NASN has confirmed that Michael Harrington, Sporting Kansas City’s back-up fullback, has been traded to Portland Timbers with an unnamed amount of allocation money moving the other way. The 26-year old (27 on January 24) has played nearly 150 times for Kansas City since arriving in MLS as the third overall draft pick in the 2007 SuperDraft. As a defender who can play both right and left back, Harrington could step into the starting role on the right, given the Kosuke Kimura trade to Red Bull New York.

At Sporting, Harrington made just 11 appearances in 2012, starting nine times as he fell behind Seth Sinovic (left) and Chance Myers (right) in Peter Vermes’ defensive preference. Yet the overall expectation is that Harrington is indeed good enough to start in MLS if not stuck behind two emerging talents in Kansas City. Harrington counted for $125,000 against the salary cap in 2012 and earned $151,833 in guaranteed compensation. That figure is nearly twice Kimura’s $71,466.