Waiver Draft in MLS, Chapter Two

By: Laurie | March 4th, 2008

I absolutely hate salary cap compliance day, which was yesterday. It gives me a ferocious pain in my maternal area. It’s the day when all of the players who don’t fit under the team’s salary cap — a lot of them perfectly decent, middle of the road players — are dumped by MLS teams in a desperate attempt to make cap before midnight. These are generally guys who are either too old and/or too experienced to be developmental players, but too highly paid to warrant the cap space they’d take up.

A list of casualties is at the bottom of the post. Pictured is my personal favorite waived player, Kyle Martino. (What can I say? When you write enough about somebody’s groin injury, you somehow become eternally linked.)

Today, though, is a slightly more positive day. It’s the second Waiver Draft day. This is when the teams get the chance to pick up the waived players on the cheap.

I believe that team order for the waiver draft is identical to the last draft we had, the supplemental draft. Expansion team San Jose is first, MLS Cup winners Houston are at the bottom. (Because MLS is all about creating parity, in case you’d forgotten.)

So how does this waiver draft thing work? From Goal.com:

Each of the MLS sides no longer hold the right of first refusal for the players they waived. If a player is not selected in the waiver draft, he may renegotiate a contract and sign with the team that is the first to submit a formal request for the player

Ridge Mahoney at SoccerAmerica has more info on some of the previous quirks of the MLS waiver system, but since they don’t apply now I’ll let you go in and read them for yourself.

Here are yesterday’s unlucky players. Or former players:

By team:

Chicago - Tim Conway, Jeff Curtin, Floyd Franks, Jordan Russolillo, Olei Telesford.
Colorado — Scott Campbell, Jose Cancela, Chase Hilgenbrinck, Brandon Prideaux, Cliff Wilmes.
Columbus – Rusty Pierce, Ricardo Virtuoso, Andre Pacheco.
D.C. United – Nicholas Addlery, Jerson Monteiro, Jay Nolly.
FC Dallas – Sandy Gbandi, Scott Jones.
Kansas City – Ryan Raybould.
Real Salt Lake — Kyle Brown, Duke Hashimoto, Ritchie Kotschau, Chris Lancos.
Toronto FC – Kenny Stamatopolous.
No waivers for: Chivas USA, Houston, New York, New England or San Jose

Alphabetical:

Nicholas Addlery (D.C. United)
Celestine Babayaro (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Kyle Brown (Real Salt Lake)
Jose Cancela (Colorado Rapids)
Tim Conway (Chicago Fire)
Jeff Curtin (Chicago Fire)
Floyd Franks (Chicago Fire)
Sandy Gbandi (FC Dallas)
Kelly Gray (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Duke Hashimoto (Real Salt Lake)
Chase Hilgenbrinck (Colorado Rapids)
Scott Jones (FC Dallas)
Richie Kotschau (Real Salt Lake)
Chris Lancos (Real Salt Lake)
Kyle Martino (Los Angeles Galaxy)
Jerson Monteiro (D.C. United)
Jay Nolly (D.C. United)
Andrei Pacheco (Columbus Crew)
Rusty Pierce (Columbus Crew)
Brandon Prideaux (Colorado Rapids)
Ryan Raybould (Kansas City Wizards)
Jordan Russolillo (Chicago Fire)
Kenny Stamatopolus (Toronto FC)
Osei Telesford (Chicago Fire)
Jacob Thomas (Columbus Crew)
Ricardo Virtuoso (Columbus Crew)
Clifton Wilmes (Colorado Rapids)