After being in absentia for a bit, I wanted to start looking forward to 2013 and see what improvements can be made to this team. After listening to the year end interviews, it would appears the players and PM are in agreement that we're close to making the playoffs, which I personally agree. Obviously there's some roster attrition but there's enough talent for some starting spots and some depth that we can use moving forward. No need for an absolute overhaul, again, in my opinion and apparently in PM's opinion as well. So that leaves the question, where do we go from here?
Using the most recent salary information from the Players Union - http://www.mlsplayers.org/files/Octo... - By Club.pdf - these are the salaries of players currently on the roster, organized by biggest salary cap hit (the furthest column is their actual salary for 2012 with annualized bonuses included).
Roster No. Last Name First Name Position Cap Hit Total Salary 1 Frings Torsten M $367,000 $2,413,667 2 Hassli Eric F $367,000 $790,000 3 Koevermans Danny F $367,000 $1,563,323 4 O'Dea Darren D $330,000 $436,250 5 Califf Danny D $275,000 $275,000 6 Eckersley Richard D $210,000 $390,000 7 Frei Stefan GK $120,000 $175,000 8 Braun Justin F $102,000 $104,500 9 Hall Jeremy D $100,000 $149,000 10 Dunfield Terry M $86,000 $86,000 11 Wiedeman Andrew F $80,000 $123,000 12 Lambe Reggie M $60,000 $62,500 13 Plata Joao F $50,000 $50,000 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Henry Doneil D $44,100 $45,100 22 Morgan Ashtone D $44,000 $56,000 23 Silva Luis M $44,000 $79,000 24 Amarikwa Quincy F $44,000 $44,100 25 Bendik Joe GK $44,000 $44,000 26 Emory Logan D $44,000 $44,000 27 Stinson Matthew M $44,000 $44,000 28 Roberts Quillan GK $33,750 $33,750 29 cap space -$35,000 30 cap space -$35,000
UPDATE 12/15/12: Included Danny Califf at his 2012 salary levels (major assumption throughout my analysis is that allocation money increases and renegotiated contracts with Hall, Wiedeman and Califf will cancel out salary increases for Morgan and Henry).
MLS rules indicate a roster can have 30 players, but players 1-20 must be no more than $2.8 million (I'll be assuming $3 million, as Yohan notes below with salary cap increase and allocation money), while players 21-30 are paid league minimum salary (with a lot of exceptions, but generally speaking that's the trend - with one notable exception that we can have $70K in roster allocation if we have a roster of no more than 28 - hence roster spots 29 & 30 are negative money). Assuming all other things remain constant (like player salaries - which wont, but let's assume anyways) and ignoring extra allocation money we might have, I've created two groups. The first group are 12 players who are above the league minimum and would be in our 1-20 if they stick around (bottom spots taken up by a league minimum salaries as they arrive). The bottom group of 21-30 are being paid the league minimum so they do not have to be considered when calculating cap space.
The cumulative salary of the 13 players in the 1-20 group are $2.52 million, leaving around $480K remaining under the cap. If we add the extra $70K in roster allocation (assuming we only have a roster of 28), this leaves us with approx $550K. Assuming we keep the players above and stick to a roster of 28, that leaves $78.5K on average for each of the 7 remaining roster spots.
This leads to several questions: Is this a good enough core to start 2013? What positions do we need to address and how much should we spend? Can we afford to fill the roster with quality players and have the necessary depth to cover for Frings & Koevermans? Would it make financial sense to trade away a forward (EDIT: Resolved - RJ9 traded away, cheaper Justin Braun brought in)? Are eight new players enough to improve this squad in 2013? Are there other cost efficiencies that can be made on this roster? I've intended for this thread to be more about a salary cap discussion than about player movement, so if we can stick to that topic (or at least talk about player movement in the context of salary cap discussions) before thread derailment, I would appreciate it