Beating Vegas: The Los Angeles Angels

I'd take the under too. Thin rotation, thin bullpen, thin lineup, no farm. Poo-holes is 36. Stick a fork in Weaver and Wilson, they're done. Pretty easy to imagine things going south quick IMO.

It must be tempting to trade Trout at some point, right?

 

You could get 2 Mets starters and a couple minor leaguers, right? something like that? Maybe?

 

what would it take, if you were them, to deal him?

From Fangraphs 2015 trade value series:

 

 

#1: Mike Trout, OF, Anaheim
Controlled Through: 2020
Guaranteed Dollars: $134.25 million
2016 ZIPS WAR: +9.6
Five year ZIPS WAR: +47.0
Last Year: #1
What, you were expecting someone else? Most of us will probably never see another player this good at this age. We’ve gone from pulling out Mickey Mantle comparisons to having to admit that that might not be a fair comparison to Trout. ZIPS projects him for +47 WAR over the next five years; over that same time period, the system projects Paul Goldschmidt and Kris Bryant to be worth +46.9 WAR combined. Trout is literally as good — on the field, mind you, not taking contracts into account — as the 3rd and 4th place guys in this series put together.

But, you might say, he’s not that cheap anymore. The Angels gave him a $145 million extension last year, and because they’re the kings of backloaded contracts, 95% of the committed salary has not yet been paid. But think about what the market has been paying for wins of late, something in the range of $7 to $8 million per projected win on long-term deals. At that range, if you accept that Trout’s roughly a +9 WAR player going forward, Trout’s free agent price over the next five season should be something like $350 million. Yes, based on what’s teams are paying to acquire wins in free agency, Mike Trout’s overall production is worth something like $70 million per year, and if you really believe that teams will pay more to consolidate performance into a single player, you probably need to argue for something closer to $80 million per year.

I know it sounds crazy to suggest that any player is worth that that when the other stars of the game are getting roughly $30 million in AAV on their long-term extensions, but with all due respect to everyone else playing baseball right now, no one is even close to Mike Trout. Here are the ten highest five-year ZIPS forecasts for guys we’ve profiled in this series.

Trout

The next closest guy is +13 WAR behind Trout. +13 WAR over five years is a good big league ballplayer, probably in the range of what the Blue Jays were hoping to get from Russell Martin when they signed him as a free agent this winter for $82 million. And that’s the gap between Trout and #2, much less all the other guys who aren’t even at the Machado/Harper level.

No, Mike Trout isn’t cheap from a budgetary standpoint, but no player in the game brings a higher return on investment than Trout, even at $135 million over the next five years. He’s literally twice as good as any player you can buy in free agency, and there’s no reason to think he’s going to stop producing at a high level any time soon.

So, yeah, it’s Trout again. Sorry that there isn’t a lot of suspense on this one, but that lack of intrigue exists because we have the pleasure of watching one of the greatest players of all time. That’s a pretty good trade-off, I think.

So yeah, as a pure rebuild play, a fair trade for Trout would be the entire farm plus all the suplemental picks, international bonus pool, and maybe you're getting close.

Maybe they throw in Albert and pay for his entire contract to round it out.

I really hope the Angels tank now. 

Under

Over.