Sweeney: My 2019 Revolution Defender of the Year vote goes to...

Thanks to the compressed regular-season schedule in Major League Soccer this year — we can thank the new playoff format for that, which actually is not a bad thing — we in the Boston Soccer Press Corps are voting for our second Defender of the Year in a little less than 11 months. Last year, media voting started in late September and ended just after 5 p.m. on Oct. 14.

This year, ballots went out this past Monday, and voting was open until 11 p.m. Saturday night. As soon as I received the email, I submitted my vote. And in true BostonSportsJournal.com fashion — in the interest of full disclosure and transparency — I’m going to tell you who I voted for in just a couple of minutes.

But first, a couple of observations about this year’s balloting:

Last year, my first year of eligibility in voting, there were certain conditions which had to be met for player eligibility. Conditions for selection are that the player must be a defender in the Revs’ back line, and that they must have played 50 percent of the Revolution’s matches up until the Sept. 29, 2018 debacle in Toronto. Media members could vote for two: a first-place pick, and a second-place pick. You will also recall that I abstained from voting, given the summer swoon. And even though RevComm had asked me at the Training Center Groundbreaking after the voting deadline had passed if I wanted to reconsider my abstention, I could not, in good faith, vote for any Revolution defender.

This year, I was surprised to see that there were no conditions placed upon the vote re: playing time. Every defender in the Revs’ back line this year was listed as eligible. And we could only vote for one player.

No problems there.

Then I went and looked at the most recent set of game notes, which the club sends out on Thursday afternoon (this weekend’s notes came while the team I coach was throttling its opponent). I checked out every defender’s matches played, and added one for those who played last weekend.

Brandon Bye: 26 matches
Antonio Delamea: 14 matches
Jalil Anibaba: 19 matches
DeJuan Jones: 19 matches
Michael Mancienne: 14 matches
Edgar Castillo: 20 matches
Andrew Farrell: 25 matches

If we went with last year’s rules — which I will admit I fully expected when I prepped for the vote — two players, through 30 matches, would not be on the ballot: those two would be Antonio Delamea and Michael Mancienne. Both sustained injuries in the first half of the season, which limited their availability through the climb back into playoff contention from the Eastern Conference basement. 50 percent of 30 is 15, and they missed the cut-off by a game. Before receiving the ballot, and knowing of last year’s 50 percent rule, I had mentally crossed them off my list; that would leave Farrell, Castillo, Jones, Anibaba, and Bye.

And even without last year’s rule in play, sure, Delamea helping the team score a couple of goals was fantastic — but the award is for defense. And while Toni is always a reliable player when out there, I don’t think he did enough to help in the back.

I couldn’t vote for Castillo or Bye; voting for Castillo would lessen my influence in the eyes of the Revolution faithful. To be fair to Edgar, though, he is a left winger playing in the back line. However, he ball-watches too much, is a liability in the corner — how many times did teams attack the left side with him in there? — and will trot instead of finish off plays in the defending third. As for Bye, there was too much sloppy play out of him, too.

That left three candidates for me: Jones, Anibaba, and Farrell.

The way that Jalil Anibaba played in an emergency starter’s role back on Mar. 3 against FC Dallas, when Mancienne pulled up with a sore back in pre-match activation, was the thing of legend. But while he gave steady play after that, there wasn’t anything that screamed Defender of the Year to me.

And while Jones played incredibly well in his rookie season — we will all remember that dead sprint in Montreal! — he recovered nicely when he had to and defended well… but again, there wasn’t anything that screamed Defender of the Year to me.

And so my 2019 Defender of the Year vote went to last year’s winner, Andrew Farrell.

I know that some will criticize my vote due to the costly penalty a couple of weeks ago against New York City, but outside of that, come on — Farrell’s move to center back, where he should be, helped to stabilize the back line during the Revolution’s surge this year. He made play after play — do you remember the way he cleared Carlos Vela off the line nearly two months ago? Clearing balls to keep Matt Turner safe in the home game against Orlando City? — and was a force in the back.

Last year, even though we didn’t vote for him, we noticed a maturity on his part when he took the captain's armband. And at the end of a preseason feature back in January, I wrote, "If the 2019 Revs can get the armband-wearing Farrell, things will look up on the soccer side of Patriot Place."

In 2019, he took that maturity — again, outside of that brain fart in the Bronx — to another level, and the club is still in the hunt for a playoff spot.

Oh, and he had a shortened season: remember that he tore a retina in preseason, before the trip to Florida.

The winner will be announced before the Revolution’s final home match next Sunday evening against New York City FC.