Preseason camp tends to be a distillation of an offseason of movement. Players come and go. Injuries are resolved (or not). Camp trialists raise eyebrows. It’s essentially the pull of the curtain on what a front office has been up to.
Fortunately and unfortunately for the Sounders, they didn’t have much an offseason to work.
The fortunate part is obvious. The Sounders had a short offseason because they won an MLS Cup in mid-December. But that also shortened the offseason significantly, forcing the team to move on the 2017 season quickly. Whether or not the Sounders even had anything planned for this offseason, a big splash was never all that likely with little more than a month between the end of 2016 and the start of 2017.