MLS All-Budget Team 2023: A starting XI of the league’s most high-value contracts

After a one-year hiatus, the MLS All-Budget XI is back. 

Each year when the MLS Players’ Association salary dump comes out, we run through the data and take a look at players who are far outperforming their salary numbers.

In past years, the cut-off for this exercise has been $200,000 – anyone listed as making more than that in “guaranteed compensation” wasn’t eligible. With salaries going up over the past two years, however, we bumped that limit to $260,000. In all, 413 players out of 869 qualified — or 47.5 percent. We also left off some players whose salary numbers hit below this threshold, but who came on a large transfer fee that actually increases their cost and cap figure. Portland’s Juan David Mosquera ($1.9 million fee) and Orlando City’s Cesar Araujo ($2 million fee) are good examples. There are also some players, like Columbus’s Aidan Morris, who have recently signed new deals that are not reflected in this salary release.

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There are other types of “budget” players, for sure. You could make a good argument that Jeremy Ebobisse, who scored 17 goals last year, is great value on a contract paying out less than $1 million. However, in MLS a DP only hits the cap at $651,250, so while Ebobisse is certainly saving ownership money, he’s not different on the cap from the strikers making several million dollars every year. For that reason, we’ve tried to focus in on players on very low salary numbers who provide value without eating up any budget space, which essentially frees up space elsewhere on the cap to spend on players. 

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Which MLS are underperforming their contracts? We pick a starting XI

Several players to feature in this list in past years have later gone on to hit a payday. That list