Minutes for Saborio and Jaime vital in playoff run-up

Real Salt Lake may be behind in the Supporters Shield race — or not really even in the running now at all — but despite that, there's a clear chance to have a season that's quite nearly their best.

If we win out, which is distinctly possible with only six games remaining, we'd actually end with our all-time best points-per-game metric — 1.88. We can contrast that with our very strong 2010 season, in which ended with 1.86 points per game over only 30 games.

That's just to say there's a chance, but we all know that winning out's not going to be easy. Regardless, we have a chance to make it very difficult for us to miss the playoffs with a win, so there's at least something definite we can take away from that. (Of course, we're rated at a 99.9 percent change of making the playoffs by Sports Club Stats so it's not as if we're finding things particularly difficult.

There are a few keys to that effort: Getting Alvaro Saborio up and running is probably the biggest one. He's a fantastic player and key to our system working well.

But alongside that effort, we need to find a way to get Sebastian Jaime regular minutes if we're to play him at all moving forward. Obviously last week was a wash — the club did the right thing by giving him time off to be with the twins he and his partner had last week. That we do that is significant, but it's probably also something you'd see at other clubs across the world that do right by their players.

It's hard to know what the right path will be to reach both of those goals. Jaime needs minutes to gel with the team, Saborio needs time to reach full fitness. I don't know that there's any mutual exclusivity there.

If Saborio is ready to start tonight, I'd start him. He needs us to exercise patience in regard to his fitness, though, as there's more than just this game with which to concern ourselves. There's a whole set of playoff games, supposing we do, indeed, reach that 99.9 percent probability.

If Jaime is ready to start tonight, too, I'd think he's got to be in the discussion. Behind Saborio, maybe, if he's ready — but there's no better way to get a player minutes than to play him, isn't there?