Dipoto still churning the M's roster

[Angelsfan1984]

3 minutes ago, Blarg said:

Take a look at Eppler's record and tell me it is not the same. Last season the 40 man roster had 26 new faces from the previous season. 3rd base, shortstop and second base were repaced along with the perrenial left field position. The entire bench was replaced and this season we are seeing a lot of the same along with starting pitchers and an overhaul of the bullpen and minor league depth chart. 

Difference is, Eppler isn't trading away pieces at the same rate. He's very rarely touching the farm and when he does its either for a premium player (Simmons) or a nobody for another nobody. He's taking a shot on undervalued former top prospects who if 1 out of 5 pan out put us in a better position than if we just chanced prospects coming up from minors. I like what he has done. I'd question their ability to sign outright free agents more than I would his ability to make trades.

[Blarg]

The Angels were involved in 31 players being traded. Eppler's sold a few more for cash consideration. There has been a huge turnover on the Angels as well, you just don't think of how much the rotation , bullpen and bench has changed over the last year. They are not much more than 9 players from when Epller took over. 

[totdprods]

Eppler's added players to org as a whole almost 3:1 - it's not proportionate because almost all of the players who have been cut have come in the lowest levels.

The deeper I look, the more obvious that Eppler has basically been in a literal rebuild mode since Day One, it just doesn't fit the normal appearance of what fans believe to be a rebuild.

[ettin]

4 minutes ago, cezero said:

lots of work left to do to get the m's able to contend perennially, but dipoto's doing a fine job of shaping the MLB roster while also repairing a decimated farm.

i don't buy what fangraphs is saying quite yet, but what i'm seeing is an org that's going to be able to put together increasingly attractive trade packages to get what we need over the next 12 months. 

This was one aspect I loved about Dipoto in that he was active and seemed to be constantly communicating with teams and monitoring players he wanted and/or needed. He seems willing to go the extra mile such as the Mallex Smith acquisition to complete another trade. In that respect he gets things done which is more than what previous GMs did for the Angels and other teams.

[eligrba]

Eppler's activity seems to be incrementally improving the entire organization through trades, signings and drafts.  Dipoto's activity seemed to have been focused on some continuously moving "hole" on the major league roster.  So far, Eppler has exceeded Dipoto at having a better understanding of organizational needs, assessing and drafting young talent, being disciplined in signing free agents that improves the flexibility of the roster and managing organizational personalities.

I am more optimistic about the Angels future under Eppler than I ever was with Dipoto.  The Angels farm became a disaster from trades and poor drafts, and one could easily argue that the poor drafts had a greater impact then all of the trades.

[Docwaukee]

with Jerry's system, you have to draft well and sign international free agents to break even on replenishing the depth of your farm system.  

Jerry like to trade.  He has even said he prefers it because he get the player he thinks best fits the team instead of just making a FA work for them.  Some trades you win, some you lose, and some are pretty even.  But at the end of the day there is talent, depth and years of control going out the door.  

The talent obtained to fund the major league club when already established is typically a depreciating asset because you spending it on wins (or at least attempting to).  

Any way you look at it, the result is a general decrease in org currency over time.  

Eppler has done his fair share of the above as well.  Certainly not quite to the extend of Jerry, but the difference is that Eppler is trying to keep depth in the upper minors by his clean peanut approach.  Something he prides himself on.  We'll see if it works.  Eppler, though has been kind of forced to dedicate organizational resources on that approach due to the lack of upper minors talent because Jerry depleted the system without replenishing it via the draft or international signings.  

It will be interesting to see if the differences in org culture allow Jerry's approach to work more effectively than it did in Anaheim.  Frankly, payroll withstanding, the M's really should be devoting their resources to the major league club as Oz has mentioned.  Perhaps even more so than they have been.  

[eligrba]

The danger of over-committing to the major league club at the expense of the farm seems like a short-sided and impulsive approach.  Prospects represent organization wealth in the form of either potential replacement players or trade stock.

[Docwaukee]

4 minutes ago, eligrba said:

The danger of over-committing to the major league club at the expense of the farm seems like a short-sided and impulsive approach.  Prospects represent organization wealth in the form of either potential replacement players or trade stock.

it's not impulsive in this case.  It's purposeful short-sightedness.  They are not built to win 5 years from now.  The best shot they have in that time is over the next 2-3 years.  

[eligrba]

4 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

it's not impulsive in this case.  It's purposeful short-sightedness.  They are not built to win 5 years from now.  The best shot they have in that time is over the next 2-3 years.  

Shouldn't the GM advocate for a more comprehensive approach to maintain organizational stability?  No one can guarantee a World Series within a window of time, but a well constructed organization can improve the probability of being in the running over a sustained period of time.

[totdprods]

4 minutes ago, eligrba said:

Shouldn't the GM advocate for a more comprehensive approach to maintain organizational stability?  No one can guarantee a World Series within a window of time, but a well constructed organization can improve the probability of being in the running over a sustained period of time.

Not if he's there to maximize that 2-3 year window. His contract may only even be for 3 years (can't recall) so sometimes that's the clear and intentional goal for FO and ownership from the onset.

Which I think is fine. If that's their MO, good for them. It just seems like he could have made more of an impact with fewer moves.

[eligrba]

8 minutes ago, totdprods said:

Not if he's there to maximize that 2-3 year window. His contract may only even be for 3 years (can't recall) so sometimes that's the clear and intentional goal for FO and ownership from the onset.

Which I think is fine. If that's their MO, good for them. It just seems like he could have made more of an impact with fewer moves.

One could argue that is exactly what the Angels should be doing with Trout.

[totdprods]

3 minutes ago, eligrba said:

One could argue that is exactly what the Angels should be doing with Trout.

Except that opportunity wasn't really there when Eppler came on. Thanks to Jerry Dipoto.

We have no pieces to sell, no money to buy, or farm to barter with. Thanks to Jerry Dipoto (with an assist from Arte).

[eligrba]

Seattle Mariners have never been the same since Danny Kaye sold his share.

[Docwaukee]

7 minutes ago, cezero said:

that sounds great.  devoting resources to the major league club. wonderful.

but in reality, without a massive payroll boost, a win now approach would be stupid.  monumentally so.

right now, we don't have the pieces at any level to trade for what we'd need to contend this year, so the focus has to be on next year and beyond.  our farm is bad, and it wasn't going to be fixed in a year.  teams aren't going to give us things we need if all we have is dog shit to trade.  the only reason we've been able to get any decent trades this offseason is because of the work dipoto did with altering our 40 man last year. those trades yielded the only things of value we had to deal this winter. 

there's still a long way to go, but he's setting things up for the m's to be competitive in 2018 and beyond, and not just a 2-3 year window. it'll take another july and offseason to make this team anything approaching stable. 

if we happen to be competitive this year, then great, but i'll be disappointed if i don't see him making moves that are consistently directed at rebuilding a putrid organization. 1 year isn't enough. hopefully he has been able to convince the new owners of that, and they're all on the same page. we'll see. 

 

you've lost org currency at the expense of major league club improvements.  I was duped into believing that he was doing what you mentioned and maybe it will work for the m's but they sure as shit better draft well, because he's thinning your farm out big time.  It's subtle Cez.  It was for us too.  But then you way up and other teams have your mediocre club controlled players that were once depth in your farm and your best prospects are a #5 starter/swing at AAA, a couple of relievers, and a bunch of potential utility inf and 4th/5th ofers.  Lewis is a nice power/speed guy assuming he recovers fully.  Hope he trade him. 

But Jerry is getting bled on the exchange rate.  Losing club control in the Segura deal.  Adding back some depth with the Montgomery deal and then trading most of it for MLB depth.  Losing depth on the Smyly deal although I think the M's got the better end of that one.  

It's supposed to add up to an improved major league club and increased depth in the upper minors but 3 years from now, you're going to notice UNLESS he drafts well.  The single biggest problem with his approach was that he didn't draft well to make up the difference.  He didn't even draft mediocre.  It was just awful.  I don't know much about the M's recent draft, but if it's filled with high floor college players, then god speed.  

[Inside Pitch]

5 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

I don't know much about the M's recent draft, but if it's filled with high floor college players, then god speed.  

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/research.asp?Y1=2016&Y2=2016&R=&RS==&Ov=&Ovs==&T=26&Player=&School=&Pos=&HL=&Region=&P=June-Reg&CT=&Bonus=0&Signed=&Active=&Source=&Bats=&Throws=&Sort=

Look familiar?   18 of the first 20 picks -- college.

[totdprods]

10 minutes ago, cezero said:

Eppler is in the same exact spot that Dipoto was in, no matter the mental gymnastics you do to blame a former GM. They're all working for an owner who places farm building at the bottom of his priority list. He's been that way for decades. Trading shit for shit at the minor league level, massively overpaying for free agents like Hamilton and Pujols at the price of farm building, and trading your most valuable 40 man pieces for new pieces that really do nothing to improve your team. 

That's Arte's brand of baseball. Believe me, my organization is worse, and I've seen a lot of the same. I have a little bit of optimism now, though. 

I don't quite agree - I do think Moreno neglected the farm, but I don't believe it was an intentional choice. We had a strong farm for quite a long time. The Clay Daniel incident is what torpedoed our minors because it basically cleaned out our entire Latin American Ops right at the time when most teams caught on to how vital, and financially beneficial, that element of org-building was. 

The Angels really have been hurt by bad luck that's just so happened to be magnified by poor tendencies throughout the organization. It all just snowballed. I don't buy any of these absolutes thrown about on message boards about Jerry being a destroyer of Farms, Arte being an egomaniacal owner who spent like a drunken sailer only to 180 overnight, or that Scioscia runs the show. There is truth in all of these, buts it's wildly exaggerated by message board posters or bored writers looking for clicks.

[Docwaukee]

just to further my point, 

There are almost no players of value in baseball from the 2012 draft.  (Morin and RJ Alvarez are struggling relievers).  There might be a couple of other AAAA guys from that crew

2013.  perhaps a couple of 5th starter/swing guys in that crew and maybe a 4th OFer.  A couple of potentially good relievers in middleton and Wesley.  And then a potential breakout in Hermosillo.  

2014.  Newcomb and Ellis could end up decent but one of those was the 15th pick and the other a 3rd rounder.  again, maybe a couple of relievers that get so show time and a couple 4th ofers and maybe a util guy.  

2015.  I've got some higher hopes for a couple of those guys, but that's probably because it's too early to tell.  

we'll see, but those kinds of drafts are going to replenish what he's giving up.  

[totdprods]

Reagins I feel was the true conductor of our misfortunes, because I think Moreno's spend-now tendencies and Scioscia's influence just happened to coincide with his tenure. He was a lifelong Angel employee who worked his way up around these guys but lacked the huevos to really stand firm against them or offer opposing beliefs. When you add Clay Daniel fiasco to that time, and Scioscia's brain trust moving to other jobs, it all sort of just disintegrated there.

Dipoto just happened to throw fire on everything - whether or not it was at the behest or Moreno or his doing. Eppler seems to have bandaged it up but this will be a big year to determine that.

[Inside Pitch]

20 minutes ago, cezero said:

Whoever the GM has been has been largely irrelevant thanks to catastrophically stupid ownership. 

Cez, the entire Angels run in the 00s was basically built by Bill Stoneman.   He was famous for thinking farm first, second, and last -- so much so the knock on him from Angels fans was his unwillingness to part with prospects.  There are similarities sure -- but to claim Stoneman was irrelevant is off-base.   Without Bill Stoneman and the impact he had on both Disney (stopped them from tearing team apart), and Moreno (seemingly tempered his spending), the Angels don't win a WS or come close to their run of success.    

If anything the issue was that once he left the Angels went back to the sort of stupid; spend first, think second, ways that made/kept them a second division club for most of their history.

[eligrba]

It is interesting how the Mariners and Angels history are linked by the influences of a couple of Bavasi's.

[Docwaukee]

13 minutes ago, cezero said:

what organizational currency?

we have no farm. they're old. very very very old. lol. they have been for years. everything of value (which really amounts to seager and possibly paxton) that jack z drafted was brought up by 2015. what was left was pure ruins. 

not sure how much more barney-style this can be broken down: we had nothing of value left to trade for "major league club improvements." it's going to take at least july and winter for the phrase "organizational currency" to have any meaning for the m's. 

as our farm gets better, unless it's a universally agreed upon marquis player like trout or something, i want to see prospects traded at about a 400% higher rate than we've seen in these parts since 2002.

another thing he does is use anything of value - even if it's at the major league level - to attempt only major league improvements.  Examples are Marte, Walker, and Montgomery.  An important part of bringing young talent into the org is using older or at least more controlled talent to replenish the farm.  When JD moved more established talent for lesser known players it was one of the better things he accomplished yet it was always for guys in the majors or just about to be.  Like Trumbo and Conger.  So even your younger major league assets are being moved for fewer years of control and talent with a more imminent expiration date.  Just look at what it took to get Smyly, Valencia, Segura.  Subtle.  But if you think that's going to result in a healthy farm system down the line, well I just don't know what to say.  

[Inside Pitch]

22 minutes ago, cezero said:

Yours is so different!

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/research.asp?Y1=2016&Y2=2016&R=&RS==&Ov=&Ovs==&T=10012&Player=&School=&Pos=&HL=&Region=&P=June-Reg&CT=&Bonus=0&Signed=&Active=&Source=&Bats=&Throws=&Sort=

Your attempt at sarcasm aside, they were.  Night and day different.  Taking high risk high reward HS players with four of the top 6 picks is significantly different than what we saw under JD and what the Mariners did last year.   

It's normal for teams to take more college players than HS players - a trend that's been growing as bonus money has been scaled.   Gone are the days when teams could make picks in the middle rounds on HS guys with college rides and offer them first round money.  But make no mistake, Angels fans grew very accustomed to the type of college player JD went after.   If last year is any indication, you will too.

 

[totdprods]

I gotta say, for a good part of last offseason I was pretty uneasy watching Dipoto do with the Mariners what I imagine he had wanted to do with the Angels, and it worked out for them, and I was pretty wary of Eppler. But Dipoto has done plenty this offseason to reaffirm what my concerns were with him as a GM. Really, it'll be a big year for both GMs to see where their strengths and weaknesses really land.

[Docwaukee]

39 minutes ago, cezero said:

Getting rid of Marte and Walker showed that he's trying to build professionalism. 

Both had stints in the minors last year with explicit things to work on, and they both came back with chips on their shoulders, and not in a good way. Both had questionable work ethics with mechanics and working out, and were prone to injury because of it. 

It sent a message that you take tasks your skipper and GM give you seriously, or your'e out.  The phrase "country club atmosphere" in Seattle is something that's floated around the majors for a long time. Time to be big boys, and work on what your'e told, or you're out.

Club control over mid-level current MLB players is one of the most important things that adds to their trade value.  Acquiring those types of players has been a priority for Dipoto in a lot of trades over the past year. Most of the trades I've seen him make over the past year have been aimed at anticipating the needs of other teams for the next round of trades. It's been his only choice since, again, he has almost no "organizational currency" to work with.  They make somewhat attractive trade pieces, and until he started his wheeling and dealing, we had virtually none in place. 

I expect that by next offseason, he's hoping to be able to move Cruz and maybe Paxton and Felix for a combination of MLB talent and prospects. As somebody else posted, he's completely rebuilt the MLB roster over the course of the last year with a focus on more balance between power and speed.  Hoping he's not done.

The farm is already marginally better than it was, but it's going to take him quite a long while to build it since the only thing of value we have to trade is already at the MLB level, whether it's what Jack Z cultivated, or what Dipoto has traded for. 

 

 

I remember my denial phase.  He's not gonna sell off major league parts unless it's for more major league parts.  If he sells paxton, it will be for a player that has even more experience and less control.  I guess we'll see.  

[totdprods]

1 hour ago, cezero said:

Not how I meant to portray Moreno at all. 

I think he cares very much about winning. His approach is really pretty awful, though, and greatly restricts the effectiveness of the choices any GM makes. 

It's like an honorary position with a club run the way the Halos are run. 

I know it's not comfortable to hear, but please understand, it's not coming from a place of superiority. Anything negative I say about your club applies to mine and then some. Our owners have been stupid and indifferent to winning. Our GM's have been hopelessly incompetent, though I sympathize with them having to deal with Nintendo/Armstrong/Lincoln all these years. The dysfunction trickles down real quick, too. Just look at how many skippers the M's have had in the past 10 years. 

I'm pretty much convinced the only reason Dipoto chose to come here was because he knew about the ownership change ahead of time, and got reassurances that he would get huge power over all decisions baseball related. I'd bet that he made it clear that he would leave the instant they tried interfering too much or not giving him what he needed to build from the ground up. 

Oh no @cezero, I wasn't singling you out, just generalizing across the 'net. 
I truly think we have a very '90s-'00s Yankees model in play with the Halos, or at least that's how Moreno envisioned it, but the execution has been terrible.

Here is how I see the Moreno Years...
Stoneman built a strong farm, the team relied on it (maybe a bit too much) and then we hit an unfortunate period where Moreno felt a championship was close and he began meddling a bit too far - with what we thought were good intentions. Coupled with Scioscia having more say than usual (and Maddon/Black/Roenicke departing) and a sycophantic GM in Reagins, there was no one around to offer up the resisting opinions to the Moreno/Scioscia dynamic. During all of this, savvy-teams caught on the value of spending heavily on Latin prospects as there were little to no restrictions, but unfortunately the Angels Latin American program was obliterated around '09 due to the Clay Daniel controversy. You could say that Moreno should have focused more energy into turning that ordeal around, but I'm not sure he could have done much. The entire culture around Latin American prospects and their 'agents' has already been sketchy at best, if not borderline criminal, and the Angels likely had more microscope on them than most teams following Daniels incident. By that point, other teams had vaulted into the Latin American spotlight, and those prospects/players were going to be drawn to that flame. They're going to go where their friends and families are having success. They're not going to risk a sketchy Angels org that's been reduced to rubble. And Moreno throwing more money at it wasn't going to fix it. Success in Latin America relies on trust and familiarity as much as it does money. Once Reagins was canned, the damage to the farm was already seeping in. Dipoto was brought in, Scioscia and Moreno were feeling the heat, and upon realizing that their farm wasn't going to help in the near future, all three likely were complicit to going big with the Pujols etc. signings. A total Hail Mary. As soon as that started showing signs of failing, you had three guys all looking at each other for blame. I think Dipoto and Scioscia's conflict was far more about personality than it was philosophy. They both made each others job harder for the other. Moreno panicked, tried to make everyone happy by spending big in hopes winning would make everyone happier, Hamilton was a tremendous mistake, it broke everyone. Dipoto quit, Moreno realized he needed to stay out of the picture, he sent a message to Scioscia that he needed to work with the next GM, and he's decided to stay the eff out of Eppler's way by hiding off on a yacht, not taking media calls, avoiding the stadium, and waiting for Billy to get the fire back under control.