October 10, 2007
Which Lucky Eleven?
San Jose Earthquakes: The only expansion team in history with two Championship Stars on their shirts
On "From the Pitch" with Marcelo Balboa,, which aired live last night, the radio crew discussed which eleven Rapids players should be protected in the upcoming 2008 expansion draft.
*If you recall, San Jose has been re-born, and won't be allowed to take their team back from Houston. They'll have to build a completely new championship team with a new coach. Maybe some new faces like Frank Yallop, Joe Cannon and Landon Donovan....
The discussion assumed that last year's rules for the Toronto FC expansion draft would be in effect for the New&Improved! San Jose Earthquakes:
- A team can only leave one Senior International Player unprotected
- Generation Adidas players are automatically protected
- A player's status is based on their 2008 status (e.g. presumably, Mehdi Ballouchy would be considered a Senior International)
So with those rules in mind, and numerous assumption (like nobody getting a green card before the draft) let's see which players made our fantasy protected list.
The first question is: Senior International players - which do we leave unprotected? We only get to expose one, though it'd be more to the Rapids benefit to expose three!
There are six players that will be SI players since Ballouchy and Erpen will "graduate" to that status. Can Osorno work out next season? Can Niko rebound from a disastrous year? Did Cummings get on the field enought to tempt a team? Which player to leave unprotected? Really I don't think San Jose or Seattle would take any of the three, so I'm going to expose Niko.
So that means the first five protected are:
SI's out of the way, there are some players that make everyone's fantasy keeper list:
That leaves only threes spots left. From the remaining roster, Kirovski, Casey, Herculez, Peterson, Clark, Keel, Petke, Prideaux, and Sanneh are the only ones to worry about protecting - since the rest of the roster wouldn't be too attractive to an expansion team.
While Mike Petke's age is a consideration, his time in Colorado has been predominately positive, with a nice effort this year. He'd be very difficult to replace, he's attractive to the expansion teams, and should be protected.
Conor Casey's performances in the final half of the season, combined with the fact that Toronto is mostly footing his large paycheck, gets him on the list.
I don't think Keel has enough MLS experience to warrant protection. Sanneh is simply too old to protect. Peterson's star fell enough this year to expose him. Prideaux didn't have a good enough season to take that last spot.
Hmmm, Kirovski, Clark, or Herculez? Kirovksi, 32 in 2008, is showing us what he's capable of, and well, it's simply not what Rapids 2008 need. Clark and Herculez both have tremendous upsides, and both are on the right side of 25. It's a very difficult decision.
Has Clark made enough of a name for himself league wide? Was Herc's cursed season enough to make expansion GMs think twice?
I'll say Herculez is the guy to protect since his reputation is larger than Colin's, but leaving Clark exposed makes me nervous.
Disagree? Let's hear your thoughts
Posted by mark at October 10, 2007 11:46 AM