2010 Expansion Draft

OK, time to get back to a more regular posting schedule. This week I'll hopefully have a season review, a recap of where the European teams I'm following are, and maybe a new team to talk about. First lets start with next week's Expansion Draft for next year's Philadelphia Union.

The draft will be a week from Wednesday. No official rules have been released yet, but MLS has been pretty consistent with the rules in recent years:

* Teams can protect 11 players, plus any Generation Adidas players
* Any DP or player with a no-trade clause must be protected
* 3 International Players can be left unprotected
* No team can lose more than one player in the draft

There are also a couple of rules that have not been confirmed:

* Paul Bravo told me he expected to be required to protect 4 of the 6 internationals the Rapids have
* There may be a rule that any player that was on season-ending IR is automatically protected

That said, here's the lists I would work with if I were making the choices for the Rapids:

Automatically protected - GA Status:
Ciaran O'Brien
Rob Valentino

Possibly protected - Season-ending IR:
Colin Clark
Jacob Peterson
Jamie Smith - Int

Required internationals protected:
Julian Baudet - I feel like he's the best leader for the defense we have
Omar Cummings - One of the Rapids top 5 players
Kosuke Kimura - Becoming a flexible option at right back or right mid

That leaves 8 slots for the rest of the roster:
Conor Casey - Our biggest offensive threat
Pablo Mastroeni - Team leader, solid defender, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has a no-trade clause
Matt Pickens - Our best GK option
Nick LaBrocca - Solid MLS midfielder
Drew Moor - I like how well he seemed to mesh with the Rapids defense
Jordan Harvey - Solid left backs are hard to come by
Scott Palguta* - Good depth across the back line
Best young player* - The coach's opinion on the best young player that didn't get much first-team time this year

* = Players that would be dropped if the season-ending IR protection is not in place for Jamie Smith or Colin Clark.

This leaves the team with a protected starting lineup of:

Pickens
Kimura - Moor - Baudet - Harvey
Pablo
Smith - LaBrocca - Clark
Cummings - Casey

With a bench of Valentino, and O'Brien plus possibly Peterson, Palguta, and a young player. That's a pretty decent MLS side to keep protected. With this protected list the players I think are most likely to be looked at by Philly are Cory Gibbs or Mehdi Ballouchy but I wouldn't be shocked if no Rapids are taken. If Palguta or Peterson are left unprotected they would move to the top of the list in my opinion.