2018 Roster Discussion

Pretty good salary flexibility for us. Could have sworn that the club announced that it had used TAM to resign Mata but the salary does not reflect that. Wallace at 300k is not great. Berget hopefully grows into that TAM salary.
 
Wallace at 300K is not great but not destructive either, same for Mata. What kills you are the multi-million dollar mistakes. The mistakes right at or below TAM offset against bargain guys who end up being productive way above their salaries. Transfer cost notwithstanding Medina looks a decent-to-good deal at 700K. So we are assuming Villa will either retire or accept a big enough pay cut to become TAM in 2019?
 
Cedric Hountondji is sitting on the bench for a guy making less than a third of his salary. Worst contract on the team by a mile. At least Berget has contributed this season.

For all the criticism of Ben Sweat, bear in mind he may be making less than the NYC median income.
 
Don’t look at RBNJ’s salary list after last weekend’s game.
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Has anyone done the math yet on our flexibility to quantify it?

Take Villa out of the mix and then compare our salaries with RBNJ.
 
Cedric Hountondji is sitting on the bench for a guy making less than a third of his salary. Worst contract on the team by a mile. At least Berget has contributed this season.

For all the criticism of Ben Sweat, bear in mind he may be making less than the NYC median income.
IMO, it looks like the worst contract on the team because Ibeagha is playing well. We still don't know what we have in Hountondji because Ibeagha has played well enough with the time he has gotten (first minutes were when Hountondji still wasn't fit), that there hasn't been a reason to run him out there.

And I don't think many are criticizing Sweat for being on the team, just the amount of minutes he gets. I'm a harsh critic of Sweat but think he's great value for the club considering cap implications.

And as others have pointed out above, it's pretty clear that the Mata TAM deal over the offseason was to buy out the remaining portion of his contract to maximize the potential fee.
 
IMO, it looks like the worst contract on the team because Ibeagha is playing well. We still don't know what we have in Hountondji because Ibeagha has played well enough with the time he has gotten (first minutes were when Hountondji still wasn't fit), that there hasn't been a reason to run him out there.

Ibeagha's been fine. But if Hountondji is worse then I'm not sure why we're paying him $200k. My fear is that we've been burned again, Brillant-style, when cheaper and better options were already out there.
 
Ibeagha's been fine. But if Hountondji is worse then I'm not sure why we're paying him $200k. My fear is that we've been burned again, Brillant-style, when cheaper and better options were already out there.
Literally, the timeline is as follows, this is why:
  1. Have 2 great CB's
  2. Need another talented CB to provide for good CB depth - sign Hountondji at $200k
  3. Need additional CB for overall roster depth - Sign Ibeagha at pennies
  4. Houtondji injured
  5. Chanot red card
  6. Ibeagha starts and does really well
  7. Chanot comes back, Ibeagha plays spot minutes and starts over Chanot against Dallas because he's shown well in the 90' he already got.
  8. We are not even 1/3 into the season
Where did we want Hountondji to get more minutes? Especially over a guy who proved himself? We talk a lot about guys earning minutes, did Ibeagha not do that?

Hountondji may be overpaid right now, but I don't see at all how we can claim that, other than he hasn't gotten a chance yet because Ibeagha has over-performed. And any claim to him being overpaid right now is complete hindsight due to Ibeagha being signed later and overperforming.
 
The guy makes $250k. Why is he "overpaid?"

I assume Villa and Maxi are overpaid then too.
 
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IMO, it looks like the worst contract on the team because Ibeagha is playing well. We still don't know what we have in Hountondji because Ibeagha has played well enough with the time he has gotten (first minutes were when Hountondji still wasn't fit), that there hasn't been a reason to run him out there.

And I don't think many are criticizing Sweat for being on the team, just the amount of minutes he gets. I'm a harsh critic of Sweat but think he's great value for the club considering cap implications.

And as others have pointed out above, it's pretty clear that the Mata TAM deal over the offseason was to buy out the remaining portion of his contract to maximize the potential fee.


Buying out the remaining part of Mata's contract means they are paying him in advance in order to get rid of him before the date originally stipulated? Or what?
 
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Buying out the remaining part of Mata's contract means they are paying him in advance in order to get rid of him before the date originally stipulated? Or what?
Sorry, buyout probably wasn't the correct term to use. His old club, Alajuelense, still owned a portion of his rights, so they would received a certain portion of any fee received when selling him.
 
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A few things to keep in mind.
  1. The first number is the annual compensation. The second number includes other amounts that the player receives for this season - most likely amortizing a signing bonus.
  2. The number that gets counted against the salary cap is annual compensation plus any other amounts paid in a given year. So, if a guy makes $200K/year with a $500K signing bonus, he counts against the salary cap $700K the first year and $200K every year after that.
  3. Transfer payments get treated the same way for salary cap purposes, except they don't appear in the compensation numbers above.
  4. The only exception to #2 & #3 is that for one player at a time, the team can amortize a big signing bonus or transfer payment.
  5. For a guy like Matarrita, the $120K difference between his base salary and total comp is probably this year's portion of a signing bonus paid when he extended. This alone could have made him a TAM player for this season, but that also could have come from buying out his original club.
  6. A lot of the guys signed this season appear to have gotten big signing bonuses - see also Berget, Callens & Tinnerholm. We were spreading around the TAM.
  7. We should be able to convert Medina to TAM next year.
  8. Remember that a TAM player might only count $150K against the salary cap, while many non-TAM players count a lot more.