Shalrie Watch Continues

By: Jeff | March 20th, 2007

(UPDATE: Not to trump what appears below, but my current wager (4th “real” paragraph in this post) as to where a footloose Shalrie Joseph might go just got a boost. I just read on the Toronto FC blog that the Canadian outfit picked up Brian Mulrooney from FC Dallas. That should clear up both cap space and a spot on the field.)

As we head into the second day of the Shalrie Joseph salary freak-out, some new details have come to light. The most significant of these appear in an Andrew Hush article for Soccer New England as it gets to the bonus equation that Joseph’s agent, Ron Waxman, alleges scuttled the deal (and this is Waxman talking here):

“Under my bonus package, Shalrie can make roughly another $55,000 in bonuses. To make that, he would have to start in 75% of games, be an all-star, be either the team MVP or the team defensive MVP, be selected all-league and he would have to start in ten games which the team wins. If he did all that, he would make $55,000 in bonuses. Who would look at that and say ‘wow, this guy really robbed us’.”

As I see it, Waxman is right and he’s wrong – though I didn’t quite get the “wrong” side of this till I read a point posted by REV-OKe on a BigSoccer message board:

“i have to say, the bounses that waxman wants, from the hush article seem to not really be incentives. shalrie has done all those things. the idea around incentives, is that he does some thing above and beyond. waxman is just padding his base with already achieved objectives. he’s getting the raise BECAUSE he is an allstar, plays in 75% of the games, the team wins 10 games etc. How a bout a bonus if he scores some goals. leads in assists. something he doesnt currently do, that will help the team.”

Decent point, actually (and it came out of this thread). Where am I? I think those “bonuses” – even if they’re not bonuses – are fair enough. It’s saying, pay me to do my job and, if I continue to perform to high expectations, pay me a bit more. The bonus system REV-OKe promotes does something a bit perverse: it asks a player who has peformed well for the team in a given role to take on a different role, to do different things that could very well render him less effective in that primary role. That’s not to say REV-OKe is formally proposing those specific goals – I assume he’s just using them by way of example; I’m merely arguing that crafting an incentive package for a d-mid can be a tricky business. How do you quantify the role of a player whose chief contributions are simultaneously highly visible, but also intangible?

In a related article, the Boston Globe’s Frank Dell’Appa makes a fair case as to why Joseph might be stuck playing with the Revs – yeah, that’ll work out swell.