Backpass: Barrios solves some questions, creates others
The Colorado Rapids jumped into my midday lull with a big move Wednesday, acquiring FC Dallas winger Miguel Barrios and the 21st overall pick in the 2021 MLS SuperDraft in exchange for an international roster spot and the 15th overall pick in the 2021 SuperDraft. I knew Colorado was going to make a few moves to round out the already nearly-full roster for the 2021 season, but this move still came as a bit of a surprise.
The main reason I wouldn’t have expected it is the position: Barrios is a winger, joining a team that already has a lot of winger options. Throughout 2020, Colorado started Jonathan Lewis and Younes Namli at Right Wing and Nicholas Benezet, Andre Shinyashiki, and Lewis at Left Wing. Add to that Braian Galván, who came off the bench a few times in 2020, rising academy star Darren Yapi who I wrote about a few weeks ago, and Matt Hundley, who spent 2020 on loan to Memphis 901 SC in the USL Championship, and you’ve got a lot of options for pacey wingers for the ‘Pids. Adding Barrios does not ... add clarity to the situation of who-goes-where in 2021.
Still. Barrios is a very good player, and the opportunity to acquire him for cheap was probably too much to pass up for Rapids GM Pádraig Smith. An international roster spot generally goes for $200 to 300K, and those draft pick swaps aren’t particularly significant, so this was a simple move that doesn’t have much impact on the budget, especially if the Rapids were certain they were going to end the offseason with a spare International Roster Spot anyhow.* Although they acquired him for cheap, Barrios himself costs a decent chunk of change in terms of salary: he earned $500,000 in 2019 the last year that such matters were revealed by the MLS Players Union to the public. Still, with only one Designated Player on the team (Namli) and only three players who were even near the maximum budget charge threshold of $612,500 in 2019 (Kellyn Acosta, Benezet, and Danny Wilson) the Rapids likely have plenty of GAM and TAM to spend.**
In exchange, the Rapids got a player that American Soccer Analysis’ G+ metric tabbed as the 7th-best winger in all of MLS in 2020.
G+ is a measure of every on-ball action a player takes in a match as a function of each action’s contribution to scoring a goal. The numbers here show that Barrios was worth 1.68 goals added (overall g+) over the average winger in MLS. That was better than any winger on the Rapids last year: better than Benezet (0.35 og+) Namli (0.26 og+) Lewis (0.15 og+) or Shinyashiki (-0.26 og+).
As you can see from his numbers above, Barrios’ key contribution is his dribbling. And overall, he’s in the positive column in every other category - a rarity for wingers, who are often deficient in at least one area in comparison to their colleagues.
His one main weakness is shooting. Here’s his expected goals (xG) and expected assists (xA) stats:
I feel like I’ve explained xG non-stop for the past five years ad nauseam - if you’re a frequent flyer with Soccer Rabbi’s Backpass, I profusely apologize. But it’s very simple. A poor G-xG rate indicates one of two things: a bad shooter, or bad luck. The larger the sample size, the more likely it’s the former; a smaller sample size indicates the latter. Due to Covid, Barrios got fewer shots in 2020 than he had in previous years. However, even when he played a full season, Barrios has always been a below-average shooter. In 2019, he had 5 goals and a -0.74 G-xG. In 2018, it was 6 goals and a -0.30 G-xG. Going back to 2017, he was really bad: a -2.30 G-xG with just 3 goals.
So he’s not a perfect player. OK. Fine. He was cheap.
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The logjam thing, though, is a little more worrisome. Maybe the Rapids have a plan here: now that have potentially eight different options on the wings, they can unload one or two of them at a profit. Or maybe they’re just stockpiling depth - they can go into March with a lot of possibilities, see who impresses and performs, and then figure out what to do with the excess talent before the July transfer window.
Or maybe there was already a plan to move one of the Rapids wingers inside. Colorado used Younes Namli both at RW and as an attacking midfielder in a 4-3-3 in 2020, and perhaps they liked that look the best for the upcoming year. That’d give you:
Which is good… except you’ve got two dribble first attackers in the final third; you can’t play Acosta and Bassett in this lineup together; and you still haven’t found a starting spot for rising talent Andre Shinyashiki. That ‘too many dribblers, not enough finishers’ is a real problem which I spoke about on the podcast last night. The Rapids leading scorer in 2020 was Cole Bassett, a midfielder, with 5 goals. Center striker Diego Rubio had 3 goals on an xG of 2.7; forward Shinyashiki had 4 goals with an xG of 3.5. This team doesn’t get a lot of scoring, and adding Barrios might make that problem worse, not better.
Barrios is talented, and experienced, and he knows this league. He has a cool haircut (definite plus), he has two double-digit assist seasons in his MLS career, and he’s still (just barely) on the right side of 30. Overall this is a good pickup. It probably shouldn’t be the last pickup the Rapids make for 2021, though, if they plan on winning the league.
*: All MLS teams have 8 international roster spots. The Rapids had swapped away 2 of those spots to Columbus and NYC in deals that brought them Lalas Abubakar and Jonathan Lewis; those slots reverted to the Rapids on January 1st. The Rapids currently list 7 players as ‘international’: Benezet, Galvan, Mezquida, Namli, Price, Shinyashiki, and Wilson.
**: In the event the Rapids need cap space to be roster compliant, and they do not add a high-priced player between now and opening day, they can elect to just make the second-highest-paid player on the roster a DP, and then use GAM to pay down their budget charge, according to current MLS’ roster rules. Otherwise, they may use TAM on that player instead. If you have read this note and you fully understand it, congratulations! You are now qualified to be an MLS General Manager. Expect a plane ticket to arrive in the mail from Sacramento, Charlotte, or Austin any day now.