A statistical analysis of the Héber trade

If you were to go around and take a poll of every Seattle Sounders reply guy on Twitter, they would mostly tell you that the No. 1 need for the Seattle Sounders this offseason was some forward depth.

This is understandable. Raúl Ruidíaz is another year older and coming back from a campaign where he was sidelined a great deal. Seattle’s backup options were less than prolific during a crucial stage of the season that ultimately saw them fall short of a postseason berth for the first time in the franchise’s MLS history.

It doesn’t seem necessary to go through and diagnose every single thing that went wrong during 2022, but one of the notable things was that the Sounders were having a really…