Expansion Protected List Released Today

The protected list for tomorrow's expansion draft for FC Cincinnati has been released, the Rapids protected:

• Kellyn Acosta
• Nana Boateng
• Marlon Hairston
• Tim Howard
• Niki Jackson
• Nicolas Mezquida/Zac MacMath (both were protected but its unclear which one was protected by the Rapids and who was protected by the Whitecaps)
• Sam Nicholson
• Jack Price
• Dillon Serna*
• Tommy Smith
• Deklan Wynne

and then automatically protected by their Homegrown Status are:

• Cole Bassett
• Kortne Ford
• Sam Vines

*Dillon Serna is a senior roster player now, so despite being a homegrown he's no longer automatically protected in an expansion draft and we must use a spot to protect him.

This leaves the following unprotected: Barnes, Blomberg, Boli, Calvert, Castillo, Colvey, Da Fonte, Dykstra, Gashi, Hamilton, Martinez, Sjoberg, Wilson.

I can't say there are any surprises here.  A bit of an eyebrow raise as Gashi being unprotected but that's probably a (safe) bet that Cincinnati won't want to take his DP contract on.  The only real question is protecting Boateng or Wynne over Sjoberg.

I expect Cinci is taking a long look at Sjoberg tonight but in the end will probably pass on all the available Rapids players.  I can't see them being interested in anyone other than Sjoberg from our unprotected list.  There are likely 5 better players for them elsewhere.

Our First Move Of The Offseason

There was a half-day trade window in advance of this week's expansion draft today (forget explaining why, its MLS) and the Rapids made a move.  They, surprisingly, sent Zac MacMath to Vancouver for attacking midfielder Nicolas Mezquida and $100K in TAM.

This is a surprise because by all accounts MacMath was the heir apparent to Tim Howard.  I even heard a rumor late in the season that they were talking about a platoon system in goal next year where Howard would play home games and MacMath would play road games.  Its odd and makes me question prior decision making (largely under Hinchey/Bravo/Pablo) that we would hold on to MacMath when he was hot after his half season as a starter in 2016 only to trade him when his value might be the lowest here in 2018.

As for the trade itself its largely meh, with a catch.  Two bad teams traded backup players.  Mezquida is a 26 year old Uruguayan #10 who has started occasionally in his time in Vancouver.  He's also able to play the wing or as a #9.   He's essentially going to take Enzo Martinez' role.  The catch is that he's an international and I don't love using up an international spot on a backup midfielder.  The $100K of TAM could be used to get us another international spot but I think the trade would have been better, even a notable positive, if instead of getting the TAM we had gotten back the international slot we traded to Vancouver through 2031 (not a typo) for Sanna Nyassi.

Year-End Roster Moves

After a month of quiet nothing from the Front Office we got the list of year-end roster moves today:

Out of Contract and Released: Yannick Boli, Andrew Dykstra

Options Declined and Released: Giles Barnes, Caleb Calvert, Kip Colvey, Mike da Fonte, Sam Hamilton, Enzo Martinez, Jack McBean, Ricardo Perez

Options Picked Up: Kellyn Acosta, Dillon Serna, Deklan Wynne

Everyone else is under guaranteed contract for 2019.

No real surprises on here and no real complaints.  Calvert and Perez as homegrown players being released are not shocking but a little unexpected.

Just because a player has their option declined doesn't mean they won't be back, it just means that the Rapids didn't want to pick them up ad the agreed on salary.  I wouldn't be surprised if Martinez, for example, gets a new offer and re-signs.

I know this is kind of minor, but I think the Andrew Dykstra signing really encapsulates the failure of the 2018 roster building process.  We traded a 2nd round pick to KC for him.  We signed him for over $100K.  Then we sent him to Charlotte all season and other than a couple of times when MacMath or Howard wasn't available and he had to be the backup on the bench he never put on a Rapids jersey.  Now we've released him.

Why couldn't we have signed a 22 year old rookie at minimum salary to do the same thing?  Yeah, the 2nd round pick next year and the $50K difference in salary really doesn't mean much, but at the same time a team likes the Rapids needs to maximize its roster everywhere it can to compete with the big spenders.  If we aren't doing the small things right are we surprised we aren't doing the big things right, like signing Boli, Mason, and Aigner?

Taking Stock And Moving On

Yes, after 3 months I'm back.  I needed the break from the blog with how bad this season was, I don't think I would have made it if I were doing game previews/reviews and news analysis on a regular basis.  That would have been far too much negativity to handle.

We're moving forward now though, hopefully I still have some readers at this point.  Unlike most years I'm not going to do a player of the year, a season recap, or a keep/trade/cut roster analysis.  The focus going forward will be looking at the steps the Rapids take to improve, not looking back at this disaster of a season.

Before we do that though, this one statistical post of how bad this season was.  I'm going to list all the ways this team sucked, then wrap it up, put it away, and never look at it again.

One note, pretty much all of these statistics ignore the first four years of the league when the shootout was used to break ties.  The further away we get from that time period the less those stats are going to be relevant anyway.

2018 Statistics:

• Second worst point total ever (23 in 2001)

• Second worst points per game ever - 0.912 (.88 in 2001)*

* - I've spent the latter half of the season saying this is likely our worst season ever.  It turns out the list I've been working from had the wrong pts/game total listed for 2001, and has had it wrong since it was first posted in 2014.  This turned out to only be the second worst season.

• Second worst total number of wins - 8 (5 wins in 2001 with only 26 games)

• Longest losing streaks in Rapids history - 8 and 7 games (not including the USOC loss)

• Worst loss in team history - 6-0 to FSL (this ties the infamous Joe Nasco game in LA but I'd argue that losing at home to your rival is wore than losing to the league's premier team on the road)

• Most goals allowed - 63 (62 in 2014)

• Worst goal differential - -27 (-20 in 2017)

• Lowest ever goal total for Golden Boot winner - 4 by Tommy Smith (Jovan Kirovski, 6, 2007)

I'll stop there.  Needless to say it was a horrible season.  Time to look to 2019.  I expect things to be quiet for a couple of weeks but if there's news I'll post.  Otherwise when we start getting information about contract options and such we'll get into roster planning for next season.

Catching Up On News

There's been a few pieces of news this week:

• First, Azira has been loaned to the Colorado Springs Switchbacks.  Considering Wilson has been crap as a dmid I don't know why we're doing this but so be it.
• Secondly, we sent our extra international spot back to Minnesota for $50K in General Allocation Money (GAM).  We got this spot from Minnesota in the Nicholson trade.  They send us Nicholson and the international spot, we sent them Miller and $50K in GAM.  So really we gave up Miller for Nicholson and an international spot for 3 months at this point.  Still a decent trade.
• next Thursday at 6:30pm Padraig Smith will be doing another online town hall.  Questions can be submitted in the Rapids subreddit.  More details here.