Monday Morning Centre Back: The Change Begins

Late Friday afternoon the Houston Dynamo made the first of what will likely be several roster moves this off-season.

In acquiring forward Jason Garey from the Columbus Crew for the low low price of a 2015 4th Round SuperDraft pick, the Dynamo add a former 1st round pick who never really seemed to settle with the Crew. 

The upside here for the Dynamo is tremendous given Garey's pedigree. He won the Hermann Trophy while at the University of Maryland, college soccer's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy in football, and can score goals a lot of different ways. More importantly, if he doesn't work out, Houston have up next to nothing for him. It's a low risk/high reward situation for the team and Garey can fill the role that Joseph Ngwenya was in last season.

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The first of two Re-Entry Drafts will take place on Wednesday. The Dynamo have five players who eligible for the draft, all who whom are high salary veterans. The entire re-entry process is available for your enjoyment HERE but I warn you, a lawyer might be required to help you get through some of the legal-eze contained in the document.

Basically, any of the eligible players can be selected by another team in the draft (teams cannot select their own players in the first phase) and be signed at the contract option price their current team did not choose to pick-up. If the player is out of contract, they must be signed at their "Bona Fide Offer Price".

Bona Fide? My first reaction was, this might be the first time I've seen "bona fide" used somewhere other than a Popeye's Chicken advertisement. As for what it means, it's explained in the above link but I promise the immense paragraph explaining a "Bona Fide Offer" will give you a headache. Essentially, it's a league determined fair offer to a player.

Any player not selected in phase one is available for phase two, where there are less stringent rules about contracts and the teams will be able to negotiate a deal with any selected player. Should a player make it through both phases, they are as close to a free agent as a player is capable of being in MLS.

I'd like to offer a more concrete explanation of the Re-Entry Draft process but after 30 minutes of staring at the rules, I just feel dumb. Feel free to take a look at the information and if you understand it better, feel free to comment or FanPost about it.

As for the final details that I do understand, the following Dynamo players are in the Re-Entry Draft: Ryan Cochrane, Richard Mulrooney, Joseph Ngwenya, Pat Onstad, Adrian Serioux. You can see the complete list of available players HERE.

There are two Dynamo players whose contract options were not picked up but are not in the draft. Anthony Obodai is not eligible for the draft since he does not have enough years of service in MLS. As for Eddie Robinson, he chose not to enter the draft and can retire, re-sign with the Dynamo or play overseas. The team is apparently looking to bring Robinson back at a reduced salary.

The Dynamo have the 5th pick in Phase 1 of the Re-Entry Draft.