We know the San Jose Earthquakes have not been a good team. We also know that the ownership group is not going to spend a huge amount of money to make that the case.
Luckily, spending huge is not the only (or in fact primary) way to have success in MLS: the top team in each conference in 2021 spent around what the Quakes did on salaries, and in the case of the Colorado Rapids, actually spent less. Compared to European leagues, salaries are highly equitable between even the highest and lowest spending teams stateside. All of that leaves us with the much more important question: then how do you succeed, whether you’re a high-spending team or not?
The obvious answer is to find good value for money. What’s slightly more interesting to me, and more potentially useful to Chris Leitch as he attempts to guide the club to success, is where and how that value for money can be found. As such, I wanted to break down the two conference winners from 2021, where their players came from, and what the implications are for the beleaguered black and blue.
My point of comparison is their 2021 rosters, and the 14 players with the most minutes played, to reflect the bulk of the contributors on the squad.
New England Revolution (1st place, Eastern Conference)
Total Salaries: $11,681,240 (5.8% more than SJE)
Top 14 Composition: 3 international DPs (Gil, Buska, Bou), 5 drafted by club (Farrell, Jones, Kessler, Buchanan, Bye ), 1 Undrafted (Matt Turner), 1 Re-entry Draft (McNamara), 1 Promoted from USL (Maciel), 2 intra-MLS trade (Bunbury, Polster), 1 non-DP foreign transfer (Traustason)
What really stands out here is the elite amateur scouting (and, presumably, development). 5 SuperDraft guys, and a 6th if you include Turner who signed with the team after getting passed up in the draft. Make that 7 if you include Maciel, who came up through Revs II. That is a simply massive advantage, given how cheap these salaries are and that the acquisition cost is zero. I cannot think of another team in the league that has done as good of a job with the draft, although the good news for Quakes fans is that they have actually been quite good since Chris Leitch took over draft duties in 2016, pulling in starters in Jackson Yueill and Tanner Beason, as well as a remarkable number of MLS players in later rounds. Unfortunately, of course, two of those late-round picks made their MLS careers on other teams, including New England’s own Jon Bell.
As you can see, the Revs had almost zero reliance on foreign transfers below the DP threshold, which by contrast was a huge part of the Fioranelli-era Quakes. Instead, they focused their foreign scouting on the highest-value portion of the roster: three true DPs. All three, of course, played up to that level and then some in 2021, collectively contributing 36 goals and 25 assists. The only mid-level foreign acquisition, Traustason, was just 12th on the team in minutes, and cost about what Judson did.
Beyond that, the remaining 3 top-14 players all came from internal league transactions. McNamara, Bunbury, and Polster were acquired with fairly little outlay (nothing in Tommy Mac’s case, as a re-entry draft guy), took up no international slots, and cost mid-range sub-TAM salaries. None were the team’s top player, by any stretch, but they represented important depth, and evidenced New England’s strength in both intra-league scouting and intra-league dealmaking, both of which were borderline non-existent during the Fioranelli era for the Quakes.
Note, also, that zero homegrowns made this list. New England’s aging Scott Caldwell, their only homegrown on roster, was just 22nd on the team in minutes. Quite frankly, the region is just not a hotbed for youth soccer talent. As such, they needed to be elite at other things in order to succeed, and were. San Jose, in contrast, can absolutely lean on this area given the much richer talent region, and use it as a competitive advantage.
Colorado Rapids (1st place, Western Conference)
Total Salaries: $9,890,085 (10.4% less than SJE)
Top 14 Composition: 8 intra-MLS Trades (Trusty, Rosenberry, Barrios, Abubakar, Acosta, Rubio, Lewis, Kaye) 4 Foreign transfers (Price, Yarborough, Wilson, Galvan), 1 Homegrown (Bassett), 1 drafted by club (Shinyashiki)
As you can see, it’s a completely different approach to New England’s, with almost no reliance on the draft. Instead, the core of the roster was assembled dominantly through intra-league trades, indicating a major strength in intra-league scouting and dealmaking. They were opportunistic with high-quality players that didn’t fit into their old clubs in various ways, and only two of them (Acosta and Barrios) are above the DP/TAM threshold. Even more impressively, many of these players are still young, indicating that their scouting department was adept at identifying untapped potential in the likes of Trusty, Abubakar, and Lewis, for example.
In terms of foreign transfers, just Jack Price is above the DP/TAM line, and even him only barely. Yarborough, although a foreign transfer, of course counts as a domestic player since he’s a US citizen. These are more of the middle-grade foreign transfers of the type that Fioranelli relied on, although two are from British leagues, a source he never tapped into. Ironically, the one expensive foreign transfer the Rapids attempted, Younes Namli, a DP, didn’t manage to get into the top 14 in minutes played, and doesn’t much look like money well spent. It’s not uncommon for teams to be stronger at identifying talent in certain salary brackets rather than others, but it’s an interesting case study in how a team can finish atop the west without a single foreign DP making a meaningful contribution.
There is a draftee, Andre Shinyashiki, who was well chosen at 5th in the draft. There is also one stud Homegrown (Cole Bassett), and there would have been two had Sam Vines not been sold midseason. As such, the draft is not an important part of how the Rapids have built up their roster, but they got much more value (including monetarily!) from their homegrowns than New England did.
Implications for San Jose
Total Salaries: $11,036,928
Top 14 Composition: 7 Foreign Transfer (Chofis, Espinoza, Alanis, Nathan, Judson, M. Lopez, Abecasis), 3 Intra-MLS trade (Remedi, Salinas, Wondo), 2 Homegrown (Marcinkowski, Cowell), 2 Draftees (Yueill, Beason)
It’s hardly controversial to suggest that one of the great failings of the Fioranelli era was an inability to squeeze value out of the domestic market. In fact, I can recall Jesse explicitly saying he didn’t think there was good value there. The only meaningful internal transaction in his entire tenure was acquiring Eric Remedi in spring of 2021, with the other two internal trades for top-14 players (Wondo and Salinas) occurring many years before his hiring. Yet, in 2021, the leading lights of both conferences relied on the internal market to at least some extent, with the Rapids in fact getting the majority of their contributors from other MLS teams.
Another lesson is also quite obvious: if you nail your three high-priced foreign DPs, as New England did, you’re going to thrive. And in fact, it’s quite rare across league history. It may even be making the rest of their draft-centric team look better than it is. The Quakes have found themselves in at least a halfway decent place with respect to their two DPs (Espinoza and Chofis), although there’s quite a distance between their collective contributions and New England’s. A third DP would of course help close that gap in and of itself.
Non-DP foreign transfers, however? Much more hit or miss, and in fact if you look through all three rosters you’ll see a litany of highly paid foreign transfers who didn’t crack the top 14 in minutes, as is the case for Andy Rios and Carlos Fierro. There are absolutely a few successes, with Jack Price in particular coming to mind, but the hit rate seems to be far too low to justify the resources expended. If anything, San Jose has exhibited more success in this category than most teams, snagging excellent deals on the likes of Judson and Marcos Lopez, but these on their own are not enough to balance out the bad.
Where the Quakes already stack up much more adequately is in the draft and in homegrowns. They of course do not have the same core of drafted players as New England, but they have drafted very well in recent years, netting 2 starters and probably one of the largest crops of MLS-rostered players of any club in the last 5 years, although of course with Jon Bell and Danny Musovski doing so for other teams. There’s no reason to believe the club is behind in this category. Similarly, with Homegrowns, they equal or surpass the above teams in meaningful current-day contributors (which could also easily include Tommy Thompson), but they have a cadre of young high-potential players who may actually increase that number in coming years.
Chris Leitch has focused on amateur scouting, the academy, and MLS’s arcane roster mechanisms during his time with the Quakes. He’s done a good job in each category. It’s no secret that ownership tapped him to succeed Fioranelli specifically since he was more attuned to the domestic market, and the first move he made in charge was to pounce on Jeremy Ebobisse in a massive intra-league trade.
That’s a good start. If he can begin to hit on those mechanisms, perhaps there’s more reason for hope this year, even without a pronounced increase in spending.
