Pedro Santos, Darlington Nagbe OUT

The Crew announced yesterday that both Pedro Santos and Darlington Nagbe are out of the MLS Cup Final tomorrow. The way it is written is confusing. "Medically not cleared to play," is the official statement for the two players, yet it does not specifically tie them to the positive Covid test that was also reported on the same day.

We can assume that the positive test is at least one of the players. Santos, I guess. Nagbe did take a cheap shot by a New England player early last match, so maybe he's hurt? Who knows. 

I'm guessing that the league is purposefully being obtuse in order to make sure the game is played.

Seattle is now favored +130 to the Crew's +220. 

Columbus had the edge before yesterday.

Top Performer of '19: Santos

Pedro Santos recorded the highest rated game of any Columbus Crew player last weekend in his first time out in injured Federico Higuain's number 10 position.

His performance was energetic, fast and direct - a stark contrast to Higuain's more methodical approach. Neither approach is right or wrong, per se, but you have to be incredibly good at what you do to take a more surgical approach. Santos' direct and fast approach gets attention because it is exciting! And he almost won the game for the team, to boot.

There is a dark side to the way Higuain plays, however. Slow and methodical is a close cousin to old and slow.  Santos is no spring chicken either at 31 and we may not see that sort of outburst from him again now that he will likely be playing it week in / week out.

Who Scored gave him a 9.15 rating against NYCFC. That's impressive. Anything in the nines means it was a special night. No other player has recorded anything over 8.5 in Columbus.

TOP 5 RATINGS THIS SEASON
9.15 Pedro Santos (Week 16)
8.44 Zack Steffen (Week 2)
8.43 Federico Higuain (Week 12)
8.34 Robinho (Week 12)
8.29 Gaston Sauro (Week 3)

Good performances can be a little random and a little lucky so one thing I like to look at, particularly in MLS, is which players are having either really good outings or really bad ones while discounting the middle/average results. This is similar to the way a lot of survey companies look at data. It's also how some companies calculate customer satisfaction scores (or Net Promoter Scores).

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of customers who are Detractors (or bad performances) from the percentage of customers who are Promoters (outstanding performances). For purposes of calculating a Net Promoter Score, Passives (average performances) count toward the total number of respondents, thus decreasing the percentage of detractors and promoters and pushing the net score toward 0.

What this math results in is a range from +100 to -100. Anything over +50 is great (+70 is outstanding, but no Crew players there). 0 to +50 is fine. Anything in the negative is bad.

Outstanding performances = 7.00 and up. Bad Performance is 6.00 and below.

NPS Score

+53 : Pedro Santos

+33 : Gyasi Zardes
+29 : Federico Higuain
+27 : Waylon Francis
+20 : Harrison Afful
+19 : Robinho
+15 : Artur
+13 : Wil Trapp
+11 : Josh Williams
+9 : Gastón Sauro
+7 : Héctor Jimenez

0 : Zack Steffen
0 : Connor Maloney
0 : Jon Kempin
0 : Lalas Abubakar
0 : Ricardo Clark

-11 : Justin Meram
-13 : Jonathan Mensah
-20 : David Accam
-25 : David Guzman
-33 : Eduardo Sosa
-40 : Luis Argudo
-43 : Niko Hansen
-50 : Patrick Mullins
-67 : J.J. Williams
-100 : Joe Bendik

Highlighted above are three regular starters that are performing not all that well. Interestingly enough, two of Porter's guys. I also called out Artur and Trapp. Both don't appear to be hurting the team but the interesting thing is that Artur was the one benched when maybe they should just split time. Trapp being captain (and the face of the team) prevents that, but a good benching might not be the worst thing for him right now.

One last thing about Santos. I think it is pretty remarkable that he is improving the way he is. This isn't to say he was as bad as prominent Crew fans (Twitter, Big Soccer, Reddit) would have you think. He came on to the team as a good player and played well. He's growing into the league and team. Something a lot of good/great players never seem to be able to do (or care to). I believe that a good chunk of this has to do with Federico Higuain and the culture he brings with him.

We shall see where this takes the team. They still have a ways to go this year. I'll consider a 10 goal, 10 assist year for Santos a huge win. He has it in him.

2019 Crew Season Opens, Concerns

The 2019 MLS season got underway yesterday. As with most years, it was a bit sloppy and incomplete. It is difficult to draw any conclusions until somewhere between week 5 and 10. However! This being my 10th season covering the Crew closely, I feel comfortable in drawing a few thoughts out of the mist and listing them out.

1. Porter's team plays more like a Robert Warzycha team: Or perhaps, because this was more of a NYRB II team practically playing a low block, they made Caleb Porter look more like Crew circa 2012. Sloppy play and very little composed possession in the opponents half.

2. Opportunity lost: Because MLS balances the rosters (best they can) teams with a decided advantage have to get 3 points out of games like this one. Crew playing at home, 1st of the year, against a B lineup... has to turn into 3 points. Even if it's a sloppy win.

3. Crew weaknesses, all over: To the right and left of Federico Higuain are weak spots for Columbus right now. I put some of that on Porter for wanting to bypass the midfield and go somewhat direct, but also because father time is catching up to Justin Meram (who was ineffective yesterday) and Pedro Santos (only 22 passes, 60% completion) has some sort of mental issue when he gets close to goal. There was even a moment late on where he scuffed a shot, went down in a heap and Higuain trotted over as if to say "come on man, let's go, get up." Artur also had a bit of a sloppy game and wasn't able to get into any sort of attacking position, which makes his role somewhat redundant with Trapp in there.

4. Porter overthinking it: With just about the entire team returning, you should have just rolled a solid XI out there from last year and won this game. But he is tinkering with how they play, which is absolutely his right. It's a concern, however, that the team looked a bit lost. Credit goes to NY a little, but that was not exactly a Supporters' Shield-winning lineup out there.

5. Fox Sports Broadcast: Looked like Fox. Production is much improved over Spectrum Sports. I wish the video quality were better, but it is what it is. Neil Sika and Dwight Burgess are back doing what they do giving us long-winded backgrounds on players that nobody asks for instead of calling the game. The GREAT GREAT news is that Chris Doran is on the 97.1 FM radio call. I caught some of it. He is excellent.

6. 17k Showed Up: Nice turnout for a cold home opener for Columbus. If the team hadn't gone through what it went through last year I would say it was a good turnout, but as circumstances are what they are - It was somewhat disappointing. It was a busy sports day in town. The Columbus Blue Jackets had a game earlier and the Buckeye basketball team played at Purdue, but that's always the excuse in town. I'm not sure I expected a sellout, but I'm sure many did.

What's funny about these broad points is that fans of the team will be discussing each of them for the rest of the season.

Most have Columbus finishing middle of the pack this year. I'm not sure anything happened last night to change that prediction up or down, but it did make me feel more confident that this team will end up fighting to make the playoffs after the summer transfer window.

Larin broke free, Finlay didn't

Player careers are short. As observers of the league, we tend to look at longevity as a whole and not drill down to an individual player. It's natural. Remeber Ethan Finlay and his two magical years with Columbus? For fans, everything is okay for because Pedro Santos came in and replaced him.

Finlay had a break out year in 2014 when he was basically on a league minimum contract ($66k). 11 Goals and 7 Assists in less than 2000 minutes put him near the top of any mid-fielders in the league making 5x that amount. MLS rewarded him with a raise for the next season by bumping him up to $142k, which was still far below other players producing what he was.

2015 saw Finlay top his previous season in terms of production with one of the best in team history. 12 goals, 13 assists and helped take Columbus to a home game in MLS Cup final. His reward, another raise. This time to $250k. STILL well under what others with similar output made. During this time we saw Finlay get National Team call-ups.

It's here that trouble came.

2016 was the year things fell apart in Columbus. Kei Kamara, who was the difference-making player that propelled the Crew to the final, wanted more money. Running parallel to that was rumors about Finlay exploring options abroad. It made for a bad season in Columbus, arguably the second worst in team history. To his credit, and without the services of Kei Kamara, Finlay chugged along and finished the season with 6 goals and 9 assists.

We'll never know if Finlay signed a 2 year deal in 2016 or if it was a one year deal with an option, but his wages only jumped to $290k in 2017. What was clear is that Finlay wanted more. He wanted to be paid what he was worth.

In the rest of the world, a player striking fire like he did means other clubs will start circling for his services and open their checkbooks, but in MLS there is a barrier to that. Teams can't bid on players like they can elsewhere. Finlay's rise was right on the front of new financial rules like TAM and GAM. For him, it's unfortunate. But even with those rules, you have a tricky contract qualifier called a "player option." Meaning, another team can swoop in, pay a little bit of allocation and keep his wages low. In a nutshell, that's what happened when he was let go to Minnesota halfway through the 2017 season.

Year: Mins - G - A - Wage
2014: 1898 - 11 - 6 - $66k
2015: 2790 - 12 - 13 - $143k
2016: 2462 - 6 - 9 - $250k
2017: 2262 - 4 - 4 - 290k

Finlay is about to turn 28 years old. He has another one or two years ahead of him, yes, but he missed out on capitalizing on two of the best seasons of his career. He doesn't get to go back to 2014 and 15. Because of MLS rules he has missed out on tens of thousands of dollars, possibly hundreds.

Finlay is no Pedro Santos. They have different skills, different players. Does Finlay have deficencies in his game? Of course, but based on production alone, Finlay was worth close to double what he was paid in 2016.

CYLE LARIN

This brings us to Larin. The number one "SuperDraft" pick in 2015 set a scoring rookie record that year for Orlando City (17 goals in less than 2000 minutes). He followed that season up with another 14 goals and 3 assists in 2016. No new contract came and he was still making less than $200k. Like Finlay, word started to spread that he wanted out and that he had options overseas. But because of the way MLS works, it's not very valuable to sell him off. MLS keeps most of the fee and Orlando is stuck losing a relatively rare talent for not much in return. So what usually happens? Nothing. The player is stuck.

Larin decided to take another route. Force his way out.

With only a "team option" keeping him in Orlando he took it upon himself to go meet with teams overseas that had interest. Going as far as taking pictures with a Besiktas jersey on. Orlando cried foul and claimed that he couldn't go because of the "option" held on him for the 2018 season. The problem here for Orlando (and MLS) is that the rest of the world does not recognize a team option. You are either signed to a contract or not.

MLS considered going to the mat to keep Larin but were ultimately frightened away by the very real prospect of losing the argument on the validity of player options. Imagine for a moment - what if that did happen. It would completely change the landscape of player contracts in MLS.

So the league let him go and in return for the trouble gave Orlando 100% of his transfer fee. This, reportedly, ruffled the feathers of the other MLS franchises a great deal, but MLS took the lesser of two evils (for them).

The lesson here is a rough one for players outperforming their contracts in MLS. They've got you.

SOLUTIONS

The increase in allocation money has loosened things up a bit, but that does not help players necessarily earn what they are worth when they are hitting a hot streak in their short careers. Pluck a player out of Columbus and they are still beholden to whatever contract they have, including the option.

The solution to this problem is to let teams keep most (if not all) the fee a foreign team is willing to pay. The "homegrown" rule change last year allowing MLS teams to keep all the fee is a baby step, but not nearly good enough.

The barriers in place need to be removed. The incentive for players to outperform their contracts needs to be there.