Anatomy of a decline; or, Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth
During the Sounders match over the weekend, it became real for me. I’m not sure what it was about this specific game, perhaps because it included the long-awaited return of Cristian Roldan but remained disappointing, or maybe because it was yet another home game where we didn’t wear green and didn’t result in a W, but it just kind of took the wind out of me.
Don’t get me wrong, we looked like the better team in the game. We had the lion’s share of chances, xG, shots, possession, whatever, and really should have just put it out of sight. It ended as an unremarkable 1–1 draw, hardly anything to get unhinged on the internet about. But it’s just so indicative of this season as a whole — we should be getting more from this group. I sighed and distracted myself with thinking about the possibilities of going on a run after Leagues Cup.
But after the match @interpearsonal on twitter asked a simple question, which was:
And that, my friends, left me scratching my head, because it has been a very long time since.
Having thought about it a bit, the last time I felt like this team was operating in such a way the first 15 or so games in 2021, when they were getting the most of out of their various skillsets and were basically blowing teams away. And then I also realized it’s been 2 years since then. And then I started digging more thoroughly and it dawned on me:
We just aren’t very good.
You can focus on the fact that we’ve been missing key players at key times, or that we’re still sitting third in the Western Conference, or that the xPoints are significantly greater than our actual points. You can dig into game data and that shows we had been brighter in spells or even entire 90s than our opponents, that we deserved more from several games and were let down by the final ball, or that key individuals are underperforming, or whatever other indicators you want to look at that show it’s not a system failure. All of these things are true to varying degrees, and worth considering, and mitigating one’s opinions over. I’m not discounting any of them. They’re real factors that affect real results.
But what you can’t really get around is the fact that the Sounders have been playing ball at a rate of 1.39 ppg over the last 100 MLS matches they’ve played. For context, in the 11 seasons that MLS has had a full 34-match season, a return of 1.39 ppg would have been good enough for playoff qualification in the Western Conference in five of those seasons, and on the outside looking in in six. In other words, 1.39 ppg is bubble team performance — just look at the table below, which shows the number of points/ppg won by teams in the Western Conference over the years. 1.39 ppg is historically low for this team, and it’s a sample size that can’t really be dismissed with a wave of the hand or papered over with mitigating factors.
Perhaps there are teams around MLS that think competing for a playoff spot is good enough, or a goal that, once achieved, is worth celebrating. And that’s fine, we need cannon fodder. But let’s be real, this is the Seattle Sounders, bro. A bubble team is below their standard, and below the standard their fans expect.
But beyond that, many Sounders faithful have sensed what appears to be a general malaise, a lack of vitality surrounding the club. I tend to agree that things do feel a bit stuck, and I think there are a lot of factors at play here. Certainly, results are a big part of it, but in this post I’ll explore the recent squad-building history, and how we ended up in a place where we are seeing strings of uninspiring performances and can’t make any moves to combat that situation.
Winter 2021–2022: To rebuild or not to rebuild?
Cast your mind back to the winter offseason between 2021 and 2022. The Sounders had just come off a 60 point season, which saw them miss out — by 1 point — on the top spot in the West to the Colorado Rapids. By all measures, it was a successful regular season, but in hindsight we may have seen some trouble brewing over the latter half. After a very good first 20 games that included an MLS record 13-match unbeaten run to start the season, a fade in performance over the last 14 saw the Sounders, who at one point had a three-point lead in the Supporters Shield race earlier in the year, ultimately end with a 13-point deficit.
Taking their ho-hum form into the postseason, the Sounders got bounced in their first round matchup against seven-seed Real Salt Lake, a team that simply shouldn’t have had a chance based on the relative quality of the two teams. RSL squeaked through 5–6 on penalties after holding Seattle scoreless at Lumen.
It was a frustrating end to a season that seemed destined for great things. But overall, 60 points in the West and a fluky playoff exit in a single-elimination game was nothing to be concerned about, especially when considered in the context of the team having performed at 1.72 ppg over the last 100 games at that point.
But Garth Lagerwey, at the time Sounders’ GM and noted Concacaf Champions League championship-wanter, had work to do. Sounders finishing second in the West in 2021 meant qualification for the 2022 CCL tournament, and if they wanted to win that tournament (*narrator voice* they did), they were going to need to come out the gates swinging. The problem was that Xavier Arreaga (at the time 26), Nicolas Benezet (30), Will Bruin (31), Stefan Cleveland (26), Jordy Delem (28), João Paulo (30), Fredy Montero (33), Shane O’Neill (27), Spencer Richey (28), Alex Roldan (24), Kelyn Rowe (29), Raúl Ruidíaz (30), and Brad Smith (27) were all at the end of their deals¹. This was a substantial part of the squad, representing 11/18 of their senior roster and more than 76% of the total cap hit.
So Lagerwey had decisions to make. On the one hand, he could stick with guys he knew, advancing age curves be damned, renew all or a good chunk of them, expect that the natural cohesion and familiarity in a stable squad would be the best foundation from which to make an early-season play at the CCL throne, and hope that the advancing age of key players would be mitigated simply by the caliber of players we were talking about. This would mean better chances in CCL, but also an inflexible roster due to the relative cost of veteran contracts vs youth contracts.
On the other hand, he could begin the hard work of a rebuild, not renew key veterans and replace them with younger options we had in-house already, and bring in new signings to fill out the middle of the roster. This is a riskier proposition in the immediate future, and would compromise our CCL campaign, but it would be a hedge against the aging core and allow more roster flexibility long term.
Or he could do something in between (which is almost always the right answer).
Lagerwey was/is smart, so he made the reasonable choice of doing something in between, but it was definitely more toward the cohesion and familiarity end of the spectrum. He re-signed eight of the thirteen veterans listed above, cutting loose Benezet, Delem, O’Neill, and Richey and selling Smith’s rights to DC United. The result was room to maneuver, enough to buy down João Paulo with TAM and bring in the highest profile free agent on the market, playmaker Albert Rusnák (then 27 years old), as a designated player.
There are perhaps arguments to be made about renewing a 31-year old center forward, or bringing in a DP that plays the same role as a more established DP already on the team (more on these later), but looking at that list, I don’t see much wrong with it in vacuum. I think all these moves were justifiable, and ultimately, were justified in the immediate term. The Sounders won the 2022 Concacaf Champions League and carved their names into the great tree trunk of history. They are, and will forever be, the only MLS team to win that iteration of the tournament.
I just want to pause for a second on what I just wrote above. Winning the Concacaf Champions League was, genuinely, one of the best experiences I’ve had as a Seattle sports fan, and in that moment I was the most proud of this club I’d ever been, and said so in a piece on Sounder at Heart, partially copied below:
The spirit of the Sounders is not interested in showcasing ourselves as a mere league representative. We are focused inward. We resist instant gratification; we know there are no shortcuts to success. We promote from within, and invest within, and that, perhaps counterintuitively, results in pulling people toward us. Our biggest stars, in their biggest moments, choose to elevate our young players. When we’re praised, we shine the spotlight on those around us. When there’s outside pressure, we double down on our commitments to each other, and in the process find ourselves — if not universally loved — globally relevant. We fight for each other because we want the best for each other. And when our attempts fail, you can expect another Rave Green trench rush full of new recruits will follow in earnest shortly, accompanied by the ghosts of those who came before.
This is the insufferable spirit of this club. Our fans offer up the best they have, and our players and staff take it and give theirs right back. And the beautiful thing is, the more insufferable we are, the more winning comes along with it. So continue to be insufferable, Sounders fans. Turn it up to 11. Give your best, support your club, and rest assured knowing that the club is going to meet us halfway.
In short, it was magical.
I think that’s important to remember that as we go forward, any criticism of the sub-par results over the past 18–24 months or so has to be understood within the context of our own expectations, which are based on our experiences with the club. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that, up until Nicolás Lodeiro lifted that trophy at Lumen Field on 4 May 2022, we had never been given any indication other than this club is building a rocket to the moon. The Sounders had been to MLS Cup finals in 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020, a Leagues Cup final in 2021, and the CCL final in 2022. That is an unprecedented run, and those lofty heights and the expectations that come along with them explain why a lot of fans are not pleased with the current run of form.
But we can’t freeze history at the moment of the CCL trophy lift. No, no. It’s not how this works, sadly. Time marches on.
Summer 2022: Summer with the Champs
Once the celebration hangover wore off, optimism was still pretty high heading into the rest of the MLS season. Remarkably, Sounders had been playing at a rate of 1.73 ppg through the first 15 matches of 2022 despite heavy squad rotation and a few midweek games as they clearly prioritized their Champions League campaign.
Our rotational options had kept us in a great spot in league play, and I remember thinking that, once the starters were all brought back into the regular MLS season ebb and flow, league play might feel like a breeze compared with the grueling CCL travel and opposition.
But as June became July, and especially into August, it became clear that something was not right. While the marketing of team’s CCL accomplishment was silly, fun and an unmitigated W — I don’t need to detail it thoroughly, you all lived it — the Sounders’ performance fell off a cliff in MLS play. They lost 10 games in the months of July and August, and the Summer with the Champs was feeling cursed.
It was around this point that I suspect something outside of the Seattle Sounders began to, potentially, affect what was going on inside the Seattle Sounders. Darren Eales, the then-club president of Atlanta United, announced that he would be stepping down from his role to become the CEO of Newcastle United, effective 8 August 2022. What follows is total conjecture, but it’s hard not to suspect that, given that he was announced as Atlanta’s new Club President a few months later, perhaps Garth’s focus was not solely on the Seattle Sounders’ squad management in this crucial summer.
I don’t want to call his professionalism into question or anything, but it is interesting to try to get into Lagerwey’s head at this time. The team was maxed out, there was no cap room or allocation money anywhere (see graphic below). He had pushed all his chips into the CCL, so it is very likely that there were simply no moves to make. Even if he thought he was staying at this point, he may not have any moves. The squad was loaded with talent, and it’s certainly possible that Lagerwey thought the cohesion and familiarity of the group he had were good enough to keep us reasonably competitive.
Alternatively, if Lagerwey knew he was leaving, he probably didn’t want to just bail with a half-dredged canal. Leaving his successor with a locked-in squad not only alleviates pressure on the new person in the role (in this case Waibel), but also buys them a year to set their own plans in place.
That said, Lagerwey has never struck me as passive. He was well aware of the roster issues he’d made for himself during the previous winter, and mitigating, or at the very least not compounding, those problems was something he had a very good reputation on up till this point. I can’t help but come back to this time and think that, had he had his heart set on staying around in Seattle, he may have used this secondary window to build in more flexibility for the upcoming offseason. Again, pure speculation on my part.
Whatever the thought process was at the time, literally no moves of any consequence were made in or out during the Summer with the Champs, and, for whatever reason, the Sounders couldn’t turn it around in the second half of the year. 2022, which started so promising, ended up being the worst MLS season the team had ever experienced. They lost 11 of the last 16 matches that season, winning only 4, which was good enough for 1.06 ppg over that period, tied with the first half of 2016 as the worst string of games in Sounders MLS’ history.
The miserable run left the team with an overall record of 12–5–17, 41 points (1.21 ppg), and missing the postseason for the first time ever.
Winter 2022–2023: Doubling down
It’s worth remembering that the last time Sounders went on a run as bad as the second half of 2022, it resulted in a notable change of direction. The Sounders fired Sigi Schmid, the then-winningest coach in MLS history, a living legend who had led the Sounders to five trophies in their first six MLS seasons, and the only manager this iteration of Sounders had even known. It was literally unprecedented, even if rumors of Schmid potentially being let go had swirled before.
But it wasn’t only that. Schmid’s last match, an embarrassing 3–0 loss in Kansas City, happened on 24 July, his firing was announced two days later on 26 July, and Sounders new designated player, Nicolás Lodeiro, presumably a player that Schmid was consulted on, knew was coming, and had planned around, was unveiled on 27 July. In other words, the Sounders pulled the trigger on a high profile piece — one that played the same position as their current highest profile piece — and threw him out there immediately, out of position, because changes were needed.
That same Lodeiro, seven years later, after a similar string of results to the one preceding his arrival, had the following to say about the 2022 season:
“There are other mistakes that are happening, at the player level, at the coaching staff level, and at the club level itself. And it happens to be that the CCL that we achieved was able to cover many of these mistakes.”
To me, that sounds like that Lodeiro thinks the team has responsibility for the way the 2022 season played out, but not sole responsibility, which also had to be pinned on the rest of the organization.
Head coach Brian Schmetzer, likewise, summed up his thoughts on the season, saying:
“Maybe there needs to be a little bit of change in the roster, that always happens, that’s normal. We’ll get some fresh faces in, we’ll continue to develop the young players because I don’t push this on any of the young players — this disappointment. The young players have come along fine. But we’ll certainly as a staff start working on that when we get back home… We’ll come back, and we’ll start working on that right away because the Club World Cup is going to come up on us pretty fast.”
This is all to say, it seemed to me that the Sounders players and coaching staff may have been a little taken aback that so little roster churn occurred during the primary winter offseason. But the front office was not. If you listen to Garth Lagerwey’s last public media appearance as General Manager of the Sounders, at the season-end annual business meeting (see video below), he basically said he didn’t foresee any needle-moving changes. In fact, what he spoke about most was that there were already 25 guys signed on the first team roster, the continued development of young players, and making sure to note that this was the first time Sounders have had a substantial first round pick in the MLS SuperDraft for over a decade. That is to say, the focus was decidedly not on shuffling the deck, even as the core was yet another year older than when the gamble was first made.
There are a couple good reasons for this. First and foremost, the triumph in the CCL was a massive achievement, but it seemed to be understood the hangover of that competition — some resting on the goodwill of that accomplishment or simply exhaustion at the extra games played — may have resulted in a flatness the rest of the season. Acceptable or not, I think it was understood that if that were indeed the case, that flatness would be exorcised by the time the first kick of 2023 took place.
Secondly, it is safe to say that many attributed a lot of the struggles in 2022 to a single point of failure; that is, the notable gap left in central midfield during which João Paulo was rehabbing his surgically reconstructed knee. This meant that a healthy number of water carrying minutes were picked up by the developing Danny Leyva and Josh Atencio, and literal child Obed Vargas. All of these options are good players, and the Sounders are rightfully high on their potential, but central midfield is a hard place to be as a young player. Mistakes are brutally exploited, and inconsistencies and growing pains that are natural of young players are to be expected. In short, João Paulo’s return was understood — and in hindsight perhaps over-indexed — as something that would contribute significantly toward returning us to winning ways.
Whatever the justifications, the fact of the matter is, with the exception of new contracts being given to Nouhou, Jordan Morris, and Cristian Roldan, the only non-supplemental roster incoming during this window was center forward Héber, acquired from NYCFC for $400,000 in GAM (pro rated over his two guaranteed contract years) and carrying along a cap hit of $1,019,000. That outlay for the striker was to be expected, even if substantial. He’s a former Golden Boot winner and, when healthy, has always been productive in MLS. In a vacuum, this move was reasonable, even if my tweets from the time evidence that I wasn’t particularly confident in the group overall.
It should also be noted that this was Craig Waibel’s first notable move as General Manager of the Sounders. What we don’t know is whether this was a deal that was planned in advance or whether this was Waibel reacting to what was available in the market at the time.
What was surprising, to me at least, was the exit of Sam Adeniran, a forward/winger who had had a pretty impressive season on loan with San Antonio in the USL, where he bagged 12G/3A in about 1,800 minutes, including two goals and an assist in their three playoff games, helping San Antonio win their USLC Championship in 2022 while on loan. His penchant for scoring goals in big games, combined with his miniscule wages ($65,500 in 2022), seemed like a profile worth keeping around. Instead, Sounders chose² to deal him to MLS newcomers St Louis City for $100,000 in TAM.
The acquisition of Héber essentially ate up any roster flexibility we achieved from the sale of Adeniran and allowing the contracts of two veteran depth pieces, Will Bruin (salary of $265,000) and Jimmy Medranda ($200,000) to expire, essentially locking us back into where we were before with an ageing core, but now with two fewer players going into a season that had even more matches due to the new Leagues Cup format.
I’ve laid out elsewhere, the squad is locked in for the rest of the year unless there is an outgoing first. Jeremiah Oshan recently outlined the options available to the Sounders this season, and, while they’re all totally real avenues for getting some financial wiggle room, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I simply don’t foresee any of those options being utilized. The brass is happy with the squad. Craig Waibel (watch below) all but confirmed that this week during his media availability when he said that unless Sounders are able to make their first team significantly better they wouldn’t be making any moves.
So that’s where we are.
Hindsight: What could have been done differently?
That was quite a long introduction to get to the point in this piece where most people will probably just skip to. The reason I spent 3,500 words walking us through the decisions leading us up to this point is because I don’t think it’s fair to simply look back at what has occurred without getting into the mindset of the people making decisions at the time. Even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the decisions that I’m going to criticize here are mostly borderline cases, which means that without that benefit, it’s hard to lay any fault anywhere, in my opinion.
That said, there are a few high profile roster moves I think should be questioned. Again, I’m not doing this because I think I know better than anyone involved in the Sounders. They’re pros with a good track record. I’m just some Apple TV subscriber. But I think it’s worth examining these moves and doing a little post-hoc analysis. So here they are, from least egregious to most:
a. Raúl Ruidíaz’s three-year designated player contract, winter 2021–2022
Of the roster decisions listed here, this is the one of which I’m least critical. Raúl Ruidíaz had been an excellent player for the Seattle Sounders, averaging 0.67 goals/90 for the Sounders and becoming one of the most feared strikers in the league, with a knack for scoring big goals (9G/4A in 11 MLS postseason matches). Any criticism of this move has absolutely nothing to do with his performances on the field.
In addition, I don’t think there’s any question that the guy has been nothing but great to have around the squad. He invests in the young players and gets to know them. He holds the standard high, and Schmetzer never misses an opportunity to praise his work ethic and professionalism. In all, he’s been a very successful signing since he arrived midway through the 2018 season.
The main part of renewing this contract that I find questionable is the age profile of the player, especially when viewed through the lens of his historic availability for us. The fact of the matter is, that while we’ve gotten production from him when he’s available, we’ve never had him for more than 72% of the available league minutes over an entire MLS season. And worse yet, over the past two seasons (ironically, since his contract renewal), we’ve had him on the field for an average of only 40% of the total minutes available.
When looked at in this light, giving a three-year contract to him may not have been the best move. Considering that even before the new contract he had averaged only 67% of the available league minutes, serious questions should have been asked about handing a player a new contract (and a $500,000 raise) for his years between 32–35, even if it is one that I think is understandable given the return we’ve gotten from him before then.
Another mitigating factor here is that we can’t really judge these decisions without knowing what the alternatives were, and the alternatives to Ruidíaz were substantially restricted due to the impossibility of scouting during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was mentioned many times in interviews by Lagerwey as a difficulty they had to contend with.
b. Albert Rusnák’s two-year designated player contract, winter 2021–2022
I think the point about the pandemic above leads nicely into the discussion of Albert Rusnák’s acquisition in the winter offseason before the 2022 season. There are a lot of Rusnák haters among Sounders fans, and I don’t really get it. I think he’s an excellent player, tidy on the ball and clever off it, who plays five positions at at least above replacement level and two at a high-TAM level. I don’t really have any consistent issues with how he plays. He’s not a perfect player but I don’t think there’s any question that he brings the level of the team up and deserves to be one of the highest paid players on the squad.
Again, in a salary capped league, we can really only judge players against what the alternatives are. But if the scouting for alternatives simply wasn’t available, it makes very good sense to bring in a known quantity from within the league, and who former RSL head coach and current Sounders assistant Freddie Juarez knew very well. I can’t fault that thinking.
What I can fault is the outlay for him. Rusnák’s salary started at $1,800,000, meaning he’s a designated player, but slightly less than $200,000 above the max-TAM threshold. This means his contract is just barely over the threshold that allows it to be bought down with TAM (read more about why in my introduction to MLS roster rules post if that tickles your fancy). Additionally, the contract was short, guaranteed only for two years with one option year.
To me, this seems somewhat crazy. It’s like this contract was designed to be just expensive enough to disallow any roster flexibility, and it seems like a very strange oversight (if that’s what it was), and if it wasn’t an oversight, it seems like something they should have corrected, either by explaining to Albert that taking slightly less money each year would mean they could bring in another quality player to help win trophies, or trying to incentivize him to take slightly less money in exchange for guaranteeing the third year instead of it being a team option.
To add to this, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to question the wisdom in signing a player that is, at least in the one position he could reasonably be expected to perform at DP-caliber, redundant with another more established DP already on the roster. If they had only a year overlap, this could perhaps be spun to be considered good contingency planning — allowing for a year of adjustment before taking over at the crucial playmaker role — but Lodeiro and Rusnák have contracts ending the same year! As such, one or the other is being asked to play out of position or sit on the bench for the duration of both their contracts, while other positions of need, like right wing, seem undermanned.
c. Not dealing Xavier Arreaga, winter 2022–2023
Xavier Arreaga, before the season started, had a pretty high trade value. He was coming off another season of 2000+ minutes, though not without ups and downs. I’m not sure all Sounders fans were particularly high on him, however, he had played a crucial role in the Sounders’ success over the past four years he’s been with the team, culminating in the CCL win.
But it became clear almost immediately in the beginning of the 2023 season that, at least to Schmetzer and his staff, Arreaga’s place in the starting lineup had been usurped by hometown kid Jackson Ragen. And that’s fine, Ragen has been better than I expected, establishing himself as a key cog in a very good defense.
But what that means is we have a TAM player on the bench, producing nothing, and blocking roster flexibility. As of today, Arreaga’s played 232 minutes through the first 24 matches of the season and represents $750,000 in roster space between his cap hit (7.1% of the total) and xAM used to buy him down.
He is now injured long-term and will therefore have no trade value, at least not for the rest of the season. If we had any opportunity to deal him earlier in the primary window — and it sure seems like we probably did, Sounder at Heart reported “definite interest”— even if for only a negligible amount of allocation money, the roster flexibility would have been worth it on its own.
Not doing this move in the primary window looks particularly bad now when you consider some of the other similar profile players that moved that window and the return they were demanding.
And, just to add to that, the downstream effects of shuffling the CB order has upset Abdoulaye Cissoko, on a first team contract but playing primarily with Tacoma Defiance, who has made it pretty clear that he wants to get out of Seattle if he can’t get more playing time with the first team. Had Arreaga been sold during the winter, Cissoko had been brought up to make the bench as the third CB all year, I doubt we’d be hearing these complaints from him. This seems especially true considering Defiance coach Wade Webber has played three other players (Stuart Hawkins — 1129’, Hal Uderitz — 1330’, and Fito Ovalle³ — 1073’) at centerback more than Cissoko (756’) so far during this season.
d. Acquiring Héber / selling Sam Adeniran, winter 2022–2023
I keep coming back to this one. I think this/these was/were the biggest mistake(s). Although in some ways I’m not entirely sure it’s fair to lump them together as I’m not convinced one move was contingent on the other, or that the two are even connected. But since they at least nominally play the same position (I’m aware Adeniran has played wide a significant proportion of his minutes), I’ll treat both of the moves together here.
Héber first. I’m a Héber defender. He is where he’s supposed to be all the time, has a silky first touch when receiving balls along the floor as he comes back into the midfield, is surprisingly good at hold up play, and, as has been cataloged, he’s an xG/xA giant. He’s also good a defending from the front (“Brian likes a hardhat” as Craig Waibel has been quoted as saying). He’s a proven goal scorer who’s been productive in this league over a number of years. As a backup CF option, most teams would kill to be in the position the Sounders are here.
But Héber is the most expensive senior player on the roster who is not a DP or named Cristian Roldan, Jordan Morris, or João Paulo. And, again, he’s a striker with a proven goal scoring record so it’s hardly a surprise. Perhaps this was the hedge against the Ruidíaz’ availability issues I discussed earlier, perhaps the plan was to platoon the two of them to keep them both fit and fresh. I see the wisdom in that. Having two viable options at center forward is better than one when both are 30+ years old.
But I remember looking at the figures involved at the time the move was made and thinking there had to a better way, one that doesn’t totally lock all of our cap options up.
Which brings me to Adeniran.
Unless there is a market where xG can be exchanged for actual G or MLS league points, we are currently paying out the nose to get slightly less production than St Louis is getting out of Sam Adeniran, who’s on less than 10% of Héber’s salary. It is quite frustrating to think about what we could do with $651,250 in cap space and more than TAM 365,000.
This on its own is annoying, but when you add to it the fact that Sam Adeniran was a Sounder to start this season, on a $65,000 supplemental roster contract, and that we traded him away for a measly $100,000 in GAM, it really gets your gears ground up.
It’s hard to know what Sam Adeniran’s deal is. Seattle clearly didn’t value him, and it would be interesting to know why. St Louis don’t seem confident of his ability either, considering he has spent most of this season in the USL affiliate. But the guy has scored everywhere he’s gone for the most part, including some very important goals in high stakes situations, and that’s something that we seemed to undervalue to some extent. He’s also young and may improve, something that Héber, at 31 years old, probably isn’t.
I think it is the compounded nature of this one that puts it ahead of the Arreaga error for me. We made one expensive bad move, and undersold a potentially valuable asset to make it happen.
So what’s your point?
That’s a good question. I’m not fully confident myself. Look, I’m not sure it necessarily does any good to dissect this stuff we can’t do anything about, but at the very least it helps me sleep at night.
What I will say, is that I think there are some lessons in the long run to take from this. First, like I said before, I don’t think any of the moves above should be categorized as unmitigated disasters or anything. I could make good arguments for all of them. But there’s also no shame in admitting mistakes and trying to learn from them. In competitive situations, it is the people who are humble enough to reevaluate plans when they aren’t working that are able to be most successful. Or, as Garth said last summer, maybe we need to “adapt and tweak the model,” and stop doubling down on an ageing group of players.
I guess my hope is that the front office is evaluating these roster moves as well, and doing a much better, more thorough and well-informed job than I am. I’m sure they are.
But most importantly, I hope we learn from this in the long term, and are a bit quicker to refresh, maybe even before strictly necessary, to avoid times like this where we are painted into a corner and just hoping our luck comes in. Nothing kills hope quite like having blown through all your powder and still watching decline in slow motion.
Lastly, and more basically, I hope we don’t end up in a situation like this again, where several key contracts — cornerstones of the club, really — are all coming up for expiry at the same time. I don’t think it’s a healthy place to be in. Of course, we can’t always get the exact ideal contractual length every time, but it is a much better strategy to try to keep < 35% of your cap hit renewing each each year, and no more than one designated player. Some roster churn is healthy, it keeps players on their toes and keeps coaches re-evaluating, which pushes teams forward and keeps them out of ruts.
But more churn than this can be disruptive to a team, and requires a massive amount of work from the front office. Given that this will be Waibel’s first time signing DP-level players into the Seattle Sounders set-up, having this much on the line worries me.
An attempt at optimism
You count this group of players out at your peril. Lodeiro, Ruidíaz & co have pulled victory from the jaws of defeat before. Whatever questionable roster choices have been made over the past year and half — and I do question allowing the age profile of this team to get to this point — they are still very good, and they’re certainly not in any hole they can’t get out of even with the narrowing horizon for how often all those 30+ year old first choice players are able to all take the field together.
When we have our full contingent of guys, I wouldn’t bet against them, and now that Cristian Roldan is back from his lengthy time out, and Ruidíaz and others hopefully have a minute to get their breath during the Leagues Cup, I think going on a very good, 2.0+ ppg run is a foreseeable set of occurrences.
Let’s hope.
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Notes
¹ It should also be noted several supplemental / reserve roster players were up for contract decisions as well. However, since these have very little cap ramifications, I haven’t mentioned them here, other than Fredy Montero, because he was renewed as a senior roster player.
² *Edit, 29 August 2023*. On 26 August 2023, Jeremiah Oshan published an article on the new Sounder at Heart (paywall) outlining the strange occurrences leading up to Sam Adeniran being sold to St Louis. In short, Garth Lagerwey, while he was still GM of Sounders, planned to protect Sounders from a St Louis expansion draft raid by loaning Adeniran to them, meaning they could leave Jackson Ragen unprotected without fear of losing him to St Louis.
However, after Lagerwey left his post, it became clear that Adeniran did not meet MLS age criteria for loan eligibility. As such, Sounders instead agreed to sell Adeniran’s contract to St Louis for GAM 100,000 in 2023, a potential additional GAM 100,000 in 2024 (criteria unknown), and also including some sort of stake in any sell-on fee.
³ Ovalle is listed as a midfielder and definitely plays more of a defensive midfield role, but Defiance seems quite insistent on listing him as a centerback in their pre-match lineups.
