Backpass: Depth Perception
A few injuries to the Rapids will immediately test whether this lineup is constructed with enough talent beyond the first team selections from the season opener.
This week, the Rapids won a game on the road - a momentous occasion to celebrate and take note of. That’s because in 2022, Colorado won just one (1) game on the road, finishing with an atrocious 1-5-11 (WTL) record; worst in MLS. They offset that with a 10-5-2 home record, third-best in MLS. Yeah, 2022 was weird.
The other thing that happened though was probably more significant. The Rapids suffered another on-field injury to another Designated Player,1 as centerback Andreas Maxsø suffered a head injury as a result of a midair collision with a Sporting Kansas City player while the two were going up for a headed ball. Head injuries are scary; a player can recover and come back in a week; or they can effectively be career-ending; and everything in between.2 We hope Andreas feels better and comes back soon – and not only because we need him on the backline. [Update: on instagram, Maxsø posted he’s feeling ok and back in training. Unclear if he’ll be playing this week against Charlotte, though.]
Without two of the Rapids’ best players, we are undoubtedly diminished. No matter what Chris Klein tells you, the 2020 LA Galaxy experienced a significant drop off from Zlátan Ibrahimovic to Ethan Zubek when he moved on. Players are not infinitely replaceable with similar results. The falloff from even average players to your next best option is pretty precipitous. But the question of ‘how diminished?’ is a good one. Great teams still win trophies when their stars go down. It just depends on others to step up.
With that in mind, we’re going to do an old-school Burgundy Wave throwback article - the Scott Palguta Depth Meter. This was BW founder and editor Chris White’s invention. I faithfully rebooted it in 2017 one time for funsies.
Scott Palguta was a journeyman MLS player. He was perfectly serviceable in MLS 1.0 as a reserve/deep bench option. Palguta played 1,749 minutes for the Rapids in 2009, and a little more than 500 minutes in both 2010 and 2011. He is what would be referred to by Bill James Baseball Almanac as ‘a replacement level player.’ If all else fails, Scott Palguta.
The Palguta Depth Meter works like this: a position with talent and depth is at 1 Palguta.
A few injuries and some mild worries about the available options pushes the Rapids to two Palgutas.
Three Palgutas occurs when a guy who probably isn’t an MLS level player is coming off the bench for the Rapids. For more recent examples on the Rapids other than Scott Palguta, who is old enough and obscure enough that this may be the first time you’ve heard of him, think Mike da Fonte, or Jack McBean, or (perhaps, depending how history judges him) Gustavo Vallecilla.
Four Palgutas means the Rapids are rolling out a starter, week after week, that quite obviously does not belong at the MLS level – because there are no other options. Zat Knight and Ben Newnam. Luis Gil. Yannick Boli.3 If you have a position in which a player is starting every week at 'four Palgutas'... the season is in deep trouble.
So here’s our Palguta Depth Meter Update:
Striker
Diego Rubio and Darren Yapi. Jonathan Lewis and Calvin Harris if we are desperate.
Status: Three Palgutas.
Starting off spicy! We know what happened with this team early in the season when they didn’t have Diego Rubio: they didn’t have offense. Rubio has started one game and has one goal. Darren Yapi and Jonathan Lewis started the other 6 games of the season and have zero goals. No Diego, no party.
Winger
Jonathan Lewis, Michael Barrios, Sam Nicholson, Kévin Cabral, Braian Galván.
Status: One Palguta.
The problem here is not depth. It’s the quality of options available. There’s no game-changing wide man; just a series of gradients of slightly-above average, average, and below average options. None of these guys is a Palguta. Unfortunately, none of them is Sadio Mané or Riyad Mahrez, either.
Central Midfield
Jack Price, Connor Ronan, Bryan Acosta, Cole Bassett, Max Alves, Ralph Priso, Yaya Toure, Oliver Larraz
Status: Two Palgutas
Price is done for the year. Cole Bassett has missed two matches in a row with hamstring issues. Yaya Toure’s timetable for return is mid-summer. Suddenly, things look a little less comfy in midfield, which was probably our strongest position to begin the season. Robin Fraser has been playing a 3-4-2-1 formation with only two real central midfielders lately, and I can see why.
Fullback
Sam Nicholson, Alex Gersbach, Anthony Markanich, Keegan Rosenberry, Steven Beitashour, Sebastian Anderson, Lalas Abubakar?
Status: Two Palgutas
When we stated the season I thought “What are we going to do with all these fullback options?!?” With Gersbach and Galván on the left, and the ever-dependable Keegan Rosenberry on the right, I felt sad that poor Steven Beitashour and Anthony Markanich would never see any time.
Well, actually.
Gersbach looked awful in his two matches to date (Seattle in week 1, San Jose in week 3) and has been benched. Galván is only coming on right now as a sub for whatever reason. There were so many injuries in week 4 that the team started Anthony Markanich on the left and Lalas Abubakar on the right. And if one of our centerbacks is hurt, our best spare CB in a 3-back lineup … is Keegan Rosenberry. So I’m not feeling great about our depth here.
Also, when Nicholson plays as a wingback, he typically doesn’t come too far back to defend; I think the Rapids know he’s not best utilized in that role. But that means the field seems slanted to one side when he plays. In other words, he’s a FBINO - fullback in name only.
Centerback
Andreas Maxsø (?), Danny Wilson, Lalas Abubakar, Moïse Bombito, Michael Edwards, Aboubacar Keita.
Status: Three Palgutas
When you loan a player to San Antonio in the USL, as the Rapids did on February 24, and then recall him just 9 days later, that says something. You thought you had some depth, but it turns out … naaah. Aboubacar Keita is expected to return in a month or so from his 2022 ACL injury. Maxsø’s injury time hopefully will be brief. Bombito has an MCL injury that has been tagged with ‘out a few weeks’, but it’s now more than five weeks. The falloff in experience and talent after our top three CB option means the team might have to adjust formations to compensate for a lack of options. Which is not ideal. I am slightly concerned.
Goalkeeper
William Yarbrough, Marco Ilić, Abraham Rodriguez
Status: One Palguta. If there were such a thing as zero Palgutas, we’d be at zero.
Yarbrough looked on his way out to start the year what with the signing of a European GK. Ilić’s visa took a little time, and Yarbs eased into his spot in the pipes and did good work. Then Ilić had a finger injury and Yarbrough got even more comfy: he earned a team of the week nod with 11 saves against SKC. Opta thinks he’s a demi-god.
https://twitter.com/OptaJack/status/1645809412437835778?s=20
And now we’ve got backup keeper who is here on loan, and he probably thought he was going to start, and he’s probably good, and we’ve got a young academy kid who might be the future, but the old man is putting on a clinic and blocking them both. And to add to it all, our fourth string keeper is starting for the USYNT U-17 team.
We’re deep here.
Quick Hit - Pádraig becomes President
Colorado Rapids revealed today that Colorado Rapids General Manager Pádraig Smith earned a new title today - he’s now President Pádraig Smith.
This move probably serves two purposes. One, it acknowledges the good and capable work Pádraig Smith has done as GM - keeping the Rapids competitive (Playoff appearances in 2016, 2020, and 2021, Western Conference finals in 2016, best in Western Conference regular season in 2021). This despite our status as possibly the most frugal team in the league. Yeah, we may be 13 years without a trophy, but we’re probably still a better team than we ought to be, and that’s Pádraig’s doing.
Two, by making Pádraig the president, he potentially has an ‘out’ in the event things do go poorly in player acquisition in the next season or two. He can hire a General Manager to do the signing and scouting while staying in a leadership role with the club. And he won’t get fired. I have no evidence that this is the plan, but it seems a plausible a reason for a title change in the middle of a season with very little explanation as to what it means.4
That’s all fine. I will say that it could be meaningless. Chris Klein is currently sailing through some rough seas with LA Galaxy fans. He’s also the team president. He’s probably gonna get fired.
If things go bad, no fancy title is gonna save you.
Nonetheless. Mazal tov to Pádraig. And mazal tov to whichever Commerce City print shop gets to make some bank printing up new business cards, letterhead, and stationary for the ‘Pids.
The Rapids have three designated players: Jack Price, Andreas Maxsø, and Kévin Cabral. Price and Cabral are both within $200,000 of the player budget maximum, and could be TAM level players if that mattered. Meaning, they are DPs, but not in the same way that
Taylor Twellman’s MLS career was cut short by repeated concussions. Sam Cronin, one of my favorite Colorado Rapids, also went out of MLS before his time due to head/neck injuries.
Gil and Boli are a specific alternate permutation of Scott Palguta. They aren’t ‘formerly league average guys who you hope don’t have to play’. They are ‘good players that are totally gassed, but hey, maybe there’s a little left in the tank?’ All five of these players, though, are the same in that they are ‘we don’t have a good player here. Let’s hope we can survive the match with this guy. There’s ten other players, right?’ This is generally not a good theory.
The announcement contains this quote from Josh Kroenke “He brings a level of expertise and leadership to the organization that is grounded in his extensive experiences in Europe and the U.S., and we believe he is the ideal person to help us achieve our goals as an organization, and in particular, our goal of bringing another MLS Cup to Colorado.” All of that sounds like they’re excited to have hired this new guy … that has worked here for five years. The other section down below tells us that Pádraig’s job responsibilities … are exactly the same as they were before.