Cap'n Piranha

They get Ohtani back as a pitcher next year--assuming he doesn't aggravate his injury, and also assuming that he recovers fully from his injury. Jo Adell could be great, or he could be Byron Buxton 2.0, but not as good defensively. It's just optimism to suggest that those 2 players alone will move the needle--maybe they will, but it's quite plausible they won't. When it comes to the postseason, I tend to take the view that if you're not at least close to the Red Sox, Yankees, and Astros, what's the point. If the Angels are behind the Astros but make the playoffs, they play in the play-in game against probably the Red Sox or Yankees, then have to play either the Astros or the other East team, and then probably the third one in the ALCS. Until the Angels can win their division, its exceedingly likely their path to the World Series requires beating all three of the Astros, Red Sox, and Yankees. What are the odds of doing that, even if you're a 90 win team? That's why I think an 85 win projection is of no value--it clearly speaks to a chasm between you and the top teams, and mid-season improvement would probably require surrendering the farm assets the Angels have to rely on to improve anyways.

Completely agree. RBI's and runs are quite situation dependent. Mike Trout batting in a lineup that consists of him and 8 me's will have 0 runs and 0 RBI's. Give me a stat like PA's-IBB's with men on/(men on first+(men on second*2)+(men on third*3), and we're talking.

Those are much different, but only if the 80 win projection isn't your ceiling for the next 3 years. As I think the Angels likely best-case scenario over the next 3 years is 85 wins (balanced by a likely worst-case scenario of 75 wins). Keeping the guy who keeps you mediocre instead of bad serves little purpose.

That's fair, but as you said, it's hard to get elite prospects. So the question really is, is it more likely to be able to pry away an elite prospect, or get 3-4 guys who end up being above average? Upton's contract is an albatross--to the Angels. My entire point in something like 20 posts has been contextual; insofar as albatross contracts to Pujols and Upton are restricting the Angels from surrounding Mike Trout with competent supporting players, signing Mike Trout now is, to me, a questionable decision--in essence, what's the point of renewing the lease on your lamborghini if you struggle to afford gas? Upton's 2.5 WAR would have great value to 3-5 NL teams who have win projections ranging from 81 to 85 and playoff odds from 14% to 48%. If the Angels cover a large remainder of his salary (which if they're rebuilding they certainly could), they might be able to net a nice return. And while trading Trout puts the Angels at a weaker position initially, that disappears immediately as soon as multiple teams get involved on Simmons or Ohtani (although why trade Ohtani? He's young and cheap for the next 4-6 years). If the Angels can find a home for Upton's 2.5 WAR, they could certainly do so for Simmons' 4 WAR, probably to any/all of the teams who didn't get Upton.

I'm not saying this isn't the practice, it just seems counter-intuitive to me. It's hard to start a bidding war, which should be every seller's goal, if no one knows they're fighting one.

By definition, and albatross contract is a bad contract. If it's not a bad contract, it's not an albatross. After all, Trout's previous contract was much bigger than Upton's but he performed up to it, therefore making it not an albatross. And Upton's 2.5 WAR is not incremental--if the 82 projection came before he was added, than it is valuable, but when your projection is 82 with the 2.5 WAR, what good is it? Again, is there really a difference between 82 and 80 wins? I can certainly respect your belief that Trout in 2022 is better than prospects +$36M--baseball has many ways to build a roster, which is part of why it's interesting. I simply happen to think $108M and 3 years stuck in neutral for what will likely be a declining player is not worth the unique opportunity the Angels have to leverage the best player in baseball who can't help them win in the playoffs (through no fault of his own) now for a better future.

I agree that past results aren't a guarantee of future ones, but in this case, what exactly have the Angels done to make themselves better? They took flyers on declining players hoping for bouncebacks, and are crossing their fingers that an average to slightly above-average farm system can provide immediate and spectacular results. Their win projection is 82 on fangraphs--seems like expecting them to, once again, be right around .500 is a quite reasonable position. In terms of prospect return, while I'm sure getting a frontline player is an objective for many teams, getting a trio or quartet of above average regulars might actually be better, particularly if it allows you to trade away a Simmons or even an Upton for additional prospects. Trout is absolutely three exclamation points, but for the next three years, those exclamation points are probably going to be at the end of a sentence like "the Angels are aggressively mediocre". Is "the Angels are aggressively mediocre!!!" really any different?

So what you're saying here is that when all the offers are in, an agent won't go back to every team who submitted a bid that isn't the best one, and inform of that fact? If I as a player learned that was true, I would fire my agent on the spot. Most teams have at least a couple of players that they would be happy to cut/leave in AAA to start a season if they truly wanted a player back. For example, the Astros have AJ Reed on their roster. He has 131 career AB's which have produced a .498 OPS, and still has an option. Do you really think in a year where the Astros are all in to win the World Series, they're keeping Reed rostered because they didn't want to match 2/21?

But if the wins don't make any difference, than why allocate any resources on them at all? The Sox, Royals and Tigers aren't spending because going from 70 to 75 wins is meaningless. The Angels are in the same boat, they just don't realize it. What does it matter if they win 80 games or 71 games? That's the whole damn point I've been trying to make. The Angels, as currently constructed, cannot realistically compete. The Angels, barring phenomenal luck with minor leaguers, cannot meaningfully alter their current construction. They are wasting what are probable the three best years Mike Trout has left, and there's not a whole lot they can do about it, UNLESS they are willing to blow past established payroll thresholds in a major way. And if they were willing to do that, why weren't they trying to sign Machado or Harper? Everything indicates the Angels plan is to hope their farm system provides 15 WAR a year for the next 3 years, otherwise they will be an also-ran. Therefore, isn't it logical to consider the possibility that it might be better to give up 9 WAR that likely does you no good now, in order to hopefully get 8-16 WAR 3 years from now, when it might do you good? After all, if the new regime is so good at evaluating prospects, surely they'll be able to identify the right ones in a return. I also never said the luxury tax, or time, or any of a million other things can't affect the market. But that doesn't change the fact that when a player signs in free agency, he is taking the best offer, and most times, the best offer is the one that pays him either the most money per year, or the most money overall. I'm not sure what is so confusing about this, unless you somehow think that Marwin had an offer for more AAV or more total that he turned down to sign for 2/21. Just because a player's demands come down, doesn't mean you're no longer not paying more than everyone else, it simply means the player overvalued himself, and was forced to change. If he has to come down too far, like if Marwin signed for 2 years and 2 million, then it could be a good deal, but players that would sign that deal are nowhere near the level of Marwin Gonzalez; if they were, they wouldn't sign that deal.

I didn't say Upton was an albatross, I said his contract was. Although that being said, his 5.2 2 years ago was far and away his best year since 2011, and indeed, 3 of 4 fangraphs projection peg him at no better than 2.5 WAR this year. That does make him a burden at the price you have to pay for him. What you call absolutes, I call reality. A 1 in 5 chance is hardly something to be excited about when it comes to just making the postseason, particularly when 80% of that comes from winning a wild card. If we re-define making the playoffs as getting to play in a series, the Angels odds are actually more like 12%. Their odds to win the World Series are 0.6%. And in terms of winning a wild card, they are actually 5th in the AL pecking order, behind the Red Sox, Rays, A's, and Twins. They'd have to pass 3 of those teams, and their likely reward is one game on the east coast against Severino or Sale. And sure, the Astros could have bad luck, and the Angels could have good luck. But it's just as possible Cody Allen's 2018 is his new normal, Matt Harvey cannot return to 2015 form, Justin Upton drops to 1.5 WAR, and Mike Trout tears an ACL in May. Any team whose strategy is "hopefully the declining cast-offs and unproven rookies are enough to complement Mike Trout, fingers crossed" is not seriously ready to compete. The Angels could outperform their expectation by 5 games, have the Astros underperform theirs by 5 games, and they would still finish 5 games back. Again, this isn't about Mike Trout being worth his contract, it's about the utility of that contract in the Angels' current situation, and if a team can't win, then what is the point in keeping that team together. The Angels are betting everything on their farm system making up 8-10 wins, and then in 2022, being able to replace Pujols and Upton. But by the way, both Simmons and Ohtani will need new contracts by then, so even in 2022, they might not have quite as much ammo available as it would seem. By definition, no prospect package is worth the present-day value of a player, otherwise the prospects would never be traded. It's simply my opinion that the Angels' house is built on a severely cracked foundation, which is unlikely to be repairable until 2022, if it even is then. So perhaps the better course of action is to do everything you can to just tear down now, and see if you can build it back better.

There are certainly degrees to it, to be sure, but every free agent deal is a "bad deal" in the sense that it is an inefficient allocation of resources. The Twins signing Dallas Keuchel is a less bad deal than the Indians or Royals, sure, but that doesn't make it good. For example,saying the 22% interest rate on your credit card is a good deal because the other cards have 30% rates is a silly statement. The 22% is bad, just not as bad. Luxury tax only makes what is already a bad deal worse, it does not make bad deals that don't have luxury tax better. Again, it's like if those cards with 30% rates added a $100/month penalty; your 22% rate is not suddenly good, it's just more "less bad" than the alternative I would imagine when it comes to offers for free agents, while it's not transparent to the general public, the player's agents ensure it's quite transparent to the teams involved. Do you really think every team bidding on a player isn't made acutely aware of the current best offer? In that system, by definition, the team signing the player has made the best offer, and excluding personal choices like a desire to play in a certain place being primary, the best offer is the one that offers the best ratio of money to years. Finally, the Trout contract is an impediment to winning in the sense that I've laid out. It requires the Angels to keep, absent minor league graduations, the same team they've had for the past 4 years (which has averaged 80 wins for those 4 years), for the next 3 years. The cost is that the Angels have essentially decided to rebuild, but are waiting 3 years to hire a contractor, and opting against using their best chip (a trade of Trout) to move the process along. The Braves have 5 prospects in the top 40, and another 3 in the top 100. Don't you think they'd be open to giving up 3-5 of them to turn their 90 win team into a 96-100 win team?

I am in agreement that rostering Mike Trout is among the 2-3 best things you can do to increase your team's chances of winning right now...in a vacuum. The Angels are not in a vacuum. They are an entire standard deviation in quality below the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Astros. And that's with Mike Trout already on their roster. The past 4 years have seen them win 85, 74, 80, and 80 games. In order to actually win, the Angels need a 10 to 15 win surge. They can't get this from their current farm system in all likelihood, and they can't obtain it from the FA market, due mostly to the Pujols/Upton twin albatross contracts. So, if you can't get better through free agency for the next 3 years, and your farm system isn't yet ready to provide multiple cheap, all-star caliber players over the next 3 years, what you're essentially doing is tap-dancing for the next 3 years, until the 2022 season. Trout turns 31 that season, which is likely the end of his prime. So in my mind, the Angels have decided to tread water for 3 years, and then start competing as Trout begins his decline. The alternative to that is to get a King's ransom for Trout, and hopefully have a passel of young, cheap talented players in 2022 that you can supplement as needed in free agency with your extremely clean books. Unless the Angels are going to break the bank for more help for Trout now, I just don't see the point of following the path they've chosen.

I disagree with this assessment. If indeed, the players are getting such a raw deal, why do they continue to participate? Why not go find 30 other billionaires who will agree to finance them, and in return for getting to acquire an entity worth at worst hundreds of millions of dollars for nothing, agree to a 60/40 split in revenue in the players favor? Seriously, why wouldn't that happen if the current system is so unabashedly unfair to the players? Your take that its awful for the owners to reap enormous benefits while the players get left out in the cold ignores the fact that the owners assume 100% of the risk in the operation of the business. The players do not contribute any money towards the financing of coaches, facilities, marketing, travel, or anything else required to operate a 21st century Major League Baseball Franchise. No risk, no reward.

According to reports, it's for 6 years, $100M. It covers all his arbitration years, as well as the first two years of free agency. Really good deal for the Astros, and for Bregman, who goes from making 600k to multiple millions this year.

In 2006, the Twins had an incredible nucleus; the best pitcher of his generation, a catcher who seemed destined for Coopertown, and an MVP-caliber masher. Two years later, the pitcher was gone, two years after that an injury derailed the masher's career, and the next year after that, injuries turned the catcher into a shadow of himself. Those 3 players together made one postseason, and won zero games.

This. So much this. Free Agency is a laughably inefficient way to obtain wins. If one win above replacement is worth $10M on the open market, and we assume a team comprised of exclusively replacement level players wins 60 games, then to get to .500 you would need to spend $210M on the free agent market. To even get to 90 wins its $300M. By definition, any deal signed in free agency is a bad deal, as you are paying more than anyone else is willing to spend.

And the owners pay the players. If the owners are so unnecessary, why haven't the players broken off and formed their own league, wherein they can keep 100% of the profits for themselves?

They're not spending on the team, or in another fashion, they're spending on the team the same way the Twins are, which is to say they're at best treading water. According to Spotrac, the Angels 2018 payroll was $173M, for 2019 its $168M. The contracts for Harvey, Cahill, and Allen are only about $4M more this year than they paid in dead money last year to guys such as Kinsler and Valbuena. The Angels have NOT increased their spending. It seems like your assertion, based on the passel of unestablished players you listed, is that the Angels are not spending because they're going to just let their farm system fill the gaps. That's a fine enough strategy, but if the assertion is that Trout's mega-deal won't restrict spending, the question remains, why aren't they spending? Is it really because they're going to put all their eggs into the "let's hope these unproven kids all end up working out" basket? I also have to ask where you're getting the payroll numbers you provided for the Twins. How exactly did the Twins increase payroll by $15M during the season, especially considering they didn't pay the last 2 months' salaries of Escobar, Dozier, Duke, Pressly, and Rodney?

1. The current deal was agreed to in 2011. There is no new local TV money kicking in. 2. They've cleared some crappy deals, but have not created payroll space. It's great and all that they're not paying Josh Hamilton anymore, but their payroll isn't significantly lower, and they're not significantly better, so what does that matter? 3.If the money is there, why hasn't he used it yet? To return to my question, when you have what is near-universally believed to be the best player in baseball, in his prime, for relatively cheap, why wouldn't you go above luxury tax thresholds then? 4. I went off opening day payrolls from spotrac. If the owner really wanted to compete, and was ok spending money to do it, don't you think he would spend in the offseason, not wait until halfway through the year?

The Angels have never been above $175M. if they wouldn't push to $200M in the heart of Trout's prime, why would they do it now, as we move to the end of it? $36M would not be unmanageable on the Twins, but mostly because they don't have $50M a year tied up in Pujols and Upton for the next three years. If they did, I guarantee you it would be extremely unmanageable.

I think a lot of teams would rather have Jose Ramirez at $19M or Christian Yelich at $36M over the next three years than Mike Trout at $108M. You could sign an extremely useful player for 3/24 or 3/30 that would easily make up the difference between the (fairly small) difference in WAR. You also aren't on the hook to pay Trout $144M AFTER he turns 35, and will most likely be worth only a fraction of that. In history, Chipper Jones is 10th all time in OPS+ after age 35 at 139. If Trout equals that, he would not be a top 10 hitter in the league (based on last year).

MLB has them at 14th. And when you system is ranked 30th in 2016 and 29th in 2017, it's hard not to get better. Maybe their GM has turned around their drafting, maybe he hasn't--two years seems a bit soon to tell. I believe they'll have the same team because they have to pay $85M a year for the next 3 years for three players; they don't have the ability to upgrade their team without having to rely on players on rookie deals or blowing past their historical payroll limits--if they're willing to do that my entire argument is moot, but I assume Arte Moreno isn't going to ok $225M to $250M payrolls. Prove me wrong Arte. As for who they would get instead of Trout, you're absolutely right, the Angels in all likelihood would not get equivalent WAR back. Or maybe they would get the next Jose Ramirez who, 3 years before posting a 4.7 WAR season in the bigs had an 88 wRC+ season in AA. But to a larger degree, my point is that if you can't win a World Series with your team as currently constructed, why stand pat? The Angels, based on the past 2-3 years seem to have hit their ceiling, and due to massive salary constraints, seem unlikely to be able to break through it. Therefore, what they are essentially doing with this deal is deciding to hope that 32 year old Mike Trout will remain a premier player when the balance sheet finally becomes manageable. Based on the list of comps I provided earlier, maybe he will, maybe he won't. After all, when Griffey Jr. was 26 (Trout's current age) he put up a 9.7 WAR. But he only had two more seasons in him of 6+ WAR production, and by the time he was 33, only had two more season of positive WAR in him (one of which was 0.1).

Wait, MLB didn't adopt video game rules for roster management? Thanks for the update, I had no idea. It's not about the value of a player only on the field, it's about the value of the player in totality. You can assert that Trout is better on the field than Betts/Ramirez/Yelich, and I won't spend much time arguing with you. But there is no team in baseball except maybe the Angels that wouldn't prefer to acquire Betts/Ramirez/Yelich rather than Trout. Finally, as I said, I'm not that interested in how historically great of a player Trout is right now. What does that matter if the cost of employing him contributes to an inability to create a team capable of reaching and winning in the postseason? I'm sure it will be nice when Trout goes into Cooperstown with an Angel hat on, but if the cost of that is 0 World Series titles, is that a price the Angels should be willing to pay?

I'm going to guess Betts will not get the same as Trout when he signs again, although it will be close. At which point, his contract will become an impediment to winning (although Boston is one of about 3 teams that realistically has almost no financial impediment to winning). I think the larger point I was attempting to make is being missed; it's not that Trout is not worth this contract (implying someone else is). It's that no one is worth this contract (for the Angels). It's also about the holistic state of the entire Angels organization. Having $50M worth of useless players hanging around your neck has to be taken into account. Having a farm system that is middle of the pack, and probably not able to provide cheap, quality options is a problem. Going into this year, a Trout deal would have made a lot of sense for the Twins; plenty of salary space available even after a mega-deal, and a deep system with top-end talent to fill gaps either through trades or playing. Ignoring the fact that the Angels, with this deal, have essentially committed to having the same roster as last year for the next 3-4 years, other than rookies, misses the reality of the situation. The Angels, hamstrung by bad deals, will not win in the next 3 years. A better use of resources would be to blow it up now, and be ready to compete in 3 years with a clean balance sheet, rather than win 240 games over the next 3 years, and have nothing to show for it.

I thin that in 2019, 2020, and 2021 the Angels will have to pay around $85M to three players--Pujols, Upton, and Trout. The Angels have been hovering around $170M in payroll, which means for the next three years they can only pay about 3.9M per player for the rest of the team, which is under the MLB average for 2018. Their farm system is improved, but still not great, with only two in the top 100 (according to MLB.com). I think the lesson is that when you sign multiple players to enormous deals, it becomes extremely difficult to sign anything but mediocre to bad players to fill out your roster. Combine that with poor drafting/development, and you are likely to get what the Angels have been--a decent team that will need all the stars to align simply to compete in the playoffs, with little to no margin for error. Let me put it another way--while almost everyone would agree Trout is the best player in MLB, would you rather pay Trout $36M, or have any of the below players; Betts (better WAR than Trout last year)--$10.5M Ramirez (less than 2 WAR below Trout)--$19M for the next THREE years, PLUS two option years Yelich (3/4 of Trout's WAR last year)--$36.3M for the next three years, plus an option year I'd argue any of those three would be superior options to Trout, at least until 2022 when the Pujols contract can be shed, or certainly 2023 when Upton is gone. But Trout is 31 and 32 in those years; what will his production look like then? Pujols was a 3 WAR player in his age 32 season, Cabrera was 4.6. Here's the list of his career comps according to baseball reference, and what they did in their age 32 season; Frank Robinson--5.7 WAR Griffey Jr--0.2 WAR Mantle--5.5 WAR Aaron--6.9 WAR Cabrera--4.6 WAR Cepeda--4.4 WAR Ott--4.7 WAR Mathews--4.2 WAR Andruw Jones--0.6 WAR Pujols--3.3 WAR To summarize; the Angels are paying Trout to be the best player in the game. Historically speaking, within 4 years, Trout will likely not be the best player in the game, and those happen to be the 4 years where the Angels are least able to take advantage of Trout's abilities. If the Angel's goal is to employ perhaps the greatest player of all time when its said and done, this was a good deal. If their goal is to win a world series, this deal is a massive impediment.