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In those tweets, he left some clues. He mentioned TAM — targeted allocation money, which teams can use to reduce players’ salaries that might otherwise make them designated players — and he mentioned his option year. He said three teams had tried to pick him up but the league said “no.”

It led to speculation that Ousted’s contract option would have put him over the designated-player threshold.

Turns out, we were right. His option year is over $600,000. Next year’s DP threshold will be a hair over $500,000. Yes, Ousted has landed in MLS contract purgatory.

If a team wanted to pick up the Danish keeper, they would have to sign him on his option-year salary, meaning they would also have to use a designated-player spot on him. It seems the three teams in question were willing to pick up his option, but then wanted to apply TAM to his contract so he would no longer be considered a designated player.

The problem lies in when TAM can be applied: It’s either used when the player is signed to a new contract, like the Whitecaps have done in the past with Yordy Reyna and Cristian Techera, or when the team is signing a new designated player and needs to clear a spot already being used. (Every team gets three DP spots.)

The L.A. Galaxy, for example, already have three DPs: the Dos Santos brothers and Romain Alessandrini. Since Ousted’s contract isn’t a new one — the option simply counts as a continuation of his current one — the first option wasn’t available.