Recapping A Busy Day

Ok, lots of stuff happened today.  Lets break down the details, then we'll talk end result.

• Made the Beeny Feilhaber signing official
• Traded Marlon Hairston for $175K in GAM ($125K this year and $50K next year)
• Traded the #15 pick and $100K of GAM to Chicago for the #5 pick
• Used the #5 pick on DU forward Andre Shinyashiki
• Used their two second round picks on defenders Marcello Borges and Jacob Hauser-Ramsey

So at the end of the day we ended up with two signed players, two trialists, and $75K in GAM.  We did had to lose Hairston to do it.

All in all, a really good day.  We covered Feilhaber last night.  Shinyashiki comes to us from across town at DU where he played with Kort Ford and Sam Hamilton.  He had 28 goals and 4 assists in 21 games last year and 51 goals with 15 assists over his four years with the Pioneers.  He plays a bit in-between attacking mid and full striker.  As a Brazilian he does require an international slot (more on that later) but he already signed a deal with MLS so he's pretty much assured of making the roster.  It will be interesting to see how much time he spends in Commerce City compared to Colorado Springs, given that he has Kamara, Rubio, Feilhaber, Jackson, Gashi, Nicholson, and Mezquida battling for minutes in similar positions.

Borges is an outside back that, if he makes the roster, I expect to spend most of the season in the Springs and be an emergency backup behind Rosenberry, Vines, and Wynne.  Hauser-Ramsey is a tall centerback that's probably a long-shot to make the roster but given that we're a little thin there he'll have a shot.

One interesting point with the roster right now is that we've got a bit of an issue with international slots.  Right now we've traded for one and traded three away, leaving us with 6.  We currently have 8 internationals though.  Blomberg, Gashi, Mezquida, Nicholson, Price, Shinyashiki, Smith, and Wilson.  I'm not particularly worried about this, we've got plenty of time to figure it out.  There are a few options.  The most obvious one is Ena Patel's work getting green cards for some of these players.  Shinyashiki has been here for at least four years going to school, Blomberg and Nicholson are entering their third season in MLS, and of course Gashi has been here since 2016, though he may not be too interested given that he's probably leaving at the end of the season.  Other than that there's the always the unlikely possibility of trading one of them away, or the more likely scenario that we trade for an international slot or two.  They tend to go for around $100-$150K of GAM.  Lastly, we could always buy somebody like Blomberg or Boateng out of their contract before the season starts (that would only work for one of our two extra internationals).  Regardless we have 7 weeks to figure it out so no need to panic.

Live-ish Superdraft Post

I will update this as soon as my work allows as news breaks.

11:00am MT - Sources report that Cicago has dealt the #5 pick to Colorado for $100K of GAM and the #15 pick.  Moving up for Sinyashiki?

11:45am MT: The Rapids and Fire make the trade official and the Rapids select Andre Shinyashiki out of DU.  A great get for the Rapids.  Now its a long run until our next pick, the 4th pick in the 2nd round.

1:30pm MT: More on Shinyashiki here.

1:40pm MT: Not draft related, but Marlon Hairston was just traded to Houston for $175K in GAM.  $125K this year and $50K next year.

1:50pm MT: With the 4th pick in the 2nd round the Rapids select defender Marcello Borges out of Michigan.  Next pick (and last currently scheduled for today) is at #18.

2:45pm MT: With the 18th pick in the 2nd round the Rapids select defender Jacob Hauser-Ramsey out of U Conn.  That's our last pick for the day barring another trade.  Rounds 3 and 4 will be held on Monday but the Rapids only pick, currently, is the 4th pick of the 4th round.  Later tonight or this weekend I'll post a better recap of today's moves.  If we do make another move in the 2nd round I'll update this post.

Rapids Sign Benny Feilhaber

I'm unexpectedly making a second post tonight.  MLSsoccer.com just broke news that the Rapids have agreed to terms with National team midfielder Benny Feilhaber.   The report is a one year deal at just below max salary with a team option for a second year.

For the first three years of his career Benny played in Germany, England, and Denmark before returning to the U.S. and joining New England in 2011.  After two seasons there he was traded to Kansas City where he played for 5 years before being traded to LAFC last year where he played in every match, starting all but 2.

Feilhaber has been a iron man in MLS, playing in almost every game in his 8 seasons in the league, averaging just under 30 appearances a season.  In that time he has 37 goals and 56 assists.  As a #10 he's known for passes that can pick a defense apart and a mouth that can get in their heads.  He's particularly hated by FSL fans, which, bonus!

I like this move by the Rapids.  There's no long term commitment and it fills a 2019 hole, namely that we won't be expecting Mezquida to be "the man" to run the attack yet.  I'm not expecting a MVP season from Benny at his age, but if he can put in 60-70 minutes in each of his starts, make 25+ appearances, and total a combined 8-10 goals and assists over the season it will be a solid move for the year.  I think those numbers are reasonable, if a bit of a stretch.

If I can manager not to misspell his name more than 5 times this year I'll be pretty happy too.

Superdraft Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the annual Superdraft which has been less and less meaningful in recent years.  I wrote an article about the Rapids recent draft history for Burgundy Wave earlier this week so I'm not going to spend a ton of time here rehashing the same article.  I'll quote the end of it though as it sums up what I expect to happen tomorrow, with one caveat:

So where does that leave the Rapids this year? We traded the 4th pick in the draft to Dallas as part of the Acosta/Badji trade and got their 15th pick in exchange. I don’t know about you but I’d rather have Acosta and the 15th pick than not have Acosta and hope to find a quality player with the 4thpick. Beyond that, we have the 28th, 42nd, and 76th picks (for now at least). That’s two in the 2ndround and one in the 4th round. Our best-case scenario is probably finding a diamond in the rough like Jackson. We should not expect to pick up an MLS-ready player on Friday.

The caveat that I didn't cover is the possibility of trading up to acquire DU's Andre Shinyashiki, a forward from Brazil.  He played with the Rapids U-23s in the 2017-18 season so presumably the Front Office has a pretty good scouting report on him.  I would not be shocked to see the Rapids move into the top 5 to get him, especially since there are rumors that the Crew are willing to trade their spot for $100K in GAM/TAM.  Some combination of Hairston, draft picks, and $$$ should get the Rapids high enough to get him, if that's what they want.

As much as possible I'll try to update here in real-time during the draft tomorrow, with a full recap tomorrow night.

Schedule Day!

The most interesting day of the offseason happened today as the league release the 2019 schedule.  With a new team this year (Cincinnati) it means that everyone in the conference plays the same schedule, 2 games (home and away) against the teams in your conference and 1 game (home or away) against the teams in the other conference for a total of 34 games.  That means only 2 games in the Rocky Mountain Cup this year, not the 3 of the last few years.

This year the schedule makers were not kind to the Rapids.  The first 2.5 months are balanced, either alternating home and away or two home followed by two away.  After the home Rocky Mountain Cup game on May 11th though things start getting out of whack with the schedule being heavily tilted to the Rapids being at home for a while.  Between June 1st and Aug 10th the Rapids play 7 of 10 games at home.  Not surprisingly, this has to be balanced out in the remainder of the season, with only 2 of the final 9 games after that being at home.  One of those is the home finale on Sept. 29th, which means between Aug. 11th and Sept. 28th the Rapids play one home game (LA on Sept. 12th).

Not only that, but the Rapids play 2 home games each on Wednesday, Thursday (one of which is 4th of July), and Friday nights, tied for 2nd most in the league.  NYCFC has the most due to having to schedule around the Yankees, but then Colorado, Toronto, and Vancouver all play 6.  3 each of Toronto's and Vancouver's are Friday nights, which I think is for the Canadian TV contract.

The result of all that is that the Rapids only have 8 home games at their traditional 7pm Saturday time, and the last one is August 10th.  They play one home Saturday afternoon home game (the season opener at 4pm) and two Sunday games (St Patricks Day and the home finale on Sept. 29th).

Getting beyond the day of the games lets look at the spacing.  Generally we came out OK with 3 3-game weeks and a 2-game short rest week (Wed/Sat) coming out of a international break in September.  The first 3 game week is the first week of April where we go to Orlando on Saturday and then host Seattle and DC on Wednesday and Saturday respectively.  The second 3-game week is the last week of May where a trip to Philly is sandwiched between home games against Columbus and Cincinnati.  The last one is in mid-July where we go to Portland and then come home and host Minnesota and NYCFC.  All of those, with 2 of the 3 being at home, are pretty reasonable.

The big haul is in August where we're on the road for 4 straight weeks.  Between the 14th and the 31st we go to, in order, Minnesota, Houston, FSL to finish the Rocky Mountain Cup, and then to play RBNY.  That's a lot of miles in the air.  That FSL game starts the final run of 7 games which could be a murderer's row if we need points to make the playoffs.  @FSL, @RBNY, LA at home, @Toronto, @KC, Dallas at home, and finishing the season @LAFC.  Getting just 7 points and the RMC out of that run would be considered fairly successful I think.

A couple of random notes to finish the analysis off.  July 4th will be the continuation of one of the longest traditions among the Rapids fan base, Jameson Night!, as New England comes to town.  As long-time readers know I never attend the 4th of July game, instead choosing to spend time with my wife celebrating our anniversary that day, but I'll be sure to get a bottle of Jameson to the tailgate crew for that one.  The Rapids have two nationally televised games, both on UniMas, one on Sunday and one on Friday (at home).  The other Friday home game is against Vancouver, which I expect is on Friday due to Canadian television.  The non-4th of July Thursday game is Sept 12th, coming out of an international break, which is probably why its Thursday and not Wednesday.

All in all its a pretty lousy home schedule.  Some of that was forced by the newly compressed schedule this year resulting in more weekday games but a lot of it was just getting the short end of the stick from the schedulers.  I don't expect our attendance to be very good this year so its up to the die-hards to bring it every game to show our support.