There is no hard and fast rule covering how to assess contract value over production in matters of player acquisition, but there are general guidelines. And the Sounders seemed to walk that fine line with aplomb this week.
Herculez Gomez’ssigning in Seattle this week will not set the league on fire. Gomez is 33, after all, and the journeyman striker has not played 30 matches in a calendar year in almost a half decade. In 2015, he made his exodus from Liga MX after five years to join Toronto FC, but that experiment shuddered to halt after Gomez had played a mere seven regular season games.
And as Sounders General Manager & President of Soccer Garth Lagerwey was quick to point out this week, Gomez is not Obafemi Martins’ replacement. After three years of escalating returns, Martins left for China less than a week before the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League resumed in February, taking his flashy goals and his Designated Player contract with him.
Gomez is not a like-for-like swap. That argument isn’t even on the table. The good news? Seattle doesn’t need him to be, and they certainly aren’t paying him DP money.
Martins’ departure left Seattle in a tricky spot as the season began. He gave Seattle head coach Sigi Schmid a tremendous amount of flexibility in how he set his bourgeoning front three in the new 4-3-3 formation. With Martins on the field, he had a live-wire first sub off the bench in Jordan Morris and more mix-and-match possibilities. In the meantime, it’s no secret that in five games together, the current front three has yet to score a goal in the run of play.
Gomez is not a salve to those wounds in and of himself, but he’s a big part of the equation. In the current setup he’ll likely be the first player off the bench in tie games or trailing situations. If nothing else, he gives Schmid another attacking chess piece with which to work. The fact that he can finish at a national team level on his best day only sweetens the pot.
At his age, Gomez isn’t running away from many defenders in flat foot races, but that was never really his game anyway. He’s a streaky, instinctive poacher, reacting to chaos in the box with stunning reflexes and banging in goals for fun. It just so happens that those traits have been sorely lacking in the first three games - all losses - of the Sounders’ season. Seattle’s managed to pile up 33 shots in those first three MLS games, but only 10 of those have been on target. Chance creation hasn’t necessarily been an issue, but the only goal in the run of play in that stretch came from defensive midfielder Osvaldo Alonso.
These were all no doubt important factors to consider as Seattle looked to bolster its attacking corps. Attacking performance off the bench was thin, and Gomez immediately gives Schmid more room to maneuver in that regard. If the first-choice front line stays the same, Gomez is a valuable like-for-like swap with Nelson Valdez at center forward. That doesn’t necessarily fix the issue of Clint Dempsey’s deployment - whether he’s better centrally or not - but the fact that Dempsey poured on shot after shot in the 2-1 loss to Vancouver last weekend had to be encouraging from the sideline.
But there’s another facet to this deal, more than just Gomez’s value as a goal-getting poacher and his worth as a veteran locker room presence who’s been in just about every scenario imaginable.
Gomez’s cap flexibility is about as fungible as it gets.
As Lagerwey noted after Gomez was introduced, Toronto FC is “on the hook” for the majority of his contract, meaning Gomez’s hit against the cap is relatively minimal. That’s an important piece of the puzzle, because Martins’ vacant Designated Player slot is still floating in the ether, waiting to be used. This move adds a valuable forward to the mixer without limiting Seattle’s options in signing a big name down the road, whenever that day comes.
When those opportunities present themselves, you pounce. Doesn’t get much more shrewd than that.
Gomez enters his second stint in Seattle with little to prove and flexible expectations. He will not be asked to bear the brunt of the scoring burden, nor will he be expected to start right away. But when Chad Barrett left in the offseason, he took 12 goals over two seasons - many of them off the bench - with him. Coupled with the departure of Martins, Seattle was dealt a one-two blow both from the starting lineup and the bench. Barrett was not a sexy player, but he won games.
While Martins’ replacement may still be an open question, it would seem the Barrett role’s been filled. Welcome back to Seattle indeed, Herculez Gomez.
