Rapids In, Rapids Out

A couple of reported but not announced roster moves by the Rapids today.  The big one is that we've sent Kamara to Minnesota for a reported $150K in allocation money and United's 2nd round pick in 2022.

Obviously trading the best scorer in the last decade is a big move for the Rapids, but the comments Robun Fraser made after the trade suggests something was not right between Kamara and the locker room and/or coaches.  Fraser said "it was evident that it was time for a move" and some rumors suggest that Kamara was demanding to start the rest of the season post-MLS Is Back tournament.  Now both the Rapids and Kamara have histories of problems in the player/club relationship.  The list of players the Rapids have left go that later came out were unhappy is long, and Kamara has played for 10 teams before today and only once has he made it past 2 years with a team.  I doubt we'll ever get a real good feel for what happened here, but suffice it to say its quite likely that things weren't good and a change needed to be made.

The other piece of this puzzle is that Kamara's contract is expiring and only has 12 games left on it.  If he wasn't likely to start as the rumors suggest and recent games have shown, how much playing time was Kamara going to get in those 12 games?  Would that playing time have made the difference in this season being successful?  It seems unlikely.  He isn't even making a strong case to start, while his numbers are better than Shinyashiki the rest of the attacking players are all putting up numbers similar to his.

So we have a possibly unhappy player that isn't likely to turn this season around and isn't an obvious starter.  Trading him is a logical step then.  Of course all those things also impact what we can get for him, driving down his price.  Despite that I would have liked to see us do a bit better than $125K in allocation money and a draft pick that we're likely to get no value out of.  Kamara is the 5th leading goal scorer in MLS history and has been successful wherever he's gone, at least in the first season.  I was really hoping to see us hit 200K at least.  In the end this is a pretty meh trade where we dump salary and potentially a problem player and get some value out of him, but doesn't help us greatly short or long term.

The other reported news just broke but the team has apparently signed 33 year old free agent fullback Steven Beitashour.  He's spent the last 10 years playing for San Jose, Toronto (where he was coached by Fraser), Vancouver, and LAFC and represented Iran at the 2014 World Cup, though didn't get any playing time.  This is a solid backup signing, giving some experience to the outside of the defense and somebody reliable when Rosenberry or (more likely) Vines needs a night off.  But that's all it is.