Predicting FC Dallas 2022 Expansion Draft lists

The 2022 MLS Expansion Draft for St Louis City to stock up their roster with five more players is this Friday (November 11th). FC Dallas will be exposed in the draft but can lose at most one player.

Here are some important rules.

• Each MLS team protects up to 12 players.
• Expiring contracts still count as being on the roster.
• Protecting a player does not pick up the player’s option.
• Generation adidas players who have not graduated and Homegrowns under 25 years this season are auto-protected.
• DPs and U-22 players are not auto-protected.
• Players with no-trade clauses must be protected.
• Players who retire will not be a part of the Expansion Draft, but the club will lose its right of first refusal should they return.

It’s important to note that Homegrown in this context just means a player that at one point was a “homegrown” player from the club’s academy, they can be on the senior roster. FC Dallas has a few players who fit that category.

Let’s begin.

Auto-Protected Players

FC Dallas has a bunch of auto-protects. It is a massive advantage in roster protecting for the expansion draft.

Antonio Carrera	Homegrown
Edwin Cerrillo	Homegrown
Justin Che	Homegrown on loan
Kalil ElMedkhar	Homegrown
Jesus Ferreira	Homegrown
Eddie Munjoma	Homegrown
Isaiah Parker	Generation adidas
Paxton Pomykal	Homegrown
Beni Redžic	Homegrown
Thomas Roberts	Homegrown
Dante Sealy	Homegrown on loan
Brandon Servania	Homegrown
Collin Smith	Homegrown

That’s a big list.

Predicting Protections

Let’s have a go, alphabetically, at predicting the FCD list of 12.

1-12	Player	Why Protect
1	Paul Arriola	Team leader.
2	Marco Farfan	Not an FCD Homegrown.
3	Bernard Kamungo	New hot talent.
4	Sebastian Lletget	Brand new deal.
5	Jose A. Martinez	Coach’s favorite defender.
6	Tsiki Ntsabeleng	Impactful and super cheap.
7	Jader Obrian	Solid production at a fair price.
8	Maarten Paes	Fantastic season.
9	Facundo Quignon	Protection in the middle.
10	Nkosi Tafari	FCD’s ’23 potential CB starter.
11	Ema Twumasi	RB starter.
12	Alan Velasco	Star in the making.

Exposed List

Those two lists above leave FCD with just seven exposed players. These are the seven I’ve chosen to expose in this exercise.

Exposed Player	Comments
Lucas Bartlett	From his Instagram, it seems FCD is declining his contract option anyway.
Matt Hedges	FCD’s defensive GOAT. See below.
Nicky Hernandez	Spent 2022 on loan with San Antonio. Low risk he’ll get taken?
Franco Jara	Half a season left on his contract. If anyone wants him, please feel free.
Jimmy Maurer	Fantastic having Maurer on the team but FCD needs to protect other bodies and Jimmy is 34.
Nanu	Loan ending.
Joshué Quiñónez	Does FCD like him or not?

Let me explain my choices.

Decisions

This year was a hard one to predict.

Let’s start with Matt Hedges. Reports are pretty clear that FC Dallas doesn’t want to pick up the approx $1 mil option and instead would like to negotiate a new deal. However, both those reports and the info I have are that the two sides are far apart.

So, that info and that FCD didn’t trade him…
And given FCD only has till Monday (the 14th) at noon to exercise the option or not…
Dallas might as well expose Hedges because free agency begins next Wednesday and if Hedges hits the open market someone else will almost certainly pay him more than FCD if offering.

Sure, he might get taken in the expansion draft if he’s exposed. But at least FCD would get $50k GAM for him and that’s better than zero if Hedges is a free agent.

And unless someone takes Hedges and exercises his option – a pretty pricy option – everyone, including FCD, can talk to Hedges about a contract starting Wednesday. Perhaps the open market will make FCD’s offer seem worth taking.

Could FCD protect Hedges to give themselves a few more days? Sure. But if they haven’t gotten a deal done by this point I don’t think they are going to.

So for this prediction, I exposed Hedges.

Given that I just exposed Hedges that should mean I can also expose Joshué Quiñónez. Given the unknown buy price on Quiñónez, plus his international status, and his status as an unproven player, it seems likely anyone picking a center back would take Hedges over Q.

Heck, we’re not even sure yet if FCD wants to bring Quiñónez back, although losing Hedges might make that more likely. I was pretty tempted to expose Facundo Quignon over Quiñónez but I think FCD values him a lot more than I do.