Getting Reacquainted with the Colorado Rapids, MLS's Bargain-Shopping Wild Cards

That's what Dawson's Creek was about, yeah?

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

What’s the most surprising thing I can say about MLS’s most surprising team, the Colorado Rapids? Is it the fact they hoisted an MLS Cup in 2010, that they played one of those great, early and unstoppable DC United teams to a valiant loss in MLS Cup 1997, or that they “won” MLS’s first-ever Wooden Spoon in the inaugural season? Never mind…that last one is probably less surprising than the fact they haven’t got slapped by the Wooden Spoon since.

I haven’t conducted the survey to back this up, but I’m guessing the Rapids top the list of teams most often forgotten by fans of other teams not named Real Salt Lake; even if they don’t top it, I’d still wager they hover near the top. (This doesn’t happen for me, as I’m mildly obsessed with Colorado in a pretty-girl-you-left-behind-in-your-small-hometown kind of way.) Colorado misses the MLS playoffs nearly as often as they make them – 13 times versus 15, respectively – and they have a wholly-earned their reputation as one of the most miserly teams in the league (listen carefully and you can hear the screams of pennies echoing over the Rockies…or is that just their fans?). For reference, the $3 million transfer they paid for Djordje Mihailovic this off-season made him Colorado’s record signing. As an organization, they find talent the same way bargain shoppers find steals (or hope to) in the bins at the local Goodwill – e.g., lots of internal transfers, some of them manifestly non-sensical (see, Cabral, Kevin) – and yet going all in on the Moneyball method has seen them finish second overall twice in the past decade (2016 and 2021)…they’ve also missed the playoffs (checks notes) seven times across the same decade, so there’s that…

Best Season(s)

It’s gotta be the 2010 MLS Cup-winning season, there’s something about that second-place finish in 2021 that makes a body believe in the miracle of Moneyball. To plumb one more alternative, I ruled out the 1997 MLS Cup runner-up run because it looks like, and almost certainly was, a crap-shoot – i.e., a testament to the limits of available talent, an odd, yet still logical result of competing in a 10-team league in just its second season, etc.. It was still pretty damn outlandish seeing Colorado’s “Marquee Players,” Paul Bravo and Marcelo Balboa, square off against DC/MLS legends like Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno. The point is, when you look at the Rapids’ roster for MLS Cup 2010, you can see that team reaching/winning a final. The 1997 team, not so much.

The Late Tackle, 11 30 2016, Bargains, Roster Construction Theory and Unicorns

Shit. Where’s the other goddamn shoe??

Trying to time the Late Tackle a little better (earlier), maybe not take the player (me) out of the game when I go in...

Of Bargains and Busts

On Monday (yeah, laggin’), Four Four Two put up a list of Major League Soccer’s Top 15 (mostly young) bargain players. It’s a respectable list, but the players come in a couple ways, as I see it. Some fit the bill on just about every level (e.g., DC’s Steve Birnbaum, Dallas’ Matt “Not Chris” Hedges, NYCFC’s Tommy MacNamara, and Orlando’s Cyle Larin), while others come in because, at their price point (e.g., low), they don’t need to produce raw stats, so long as they can tilt a game a little (e.g., Colorado’s Dominique Badji, for under $60K). Another group features regular starters and decent players who play positions, like fullback or defensive midfielder, that pose mildly depressing questions of how much they’ll ever be able to pull down; their teams get a good player at a good price (see, New England’s Scott Caldwell or San Jose’s Fatai Alashe), but one has to wonder how much higher each player’s salary can go at any point in their careers.

One little thought to float: a good attacking fullback should be worth more than what most teams are paying (think low $100,000s are the ceiling). At any rate…

The one player on the list who really caught my eye was Columbus’ Wil Trapp. And a whole lot of questions roll into that, starting with one I haven’t been able to shake for a couple days. What are the odds that Trapp falls into the same sort of professional slough as Colorado’s Dillon Powers; in other words, will fans see Trapp fielded as something close to a stop-gap in the not-to-distant future, as Powers was in last Sunday’s Western Conference final? As much as I like some things about Trapp’s game – e.g. quality long-range passing – he strikes me as one of those players who drive me crazy – i.e., one who needs a support system in order to function. Trapp’s qualities are real, but he’s not a great tackler (and I think that mattered for Columbus this year), and that obliges Crew SC to stick another player alongside him or risk getting overrun. With that in the equation, how can that $178,250 price tag not look a little more dear?

MLS Snapshot, 09 06 2016: Small Week, Larger Conclusions

It was a shrunken weekend in Major League Soccer (THANK GOD!), which leaves me with fewer variables to wrestle into some kind of coherent shape. One thing, though, before getting into everything.

First, I'm only realizing now just how idiosyncratically soccer allows people to view it. While this applies to every sport (eh, who'm I kidding? We're special!!), soccer's wide open enough that it can be played just about any way one can imagine. I'm not envisioning a team winning the league playing a 9-1-1 or anything, so much as I'm pointing to almost infinite variables even within practical constraints of the modern game...and, ugh, nothing’s more tedious than someone saying, "you need X in the modern game." That’s nonsense, and ridiculous. We know this because someone always comes up with the next thing. Or they play something throw-back, like New York City FC did early in the season when they (allegedly) brought back the "W-M." (Did they really? Maybe. It was just something I read somewhere, but not there, but same point.)

Anyway, just tinkering with the layout this week. Starting with...

Week 26: Results That Mattered (In Brief)
No, it wasn't close - it was almost embarrassing by the end (poor, poor Ken Tribbett; see below) – but the bigger take-away from the Chicago Fire's 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Union is that Chicago's rounding into one of those end-of-season nightmares for any team pushing for the playoffs; New York City FC continued its swashbuckling rip through the Eastern Conference with DC United slashing scimitars at their butts in a last-gasp(-ish) 3-2 win; it was the details (see #8 below) of the Los Angeles Galaxy's 2-1 "goal-too-far" win that made the day so utterly depressing for Columbus Crew SC's fans; finally, the Colorado Rapids' flailingly impotent attack tells the tale of their 2-0 loss at the New England Revolution, but could it also tell the tale of a late-season collapse/early duck out of the playoffs?

The Results That, Honestly, No One But Their Fans Give One Wet Shit About
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 Red Bull New York (because Vancouver is cursed/hapless/awful)

There might have been another result in there...oh, never mind. It must not have been important (!!!). Anyway, moving on...

MLS and the Global Tipping Point

Not Olympic, yet somehow totally appropriate.

Where is the tipping point? That’s the question under examination here.

When Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off with a handful of U.S. World Cup heroes and some decently high-profiled internationals (here, I'm thinking of guys like Carlos Valderrama, Roberto Donadoni, and Marco Etcheverry), the league came off as a carnival barker's novelty. Even as MLS has grown and, somewhat recently, noticeably improved, it has never shaken the minor league status.

One major assumption has held through all this – the idea that any given American player's ambition is defined by his willingness to go to the European big leagues. Failure to find his highest possible level and test himself against it was, by definition, a preemptive denial of whatever potential he, or his career, had. Anyone who doubts this should read up on Landon Donovan's career, who could never do enough during his time with Everton because he failed to transfer to the Liverpool club outright.

A number of Americans – maybe one score, maybe two (maybe more; fuck it, I'm not counting) – put in real time in various European top flights. While some other enjoyed more success with individual clubs – here, I'm thinking Clint Dempsey and Brian McBride at Fulham, or maybe Sacha Kljestan at Anderlecht - Michael Bradley probably compiled the most storied and prolific European career of any American player. And then he came back to MLS. Like Dempsey, like Kljestan, like Jozy Altidore, etc. etc. That's all pretty new, so I guess we're all still sorting out what that means.

Scott Caldwell, the Thoroughly Modern Midfielder, and A Promised Land

Box-to-box? Pure No. 6? He's tough to peg, but best let him pick his spot.

This is going to wander a little, so bear with me.

During last weekend's sour draw between the New England and the Montreal Impact, my attention drifted to Scott Caldwell. Generally, the only players on the Revs' roster less likely to draw attention than Caldwell are the guys on the bench. And brings me to my point.

I started watching Caldwell because, time and again, I saw the Revs' outside backs struggling to find a passing outlet while, at the same time, overlooking Caldwell. There he was, smack in the middle of the field, just outside the center circle on New England's side of the field with no one from Montreal particularly close to him; sometimes Caldwell raised his arms in a bid to catch their attention, but the Revolution stuck with Plan A – e.g. attempting to stuff the ball up the flanks in spite of Montreal's generally effective response of pinning them against the sideline.

Caldwell got more of the ball as the game progressed, but he never struck me as anyone's first option. This formed the impression that, 1) Caldwell's teammates don't trust him implicitly on the ball, or 2) they insist that he earns the ball – presumably by prying it off the foot of some opposition player.

All the above got me wondering (plenty of time for it in a game like that) about what Caldwell does when he gets the ball. Generally, he does what most No. 6's do: dish it to other players, most often with longer or shorter lateral passes; when he's feeling really nutty, he drops it back to defense. OK, yes, I did see Caldwell push the ball forward – it was even a decent pass, if I recall – but it's pretty clear that Caldwell's job is to find, say, Kelyn Rowe who (on a better day) will do something great with the ball, or Diego Fagundez who will (on a better day, in 2013) get dangerous, or, of course, Lee Fucking Nguyen. (I tried to dig up Caldwell's day via Opta, which only shows that I don't know how that works, or who gets access to it.)