank to get past a very good Galaxy side.  Its disappointing to see the team end a good season on a 6 game losing streak (and 7 of their last 8) and shows why the quiet summer window was a missed opportunity, but we shouldn't let that overshadow things like the 3rd place in Leagues Cup, winning the Rocky Mountain Cup, and just bouncing back from our worst season ever to be in the mix for a top 4 finish in the West into late September.

We'll get into the normal end of season coverage this week then a bit of a break as I have to go to Las Vegas for work next week.  The first real big date coming up is December 10th when the draw for next season's CONCACAF Champions Cup will be held and we'll find out our opponent for the games in February.  We'll get roster updates before that probably, and we have an expansion draft coming up as well.

Man Of The Match: Oliver Larraz.  Score a playoff goal, get MOTM.