Carrying Mix at $200k ties him with Jazon Hernandez as our joint 8/9th highest paid player on the team. In MLS, especially on a three DP team, where ~37.5% of your cap space is tied up in three players, someone making $200k is someone who should be starting. Keeping Mix on at 100k a year makes him our 14th highest paid player.
I think a lot of people haven't really thought through the implications of having a 3 DP team from a salary cap standpoint. If you go with that 3 DP team you have really constrained yourself from a cap perspective for everyone else, you cannot waste cap anywhere else if you want to be competitive as a team. It's just too valuable. Btw assuming that Mix's salary was bought down only to the maximum budget charge, Mix + 3 DP's = 50.7% of our cap space.
The cap distortions that arise due to our use of 3 DP's are serious. When Mix and Lampard aren't on the field we're missing ~25% of our cap space.
Riddle me this what does a NYCFC team with a healthy Frank Lampard and a defender who's just a little bit worse than Matt Miazga, last year, look like?
Cap space is the biggest reason I think Frank will retire, it's simply too risky to spend ~12.5% of your cap on a player with a serious injury history. It doesn't matter how good he is if he misses half the season.
Our basic 3 DP and one half DP strategy is fine, with the way we're executing it it's amazing, it just requires that four specific players play damn near every one of our matches if we want a shot at the cup/shield. We must be absolutely ruthless in deriving value from every dollar not tied to our four best players, any chance of success we have rests on it.
