Hot Stove Season 2026 for the Colorado Rapids, Reviewed
Moves were made. Lotta ins, lotta outs.* Was it enough? Is this team ready to go for 2026 with the personnel on hand? Did they get better offseason?
Hot stove season in MLS has been fairly exciting so far. Inside the league:
Inter Miami acquired Tadeo Allende permanently.
Tai Baribo went to DC United.
Walker Zimmerman has joined Toronto FC.
Nashville picked up former SJ Earthquakes attacker Christian Espinoza.
And then there’s the big transfers-abroad rumors which everyone is eyeing:
Mateusz Bogusz going from Cruz Azul to Houston.
Timo Werner, who has 115 career goals in the EPL and Bundesliga, headed for Bruce Arena’s SJ Earthquakes.
Facundo Torres from Palmeiras to Austin FC.
Josh Sargent to Toronto FC.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Rapids have been active too, albeit on a smaller scale. There hasn’t really been a ‘this will surely win us the league!’ move that supporters all dream of.
It’s hard to know if Colorado are all done with their moves yet, or if Pádraig Smith still has something pending. But we might as well look at COL’s winter moves now to ponder how things are shaping up in 2026.
Here are all the teams subtractions and additions for December and January (plus one from Summer).1 We’ll take a moment here to ask whether the sum total of these moves makes the Rapids better or worse, at least on paper. And at the end, we shall try and answer another question: is there a chance the Rapids will make any more moves before opening day on February 22?
These moves appear below in ‘the order they appeared on Rabbi’s spreadsheet.’ In other words, no particular order.
Subtraction: Andreas Maxsö. Addition: Rob Holding.
Position: Starting CB.
Minutes to replace: 2,880.
Dumping Maxsö meant the Rapids needed to replace their 2025 leader for minutes played. Andreas wasn’t great, by any measure, and certainly not if we’re considering his performance against his $1.39 million salary. The Achilles heel to his 0.0 G+ in 2024 and -1.20 G+ in 2025 numbers were his not-great Goals Added Passing numbers: -0.61 G+Passing in 2025, third-worst on the team.2 Maxsö was 16th percentile amongst all MLS CBs for Passes Attempted, 74th percentile in passes completed, and 8th percentile in Progressive Passes.3 Yuck.
But before we declare Rob Holding as ‘definitely better because Andreas Maxsö was bad’ consider that he only played 420 minutes for Crystal Palace last year, and 526 for Colorado. It would be unfair to extrapolate out and definitely state anything. But we’re gonna do it anyways.
Holding’s Passes Attempted over the past year were in the 86th percentile; his Pass Percentage is in the 66th percentile; and his Progressive Passes was 88th percentile. We don’t have G+ numbers for the English Championship, but in his time in MLS, Holding had a +0.33 G+. Take all of it together, and I feel pretty good that Rob Holding is going to be an improvement over Maxsö.
Verdict: Upgrade 📈
Subtraction: Calvin Harris. Addition: Dante Sealy
Position: RW/RM
Minutes to replace: 1480.
Calvin Harris had 5 goals on 5.33 xG in 2025. That made him a useful addition to the team in his as a wide attacker, a role that he inherited from the underwhelming and overpriced Kevin Cabrál. But Harris provided just 9 Key Passes all year. Considering that, by comparison, Omir Fernandez provided 8 KP in just 232 minutes, and you see maybe why Colorado decided to move on.
Side note - don’t get confused that the above statement is making the case that selling Omir Fernandez was a mistake. I wasn’t enamored with Fernandez; he was dribbly and an ok passer, but he wasn’t much of a scorer. Then again, the man that took over for him, Ted Ku-DiPietro hasn’t been either. After getting sent to Portland in April for $200,000 in GAM, the Timbers buried Fernandez on the bench, giving him 400 minutes in 2025, so it seems like he’s maybe touched his ceiling in pro ball. Also, Fernandez and Ku-DiPietro play LW while Calvin Harris was primarily an RW. My point was mostly to say ‘a good winger should pass and score well, or pass well, or score well.’
Dante Sealy had 9 goals, 1 assist in 2421 minutes for a pretty bad Montreal team last year. He’s 22 years old. He had 37 Key Passes last year. So he looks like a winger that passes well and scores well. Ding ding ding!
Sealy looks like he might be the solution this team has been seeking for quite some time; the last Rapids winger to score 9 goals in season was Shkelzen Gashi, waaaay back in 2016.4 I’m excited about this. They are too: and I know that because they paid Montreal $1,150,000 in GAM to get him. That’s the most GAM the Rapids have ever paid for a player.5
Verdict: Upgrade 📈
Subtraction: Sam Bassett. Addition(s): Billo Diop, Donavan Phillip
Position: Bench guy
Minutes to replace: 339 (MLS), 462 (MLS, CCL, Leagues Cup)
This one’s kind of an odd category in that the in-out move here isn’t really about finding a like-for-like player who will fill the position Sam had with the club – Sam was a midfielder, Diop and Phillip are strikers. Sam’s role was basically ‘let’s see what the kid’s got’, and Diop and Phillip will be in the same position in 2026.
Bassett was given an opportunity to get some minutes and wow the team, and he gave it a go for a year but ultimately the Rapids have decided to move on. Sam was last seen trialing with Nashville. As an aside, few trialists earn a job with an MLS team anymore – mostly, it’s a way to work out and pick up some eyeballs while your agent speed dials every GM in USL trying to get you $60K and a starting job. Good luck, kid.
Nonetheless, Bassett was good enough in 2025 to not only be on the long end of the bench in the 18-man lineup, but also get into a bunch of games; 15 games, to be exact. And to eat some minutes and give the starters a rest. And that is something every team needs.
R2 player and 1st round Superdraft pick Billo Diop might get those minutes this year. He was a pure scorer for the Cobras6, but if he’s gonna be the 18th man this year, he should be prepared to sub on as a winger, a striker, or even a number 10 / false 9 for garbage time minutes. Same goes for Donavan Phillips, who just won the Mac Hermann Trophy as the NCAA’s best men’s soccer player in 2025. He’s a striker/forward on a team with a bunch of strikers ahead of him.
Here’s a weird thought. The Rapids drafted 3 forwards in the 2025 MLS Superdraft, all of whom (Phillip, Alex Harris, and Sydney Wathuta) are still with the club. The Rapids used their first 3 picks in the 2026 Superdraft to grab more forwards, taking Diop, Mitchell Baker, and Wahabu Musa. This ‘stocking up on forwards’ could be a Pádraig Smith arbitrage idea: paying for strikers is crazy expensive, so draft a dozen of ‘em and if one works out, it’s way cheaper than the transfer fee for a 36-year-old Didier Drogba. Or it could be an imminent signal that the club is going to sell Rafa Navarro and they need to stock the pond with potential backups for Rafa’s heir apparent, Darren Yapi. Or it could mean nothing and the Rapids scouting department just liked those dudes better than some other dudes.
Verdict: Life is like a box of chocolates. 🍫
Sometimes you draft and play Moïse Bombito and sell him to France for $7million. Sometimes you draft and play Sam Raben, he’s a bench guy for the Switchbacks, and he goes on to study for his doctorate in Physical Therapy at Duke.7 You just never know.
Subtraction: Oliver Larraz. Addition: Hamzat Ojediran
Position: DM
Minutes to replace: 2458.
Larraz’ two years on the senior team were full of unfulfilled promise. He had steel in the tackle, but not enough. He couldn’t quite get the hang of making a tough pass under pressure at full speed. There were occasional little errors for turnovers here and there. It all resulted in a -0.69 G+ in 2024, -0.67 G+ in 2025. Maybe there’s a little bit more development there, or maybe the right coach or the right system can unlock Larraz’ potential. If so, it’ll come with his new club, Vancouver Whitecaps. Godspeed, dear ginger ninja.
Meanwhile the Rapids have acquired his replacement, Hamzat Ojediran, from RC Len in the French 1st division. Hamzat had only 416 minutes there, so there’s not much to go on. And there’s no guarantee that he even beats Josh Atencio for the starting spot out of camp. Moreover, Hamzat’s highlight reel on youtube is not particularly illuminating or inspiring. But the Front Office is sure they have their man, and I know this because Ojediran’s transfer fee is reportedly $3 million. If he comes good, it could make the season. If he’s a bust, he’d be the biggest bust in team history: bigger than Nana Boateng and Yannick Boli combined.
Verdict: Unknown. Big gamble 🎰
Subtraction: Michael Edwards. Addition: Lucas Herrington.
Position: CB
Minutes to replace: 27.
Forgive me if I ramble a little bit about the Rapids centerback depth here. TL;DR, it’s bad.
“Big Mike” as Matt liked to call him was a 6’4” centerback. Edwards originally joined the Rapids ahead of the 2021 season – he was a Homegrown with DC United. And in his time with the Rapids, he’s mostly been … not with the Rapids. He spent parts of 2021 and 2022 with the Colorado Switchbacks; 2023 and 2024 with R2; and with Charleston Battery. He had 2 starts with the senior team in 2024 and a total of 328 minutes, including a start in US Open Cup that year. For Charleston, he started most of May and June, then hit the bench.
That’s a lot of effort to say that the Rapids gave this guy a chance to earn a shot in the first division for five years, and it just didn’t happen, and so they’ve moved on. Edwards will likely catch on in USL Championship or USL1 next year.
As 2025 drew to a close, Colorado had Matthew Senanou, Nate Jones, and Edwards on the roster as ‘CBs of the future.’ Jones and Edwards both had their options declined with the senior team, and Senanou’s option was declined for R2. In other words, the Rapids are starting all over at CB. There’s a few guys at R2: Vincent Rinaldi, Charlie Harper, and James Cameron. But really right now, there’s a severe lack of depth at this position for the Rapids. It’s Rob Holding, Noah Cobb, Ian Murphy, and offseason pickup Lucas Herrington.
Herrington is 18 years old and just relocated from the Australian A League. He’s started every match for the Brisbane Roar from October 2025 till literally two weeks ago. The kid has been a part of the Australian U19 and U20 teams. The Rapids liked him enough to sign him to a four year deal with an option for a fifth. The good news for Herrington is that he’ll get some run because there simply aren’t a lot of other options – unless the team makes a signing in the next month and sends Herrington to R2 or on loan. But right now, Lucas has a great opportunity to show his stuff.
I started by saying that the depth at CB is bad. It’s not so much bad as untested. Last year, Maxsö, Holding, Murphy, Cobb, Edwards, and the departed Chidozie Awaziem played 7,205 minutes. Of that, Holding, Cobb, and Murphy played 2,150 minutes. So that’s 5,055 minutes of ‘gee, I hope this works.’
Verdict: Unknown. No downside risk, all upside reward.🍹 But also - what if we need Herrington to play 1,000 minutes?
Subtraction: Rafa Santos**. Addition: None.
Position: LB
Minutes to replace: 417
Rafa Santos was fine, but he wasn’t an improvement over Sam Vines, who posted the best Goals Added of any Rapids Fullback last year with a very modest +0.48. All the rest were in negative numbers. Over the past three seasons, out of 13 fullbacks, only 5 had positive (against an ‘average FB’ set at 0.0) G+ numbers. Only one had positive numbers in two seasons: Sammy Vines. So at this point, the job belongs to Sam. He went 1,440 minutes last season and 2,451 minutes in 2024, so they’ll need him to stay healthy as much as possible. Jackson Travis is here to back him up. And he was fun in 2025 - very dribbly, has potential, only 20 years old. But he was rough in spots too, and has a yucky G+ number (-0.57 in only 748 minutes) to show for it.
**Note: Santos is out of contract and hasn’t landed anywhere new. So it is possible that he ends up back with the Rapids. He made $401,188 in 2025, and I suspect he wants that much or more to stay in MLS. Also, if he came back, I assume he’d either be the backup or have to compete for his job, and maybe he doesn’t want that. Take that all together and it means I think he’s gone.
Verdict: In Sam We Trust. (Mostly because he’s the only real option.)
…
So did the Rapids get better in the offseason, or get worse? Well, they got a little bit better. Sure, I counted Rob Holding as a ‘winter transfer’ even though he came in the Summer window. That’s because he only played in six matches for Colorado in 2025. So he’s like a new player. But the big pickups to focus on are Hamzat Ojediran and Dante Sealy, and they both seem to be good players who will be upgrades over what Colorado had before. Ojediran is a little harder to predict, but that’s the risk/reward part of buying a young player that hasn’t seen a lot of action yet.
Colorado still seem thin at a few positions. Here’s my latest suggested depth chart.
So what didn’t get addressed in the offseason? Well:
Colorado still needs a true Left Winger/ Left Midfielder.
There’s not enough depth at CB if someone gets injured.
And unless Reggie Cannon has a rebound from a sub-par year in 2025, Right Back is perhaps the weakest spot on the starting roster.
AND if Rava Navarro gets sold to Brazil, then the team will need puts all its trust in Darren Yapi to score 15 goals. Or maybe buy a guy.
So I think the Rapids probably have one more move in store before opening day: either for CB depth, or an LW, or they sell Rafa, or add an FB. We have 30 days to find out.
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*: This is a ‘Big Lebowski’ reference. In truth, there were neither a lot of ins nor outs. Rather, there were a few modest moves.
I left out a couple departures of players - Daouda Amadou, and Anderson Rosa. They didn’t contribute much in 2025.
Yapi was team-worst with a -0.85 G+ Passing, but he offsets that by having the softest feet on the team with a +0.91 G+ in Receiving. Reggie Cannon’s G+ Passing is -0.65. None of his G+ numbers are good. Eeek.
These numbers were acquired from fbref before Opta killed their access to advanced metrics. Free the data!
Michael Barrios had 8 in 2021. But: 8 is not 9. And also, Barrios was playing roughly half those games as a striker in a 4-2-2-2 or a 5-3-2.
It’s not the highest amount the team has paid to another team though. That’s $1.5 mil to DC United for Ted Ku-DiPietro, which was done as a ‘Cash-for’ deal.
The Rapids reserve team back in like 2013 was nicknamed ‘the Cobras’. I don’t remember why. Ask Drew Moor. Or Matt Pollard.
A top ‘where are they now?’ entry in Rapids history. Only topped perhaps by Rhys De Sota, a homegrown that played for Stanford University, got a bachelors in bioengineering, a masters in Chemical Engineering, and now works for a biotech firm that is using RNA to try and cure Alzheimers.