Here are the Timbers players at risk for the Expansion Draft - News & Reaction

Plus the list of protected players, and who is likeliest to be picked

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, I’m not I’m not talking about holiday greetings — I’m talking about weird MLS drafts, baby.

Photo Credit: Kelsey Baker

Wednesday is the next iteration of the MLS Expansion Draft, when new boys San Diego FC get to peruse the league and select up to five players from other teams to bolster their inaugural roster. In advance of the fun, the league released the names of players that are eligible to be selected.

Each club got the chance to protect 12 of the players on their roster (homegrowns under the age of 25 are automatically protected), and teams can only lose one player in the draft. Importantly, San Diego must take on the current contract and guaranteed compensation number for any player they select — though they are free to re-negotiate with said player. If a player has a club option in their contract, it must be picked up if they are selected.

So with all that out of the way, here is the list of Timbers players that are available to be selected by San Diego tomorrow:

Miguel Araujo
Diego Chará
Marvin Loría (MLS rights)
Zac McGraw
Eric Miller
Trey Muse
Cristhian Paredes
Mason Toye (Club option year)
Eryk Williamson
Dario Zuparic

That means that Timbers subsequently protected the following 12 players:

Felipe Mora
Jonathan Rodriguez
Evander
Santiago Moreno
Antony
David Ayala
Juan Mosquera
Claudio Bravo
Kamal Miller
Finn Surman
Maxime Crepeau
James Pantemis

The 2024 MLS Expansion Draft will go down at 7:30 p.m. PT tomorrow, and will be streamed on MLSSoccer.com.

You can read the full list of all eligible players from across MLS here.

Reaction and takeaways

It’s a fun yet foolish errand to try to read too much into Expansion Draft lists. The logic of why teams protect the players they do is unknown, and what any given expansion team’s strategy is for the draft is incredibly hard to predict.

What’s San Diego FC’s plan for their roster? Which positions are they planning to invest more heavily in? How do they value MLS experience? How are they balancing cap hits and contract length? I do not have an answer for any of those questions, and the only people who do are SDFC head coach Mikey Varas and Lindsey Horan’s fiancée.

That being said, of course I am going to try to explain why Portland protected who they did and identify who of the unprotected players are most at risk to be selected and why. Because what good is a blog boy if he can’t spew a dozen paragraphs of relatively educated speculation?