The Lower Third
Analyzing supplemental roster composition and value in 2024
In January, I wrote a blog on the LA Galaxy’s cap issues, citing their lack of “off-budget contributions” as a factor. I noted that the since-traded Jalen Neal received 70% of the club’s supplemental roster minutes in 2024, with no other member earning more than 350 regular season minutes.1
At first glance, those numbers might seem trivial. Coming off a winter that saw the league-record transfer fee broken twice, it’s easy to see a club’s senior roster — which consists of up to 20 players, including those multimillion-dollar signings — as the end-all, be-all. However, as the league continues to grow, bringing new competitions and more fixture congestion, so has the importance of the remaining 10-11 roster slots, which comprise a club’s supplemental roster.
Unlike members of the senior roster, supplemental roster players don’t count against the salary budget. As a result, there’s a ton of value to be found in those slots.
How much value? is a question I found myself asking over the offseason. And while other commitments kept me from digging into it then, I finally sat down to explore how clubs constructed their supplemental rosters in 2024, and what lessons we might draw from them.
Understanding the supplemental roster
If you were to look at the league’s roster profiles, you’d be excused for thinking all supplemental roster slots are the same. In reality, though, they’re broken into tiers.
The first tier includes slots 21-24. These may be filled with Senior Minimum Salary Players — players whose base salary is no less than the senior minimum. That number was $89,716 in 2024 and has increased to $104,000 this year, per the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
The second tier consists of slots 25-30. Prior to 2024, there was a distinction between slots 25-28 and 29-30, though the league has since amended that difference, making the six slots uniform. These may be filled with players earning the Reserve Minimum Salary ($71,401 in 2024, $80,622 this year). Per league rules, only players aged 24 (meaning they turn 24 during the calendar year) or younger may be paid the reserve minimum.
Of course, because it’s MLS, there’s a caveat: Homegrowns on a club’s supplemental roster may collectively earn up to $125,000 above the senior and reserve minimums. Additionally, clubs may use up to $200,000 in available allocation money to sign new Homegrowns to their first MLS contracts.
Take the Seattle Sounders as an example. We can use last year’s roster profiles and the parameters outlined above to assume 1) their supplemental roster composition and 2) which Homegrowns earned more than their respective minimums:
Beyond slots 21-30, slot 31 is reserved for players who:
Are 24 or younger,
Carry a budget charge that’s no more than the Senior Minimum Salary, and
Are on a season-long loan to a lower-division club in the United States or Canada.
Of the 16 players who occupied slot 31 in 2024:
9 were loaned to their club’s MLS NEXT Pro (MLSNP) affiliates,
5 to the USL Championship (USLC), and
2 to the Canadian Premier League (CPL).2
Notably, players loaned to the USLC or CPL were, on average, 2–3 years older than those sent to MLSNP. Moreover, six of the seven players loaned to the USLC or CPL had previously spent at least one year within their parent club’s ecosystem, rendering continued exposure to that environment less critical.
Finally (and while not part of the supplemental roster, worth noting for clarity), you’ll find that some clubs list unavailable, off-roster players on their profiles. To be designated off-roster, a player must be a Homegrown aged 21 or younger in the league year. These players can be made available for league games via short-term call-ups, which, for those keeping track, differ from short-term agreements — four-day contracts available for certain professionals within the club (including second-team players). There’s a cap on how many short-term agreements a player can sign in a year, but given their irrelevance in the context of off-roster Homegrowns, we won’t get into that.
Extracting supplemental roster minutes
Now that we understand the roster structure, let me briefly explain how I calculated supplemental roster minutes — a rather complex process due to roster fluidity:
10 players listed on their club’s senior roster in May were moved to the supplemental roster by September 13’s roster freeze.
8 players moved in the opposite direction (i.e., from the supplemental to the senior roster). Five of the eight signed new contracts announced in the fall, including three Homegrowns who re-signed as U22 Initiative Players.
10 players began the year on their club’s second-team roster, played at least one MLS minute while on a short-term agreement, and signed a first-team contract before the conclusion of the 2024 season.
6 players considered off-roster Homegrowns on May 1 were moved to their club’s supplemental roster by roster freeze.
1 player began the year in slot 31 before moving to a higher slot (between 25 and 30).
1 player began the year on his club’s supplemental roster but was moved off it after securing a loan through the end of the season.
All told, that’s 36 players who spent just part of the year on the supplemental roster, despite remaining with the same club (on a permanent basis) the entire season.
Trades impacted roster classifications, too. Caden Clark, for example, went from Minnesota United’s senior roster to CF Montréal’s supplemental roster following a trade in August. His $350,000 base salary, coupled with Minnesota’s low return (up to $150,000 in GAM), suggests the Loons retained a significant portion of his salary in 2024.
Thus, to calculate a club’s supplemental roster minutes, I:
Looked exclusively at slots 21-30.
Removed minutes played on short-term agreements (as best I could with the information available).
Used roster freeze as the cutoff for players who moved across rosters. For example, Max Arfsten held a spot on the Columbus Crew’s supplemental roster in May but was bumped to the senior roster by September 13 (signing a new contract in October). Thus, the minutes he logged prior to roster freeze represent his supplemental roster minutes. Conversely, Lucas Bartlett began the year on D.C. United’s senior roster before moving to the supplemental roster. Only the minutes he played post-roster freeze are considered in this analysis.
Given these limitations, I’ve demonstrated an alternative approach to measuring off-budget value, using bonus structures outlined in the CBA. We’ll get to that, but first, let’s see what the minutes tell us.
Supplemental roster minutes
No club’s supplemental roster contributed more regular season minutes in 2024 than the Seattle Sounders’, with players in slots 21-30 logging 8,778 minutes — 23.36% of the club’s total.
That should come as no surprise for a club that’s built an impressive pathway to the first team, as 15 players on the Sounders’ 2024 roster signed via their developmental system.
That includes Jordan Morris, who signed a Homegrown deal in 2016, honed his craft alongside the continent’s best, and set the club’s all-time scoring record earlier this year. It includes Jackson Ragen, a one-time academy prospect who returned to the area after college to spend a year with the second team before signing a first-team contract and finishing third in Defender of the Year (DotY) voting, right behind Jordi Alba.
These success stories mean when Father Time catches up to Raúl Ruidíaz, second on the club’s all-time scoring chart, the Sounders can save $10 million on a replacement; they have Morris. When Yeimar Gómez Andrade, a two-time DotY finalist, begins to fall off, the floor won’t give out; they have Ragen.
When the replacements are built-in, you experience little turnover across the years, and the less turnover you experience, the fewer international slots you require over time. Thus, you can trade your excess slots for over $1 million in GAM, flipping that for a 24-year-old Designated Player with more than 50 goals across his MLS career. You can sweeten that deal with additional GAM from the future, knowing that a Homegrown you extended on a U22 deal has serious interest from within the league, enough to net you another $1.3-1.6 million in GAM. You can trade that Homegrown because a younger, more talented one has broken through at the same position, and he’s worth eight figures on the international market. And when you sell that guy, you can convert up to $3 million of his transfer revenue into GAM and do the whole. damn. thing. again.
When I say more off-budget contributions might have mitigated the Galaxy’s issues, this is what I mean.
Speaking of the six-time MLS Cup champions: here’s an updated graphic that revisits the numbers I shared in my January blog, depicting the percentage of supplemental roster minutes Neal (and every other club’s most significant contributor) received:
I guess 63% is better than 70%, but that’s still not great.
Also not great: Orlando City’s supplemental roster contributed just 1,156 minutes — or 3% of the club’s regular season minutes, the lowest share in the league. Despite entering their 11th MLS season, the Lions have yet to develop a Homegrown into either 1) a consistent first-team contributor or 2) a significant sale abroad. The list is bleak, man.3
Their success in the SuperDraft has helped mask this, though it’s worth noting that since their first “good” season — 2020, when they finished fifth in the Supporters’ Shield standings — they’ve hit on just one of 19 picks (Duncan McGuire). That’s not to say the others can’t still come good, but it’s a reminder that the draft isn’t as easy when Cyle Larin and Daryl Dike aren’t falling into your lap.
I bring up the academy pipeline and SuperDraft because those were the two most common modes of acquiring players for the supplemental roster in 2024:
Unsurprisingly, Homegrowns occupied more slots (134, 44.97%) and earned more minutes (64,302, 44.31%) than players from other groups. This aligns with research I conducted in 2023, which showed that the average number of Homegrowns on an MLS roster had essentially doubled from 2017 (4.59) to 2022 (8.25), while the average number of SuperDraft picks followed an inverse relationship over that span (8.14 in 2017 to 5.79 in 2022).4
That’s not to suggest the draft is irrelevant, though. In fact, the table above undersells the SuperDraft’s impact, given the number of drafted players who go through a club’s second team en route to MLS. The aforementioned Ragen is an example, as are Yutaro Tsukada (Orlando) and Nicolas Fleuriau Chateau (Vancouver Whitecaps), both of whom were selected in the 2024 SuperDraft, signed MLSNP contracts, and were promoted to their respective first teams later in the year. For this analysis, all such players were labeled second-team signings, rather than SuperDraft picks.
In addition to reinforcing the rise of Homegrowns, the data supports the conventional wisdom that clubs are more likely to use supplemental roster slots on players positioned lower on the field. Of the 211 supplemental roster members who logged at least one minute in 2024, 100 were either goalkeepers (20) or defenders (44 fullbacks and 36 center backs). Collectively, those positions accounted for 55.42% of supplemental roster minutes, compared to 23.81% for forwards and 20.77% for midfielders.
Also, in case you needed further confirmation that MLS remains the league of the 10: attacking midfielders accounted for just 2.86% of all supplemental roster minutes — the lowest share of any position on the field. As clubs continue to invest heavily in that role, it remains difficult for young, domestic 10s to break through.5
An alternative approach
While analyzing minutes helps us understand supplemental roster composition, it’s an imperfect lens for determining value. For one (as alluded to above), the lower half of a club’s roster is quite fluid, making it difficult to determine who occupies which slot at a given time, even with the league’s semi-annual roster profile releases. For another, it’s probably not a great sign if a club’s supplemental roster is accounting for too large a share of its minutes, as that (with exceptions, of course) could suggest its senior roster isn’t pulling its weight.
Thus, inspired by a mentor, I used information from sections 10.5 and 10.6 of the CBA to calculate an alternative measure of supplemental roster value. The basic framework is as follows:
Players earning a base salary less than $35,000 above the senior minimum are eligible for a gameday bonus, depending on whether they 1) start the game, 2) appear as a substitute, or 3) make the bench but don’t feature. As outlined above, the 2024 Senior Minimum Salary was $89,716, meaning any player earning under $124,716 qualified for the highest achievable bonus each gameday.
Bonus amounts vary based on salary:
Reserve Minimum Player Bonuses are available until a player’s earnings (base salary plus those bonuses) reach the Senior Minimum Salary threshold. Once they hit that number — without exceeding it — they became eligible for Senior Minimum Player Bonuses.
These Senior Minimum Player Bonuses are achievable until a player’s base salary plus bonuses are equal to $35,000 above the Senior Minimum Salary in a given year. Additionally, a club’s aggregate amount of Senior Minimum Player Bonuses counts against its salary budget the following season, irrespective of whether the players who achieved those bonuses remain on the roster.
Now, while the CBA does not explicitly state as much, it’s reasonable to assume that these bonuses are accrued chronologically. For example, if a reserve minimum player comes off the bench in Week 1, starts in Week 2, and remains on the bench in Week 3, his bonuses would be calculated as $750 + $1,500 + $250, respectively. That sequencing is relevant for the 18 reserve players whose bonuses exceeded the senior minimum in 2024.
To save myself the headache, I simplified the process by finding the fewest number of appearances needed to reach the $89,716 threshold and applying senior minimum bonuses to any appearances beyond that.
Let’s use Charlotte FC’s Andrew Privett, who earned the most bonuses in 2024, as an example:
His base salary was $71,401 — the reserve minimum.
Across the regular season and playoffs, he started 33 games, made no substitute appearances, and was included on the gameday roster 4 times.
Thus, his quickest path to the senior minimum threshold: 12 starts × $1,500 = $18,000, plus 1 roster appearance × $250 = $250. Adding that to his base salary brings his earnings to $89,651 — just below the $89,716 threshold.
Applying the senior minimum bonus rates to his remaining 21 starts and 3 roster appearances nets him an additional $22,500.
Altogether, I estimate Privett earned roughly $40,750 in bonuses, bringing his 2024 compensation to $112,151 (plus any individually-negotiated bonuses).
A couple of other notes on scope:
To maintain consistency, I did not factor in senior roster members who earned less than $124,716, since they were not included in my original dataset. Thus, consider the numbers below “supplemental roster bonuses.”
I did not filter out appearances made on short-term agreements, as doing so would’ve made an already time-intensive process even more unwieldy. That Abraham Romero’s MLSsoccer.com bio is now one of my most frequently visited pages says it all.
With that in mind, I present the findings:
Once again, we see familiar names at both ends of the chart. Seattle, Minnesota, and St. Louis CITY SC ranked among the top five in bonuses owed and minutes played — indicating not just depth, but meaningful roster usage. On the other end, the Chicago Fire, New York City FC, the Houston Dynamo, and LAFC appeared in the bottom five in both metrics.
Also near the bottom of both charts sit Austin FC and the Portland Timbers — the two clubs who, as the graphic shows, gave no starts, substitute appearances, or gameday roster spots to a reserve minimum player. What’s more, neither club made any in-season additions to their supplemental roster, despite having between four and five open slots available.
Looking for clubs that have failed to exploit the domestic player pool? There you go.
For clubs like Montréal (6th in supplemental roster minutes, 21st in bonuses) and the New England Revolution (8th in minutes, 20th in bonuses), the discrepancies can largely be attributed to contributors whose base pay exceeded the $124,716 threshold. Take Aljaž Ivačič, for example — he led New England with 2,512 supplemental roster minutes but received a base salary of $385,000 in 2024. However, since he was picked up on waivers, the Revolution were responsible for just part of that (with Portland, his former club, on the hook for the rest), allowing them to fit him onto the supplemental roster.
Plotting supplemental roster minutes against bonuses owed helps visualize this dynamic more clearly:
With an R-squared value of 0.57, we can observe a moderate relationship between the two measures of supplemental roster value. As alluded to above, clubs below the regression line paid fewer bonuses relative to the minutes their supplemental roster contributed, while clubs above it paid more relative to the contributions they received.
Inter Miami exemplifies the latter, as their supplemental roster (with the exception of Yannick Bright) primarily served as depth rather than producing consistent, week-in, week-out starters.
Ultimately, that’s a perfectly valid use of a supplemental roster. In fact, every club in the upper-right quadrant — particularly Miami, Seattle, Minnesota, St. Louis, D.C., Toronto FC, and FC Cincinnati — got significant value out of slots 21–30 in 2024.
And while that doesn’t directly equate to on-field success (as there was no correlation between supplemental roster “value” and points per game), it establishes a foundation for long-term sustainability.
In a league like MLS, that’s half the battle.
These values were based on the league’s September roster profiles and calculated using data from FBref.
In February, Cincinnati loaned Joey Akpunonu to the USLC’s Hartford Athletic but recalled him for a loan to Huntsville City of MLSNP in the summer. Minnesota’s Morris Duggan followed the opposite path, beginning the year with MNUFC2 of MLSNP before joining Rhode Island FC of the USLC in August.
It’s not for a lack of talent, though. The U15s I saw at MLS NEXT Flex last spring were among the best in the country. I walked away particularly impressed with Jakob Garcia, a 2009-born winger with an excellent change of pace. He’s electric over those first five yards, consistently baiting defenders in before bursting by them. When combined with his dangerous left foot, powerful shot, and sharp final-third combination play, he’s one to watch (though some folks in the youth space have concerns about his attitude).
In the more immediate term, 20-year-old Homegrown Alex Freeman has started six of Orlando’s seven league games this season and looked solid throughout.
These numbers include Homegrowns and draftees acquired from other clubs.
Outstanding article. No need to elaborate. Just some excellent analysis.