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.