PICKING OVER THE PIECES
Caps’ Kudo among those unprotected
For the teams not picking players, the MLS expansion draft is an exercise in calculated risk.
You get to protect 11 of your players. A few more—home grown players and those signed to Generation Adidas contracts — are automatically protected. And a handful of players get exposed.
The trick in drawing up these lists is not simply to put your best players in one pile and shuffle the rest of the names one column over. It’s about exposing those who’ll be least attractive to the incoming clubs. Or put another way, it’s about protecting those who offer good value.
Hence, Whitecaps coach Carl Robinson has protected the lowpaid, high-energy Nicolas Mezquida, while high-cap-hit, low-return winger Cristian Techera could, in theory, be plucked Tuesday by incoming Atlanta United or Minnesota United. Not bloody likely, though. Techera had a very good first season in MLS in 2015. He scored. He set up goals. He befuddled defenders. He dazzled at times. But in 2016 he was a $345,000 cap hit — which surely includes some portion of his transfer fees — and he was a shell of the player fans fell hard for the previous year.
Likewise, the Caps can afford to leave Japanese striker Masato Kudo unprotected because he’s on the books for $370,000 and he scored two goals in his first MLS season. In other words, he’s untouchable.
Mezquida, by contrast, has 60 MLS games to his name, works his tail off and makes $88,000. He might not have nearly the upside Techera has, but he’s a far more attractive option to an expansion team.
Aside from value, the other thing expansion teams often look for is MLS experience to complement whoever they pluck from the college draft and whoever they sign.
Perhaps, then, defender/midfielder Marcel de Jong will be the most attractive of the Caps’ exposed players.
But de Jong is a Canadian international and wouldn’t be a domestic player on Atlanta’s or Minnesota’s roster. He’d take up one of their limited international spots. So would Canadian centre-back David Edgar, who is only 29, isn’t making huge money and is also exposed.