Author’s Note: Angelswin.com would like to welcome all of the new people who have joined the site! New blood and fresh faces, opinions, and commenters make this Angel fan community stronger, thank you for joining and please feel free to participate in the conversations, as well! Also, for the remainder of this Trade Deadline series we will utilize FanGraphs.com, a premier data-driven baseball website for all of our projected and factual information. Any additional, outlying information used will be credited appropriately to the correct source as needed.

Every year, each team in baseball is faced with an important decision heading into the Trade Deadline: Should the team buy or sell?

This decision is typically based on a variety of factors, of which the most important one is the team’s standing in their Division and in the Wild Card hunt. Each General Manager (GM) must balance the odds of winning the rest of the season, based on strength of schedule, team depth, finances, available players and prospects actually available in the marketplace, and a host of other considerations, based on the information available to them at any given moment. Not an easy job and for Angels GM Perry Minasian, in the era of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, it will be an even more difficult decision leading into the last week of July.

So, in order to determine the Angels posture heading into the Trade Deadline (July 30th this year!), we first need to understand what their playoff odds are and, based on that number, what recommendation Perry will make to owner Arte Moreno and what tack they will take toward the remainder of the 2021 season.

FanGraphs has a great tool called ‘MLB Playoff Odds’, located here, that takes the Angels current record and projects their winning percentage (W%) the remainder of the season, based on projected team production and strength of schedule (fancy term for describing how many good and bad teams they will face), and combines those numbers to forecast the Halos final end-of-season record and provide a prediction of their playoff odds to make the postseason.

Below is a graphic showing the Division and Wild Card leaders, across MLB, plus the Angels, in relation to that group:

2021 FanGraphs MLB Playoff Odds for Division Leaders and Los Angeles Angels (as of July 10th, 2021)

The graphic, above, visually shows the challenge (16.2% of reaching the playoffs) our beloved Halos face the remainder of the season and infers to the difficult decisions facing Minasian and the Angels front office about whether to buy, sell, or a combination of both. To be clear, the Angels have a much greater chance of landing a Wild Card spot (13.6%) at this point, than winning the Division (2.6%), but anything is possible in baseball when you play every game.

Certainly any of those choices (buy, sell, or hybrid) could be on the table, here. Perry Minasian must weigh the odds of securing a playoff berth against the information available to him at this moment. Money, players and prospects that appear to be available in trade and interest and inquiries from other teams regarding the availability of Angels players, all must be weighed against the backdrop of improving now versus throwing in the towel on 2021, retooling for 2022 and beyond, or trying to compete the remainder of the season. It is complex to say the least.

For example, the Angels might see a fertile Trade Deadline and know there is a bona fide, ace-level starting pitcher with multiple years of control available that they believe they can acquire to push harder, now, and over succeeding seasons. It may, also, be possible that there are some good, but not great, opportunities and Perry and his team make a modest investment to make the Halos better, now, without sacrificing much of their future. Or maybe the trade market is bare and their opportunities to improve are scarce, so they execute a full selloff, themselves, of their tradable assets to reset for 2022. Or, alternatively, they could sell one or more pieces to interested parties for players and prospects, while simultaneously acquiring one or more pieces to improve the team, and use their depth at certain positions to backfill and reinforce the current squad, continuing to compete in 2021, but hedging their bets, to still win now, while continuing to progress forward.

Based on the Angels current playoff odds, owner Arte Moreno’s past history and expectations, and the fact that the Halos have a lot of one-year expiring contracts on their current roster, it appears that the Angels have the potential to be both buyers and sellers. Moreno has always had a competing attitude and penchant to spend reasonably, when needed, and despite the Angels being 9 games back in the Division, they are only 4.5 games back in the Wild Card. The current 16.2% playoff odds (both Division and Wild Card odds, combined) could embolden Minasian and Moreno to be more aggressive, now, assuming that number holds or improves over the next two weeks. If, however, their playoff odds fall below the 10% mark, they could lean all the way, fully, to the sell side, too. 

In the end the Angels front office has an infinitely better understanding of the Trade Deadline market and what is and is not possible. As fans, on the outside looking in, we simply do not have access to all of the information, including trade negotiations, a Major League team like the Halos do.

However, we, here at Angelswin.com, will attempt to divine the likely trade pieces and even speculate at destinations and possible arrivals. We will make educated guesses, based on the factual information that is available to us, and attempt to point to the likely suspects the Angels might trade away and for, as they approach the 2021 Trade Deadline.

Do you like the Angels chances of reaching the Playoffs? Comment and share your thoughts in the thread!

Up next - 2021 Angelswin.com Trade Deadline Series: Methodology and Analysis