Here is the language 2012 MLS Roster Rules in regards to "Homegrown Players".
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I. MLS ROSTER COMPOSITION, Salary and Budget:
Clubs may sign up to two Homegrown Players contracts above the minimum salary and similar to Generation adidas player contract amounts.
II. PLAYER ACQUISITION MECHANISMS, (F) HOMEGROWN PLAYER SIGNINGS
A club may sign a player to his first professional contract without subjecting him to the MLS SuperDraft if the player has trained for at least one year in the club’s youth development program and has met the League’s Homegrown Player criteria. Players joining MLS through this mechanism are known as Homegrown Players. There is no limit to the number of Homegrown Players a club may sign in a given year.
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I found it interesting that MLS only allows two homegrown (HG) players to sign at above league minimum ($33,750 for players under 25 yrs old). In the language it does not specify if that is per year or overall but I'm going to go with per year right now as all three current HG Crew players are above the league minimum salary. Here are the current Crew homegrown players:
Base : Guaranteed : Name
55,000 : 70,500 : Aaron Horton
58,000 : 58,000 : Ben Speas
44,000 : 44,000 : Matt Lampson
Full MLS Homegrown list with salary can be found here.
The median Base and Guaranteed Salary for a 2012 MLS HG signing is $44k. With a max of 62,500 and min of 33,750. Only three players topped 44k: Brent Richards (POR), Speas (CLB), Cristhian Hernandez (PHI).
Since the Columbus Crew expedited this signing I think it is safe to say that Wil Trapp was signed for a number in the 52k - 62k range. What this means is that he will likely count against the salary cap.
Trapp is from Gahanna, Ohio (middle to upper middle class town, northeast edge of Columbus) and played a couple years in Caleb Porter's successful Akron program. He is listed at 5'8" 150 lbs. The Crew will try him out in the defensive midfield position with spot duty as a box to box. His size will put him on the smaller side of the playbill but that doesn't mean he can't handle it. We'll see.
UPDATED CREW CAP ROOM
Last week I estimated the Crew have somewhere in the range of $400 - $700k to play with. I'm going to amend that slightly by extending the range to $850k. The reason has to do with a few players falling off the total cap number (Lampson, Schoenfeld, George).
If you would like to see my 2013 estimates you can go here.
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