Rapids History By The Numbers: #29 & #30

Before we get started, a slight update from the tournament.  Based on pictures the Rapids have posted and other sources it appears that every player, other than Kortne Ford (ongoing knee injury) and those already loaned out to USL sides, is in Florida.

Now, on to today's lists.  We're starting to crape the bottom of the barrel as we exit the 20's and get into numbers that aren't used very much.  First the group at 29:

Scott Garlick (2002)
Scott Palguta (2009-2012)
Kory Kindle (2013)
Caleb Calvert (2015-2018)
Matt Hundley (2019-2020)

Kindle never played in a league match and Hundley hasn't yet, so we can eliminate them.  Calvert only make 4 starts in his time, and averaged 20-30 minutes in most of his sub appearances.  Garlick started 15 games that year with a goals against average of 1.6, 8th of the 10 keepers who played 15 or more games that season (9th was Tim Howard of all people).  Which brings us to Scott Palguta.  While Palguta was never more than a replacement level player he did get 30 starts and 50 appearances in his four season here (and won MLS Cup), more than everyone else on the list combined.  He appeared in half of the games in our Cup winning season (though he only started 5, and had no playoff appearances).  While that's not great, its the best to wear 29.

Now we're into the 30s with a rather infamous list:

Zizi Roberts (2003-2004)
Amir Lowery (2005)
Thiago Martins (2006)
Gabriel Torres (2013)
Abe Rodriguez (2020)

Now I think in a few years Rodriguez will be the obvious choice, but he hasn't played yet.  Lowry had a grand total of one appearance.  So that leaves us with three somewhat infamous forwards.  To break them down:

Roberts: 17 appearances, 12 starts, 1091 minutes, 6 goals
Martins: 25 appearances, 14 starts, 1390 minutes, 3 goals, 4 assists
Torres (2013 only): 7 appearances, 5 starts, 507 minutes, 3 goals, 1 assist

To be fair to Torres, he was signed with only 9 games left in 2013 and the only two games he missed were due to National Team duty.

These three are actually remarkably close.  Roberts had roughly double the minutes and double the goals of Torres.  Martins didn't have as many goals but did rack up a few assists.  In the end I'm going to go with Torres for doing as much as he did in as little time as he had in 2013.  Too bad after that he decided he liked the training table buffet more than playing.

Rapids History By The Numbers: #27 & #28

After a break for real news we're back to our recap of 25 years of Rapids players.  We're now to the point where the lists are short enough and the choices obvious enough that I'm going to cover multiple numbers in most posts.  Tonight we get two fan favorites.  First, the list for #27.

Byron Foss (2005)
Kosuke Kimura (2007-2012)
Shane O'Neill (2013-2015)
Luis Gil (2017)
Deklan Wynne (2018-2020)

Yeah, this is obviously Koz.  The heart of the 2010 MLS Cup team and maybe the biggest difference between player value and fan love.  The only players I can think of that are more loved by the fans are all in, or will be in, the Gallery of Honor.  Honestly, Koz is probably more loved than some of them even.  He's the only player who's returned to the Dick with another team and had to take a lap of honor after the game to acknowledge the fans.  The only other candidate, O'Neill, played in about half as many games as Koz, never really fully locked down a starting spot, and left under less than ideal circumstances.

Oddly, despite his long time at the club he doesn't appear in the top 10 of any records and his only league honor, other than winning the Cup, was being a finalist for the Fair Play award in 2011.  He had the winning goal to put the Rapids into MLS Cup 2010, even it was meant to be a cross. 

Our list for #28

Alex Blake (2003)
Jordan Cila (2004)
Leo Cullen (2005)
John DiRaimondo (2008)
Davy Armstrong (2010-2014)
Sam Nicholson (2018-2020)

Ironically I was planning to post this on Thursday night, when the news of Nicholson's release pushed it down the schedule.  To show you how easy this pick is, Sam Nicholson had 48 appearances for the Rapids, and was clearly about to rack up more this season before COVID-19 and his personal issues at home led to his Rapids career ending.  The rest of the players who wore 28 had 53 appearances combined.

As The MLS Bubble Turns

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend as Denver blew up half of Wyoming's inventory of fireworks.  We had some significant developments around the MLS Is Back tournament in the last 36 hours.

Sunday the Rapids were scheduled to fly to Orlando, until they weren't.  The final round of tests conducted on Friday returned two positive tests, which meant that nobody could fly yesterday and the whole travelling group had to be retested.  Yesterday the Rapids sent out an official update that the team would fly down tomorrow (Tuesday).

That lasted about 24 hours until news broke that the team was back at the Dick this afternoon preparing to leave, and sure enough they did.  When they reach Walt Disney World tonight they'll be the final team to enter the MLS bubble in Orlando.  This evening the team sent out another official update saying the team had gotten the results of the tests from yesterday back and everyone tested negative.  The two people that tested positive yesterday still stayed in Denver and will join the team in Orlando once they have a second negative test returned after at least 24 hours.

Once that news came out the big news of the day broke, that FC Dallas has been withdrawn from the tournament by MLS due to having 10 players test positive since they reached Orlando.  Even after having rescheduled their first game it was determined that it was not viable to have them try to compete.  MLS has not yet announced how the tournament will change to deal with this missing team or how Dallas will make up the three group stage games that are meant to count towards the regular season standings.

That may be because there's more to come.  There are reports that Nashville has 5 to 8 members of their party that have tested positive.  If accurate that may lead to them needing to be removed from the tournament as well, which would leave the league with a much easier 6 groups of 4 teams to deal with.

I said it last week, and I still feel that this tournament is a bad idea at this time.  The best move is just to end it now.

Rapids And Nicholson Mutually Terminate Contract

Surprising news this afternoon as the Rapids announced that they had reached an agreement with Sam Nicholson to terminate his contract.  There are some reports that Nicholson has an ongoing personal issue back home in Scotland, and the official announcement states that this decision is what's best for Sam and his family's well-being, which does seem to lend credence to those reports.

First of all, obviously, we hope that whatever is going on with Nicholson and/or his family turns out for the best.  Sam has been a fan favorite since he got here and I have heard nothing but good things about  him.  This is not how you want to see a players' time with a team end.

As far as the on-the-field impacts, the Rapids should be able to absorb Nicholson's departure without too much drop off.  As it was he was likely to see his playing time reduced with the addition of Benezet and Galvan.  He was already in a three way battle with Shinyashiki and Lewis last season, plus the wing is one place where we can get Rubio on the field with Kamara.  We'll miss his speed from time to time but overall I think we'll be ok.

Rapids History By The Numbers: #26

As we get into the higher numbers our lists get smaller, which in some ways makes my life easier.  For example, this group.

Nat Borchers (2003)
Alberto Delgado (2004)
Fabrice Noel (2005)
Conor Casey (2007)
Michael Holody (2009-2011)
Deshorn Brown (2013-2015)
Dennis Castillo (2016-2017)
Cole Bassett (2018-2020)

We can quickly whittle this down.  Delgado, Holody, Castillo, and Noel aren't in the running.  Borchers and Casey had good to great Rapids careers, but their first season at the club wearing this number isn't enough to make them the best to wear this number.  That leaves us with Deshorn Brown and Cole Bassett.  While I think Cole is the future of the club and will either become a significant player or get sold for a significant price, he has not quite reached the level of Deshorn Brown yet.

Despite only playing for two seasons and one game, Brown is in the top 10 in team history in goals, shots, and shots on goal.  For most of the decade, befre Kamara joined us last year, his back to back 10 goal seasons were the highlight from a Rapids striker.  On top of that, in maybe the team's best ever "strike while the iron is hot" moment, he was sold to Norway for over $500K at the start of 2015, and immediately became a wanderer who has played for 7 teams in 6 years, including a brief stint with DC United, which cost them their spot in the allocation order.