How about this for a question. If you had to protect 11 players on our current roster (exclude Mix and Poku & assume Lamps leaves) who would those 11 be?
Pirlo, Villa, Jack, Mikey, RJ, Tmac, Mata (if he's still with us), Iraola, Bravo, Brilliant, Martinez. That's 11 and I'd leave Brilliant and Martinez exposed if I had to. The expansion draft won't hurt us, unless we decide to protect a player like Khiry just because we drafted him at the expense of another. Or Saunders... We protect Saunders and this forum crashes, I guarantee.
It's more likely Mata is with us next year than Bravo , who's here on loan.
So I'd take out Bravo for Shelton, and probably Martinez for Mullins because Mulljns probably has more trade value.
But we have a whole transfer window yet and it looks like we are setting ourselves up for some acquisitions, so this will all change. If we bring in two this summer, I'd drop Lopez and Mullins/Martinez from the protection list. After that it gets pretty tough.