Props to Arte

[T.G.]

4 minutes ago, Angel Oracle said:

I just wish Arte Moreno had gotten close to the tax threshold many more seasons in the past by allowing his GMs to make the type of off-season acquisitions that Perry has made now to achieve the long needed team depth.

Finally!   No over reliance on AAAA level players!!!!

At least now they are only $12 million under it.

Aren’t you the guy who always complained about big money contracts?

[AngelsMetsWS]

I’ll be happy to see them run out an entire line up of major leaguers!

[Blarg]

49 minutes ago, T.G. said:

Aren’t you the guy who always complained about big money contracts?

None of these off season contracts would rate as big money. 

[Docwaukee]

49 minutes ago, T.G. said:

Aren’t you the guy who always complained about big money contracts?

what big money contracts did they take on this year?  

[Warfarin]

1 hour ago, T.G. said:

Aren’t you the guy who always complained about big money contracts?

I think he probably wants to see this team spend on reasonable contracts in the same fashion we have seen this offseason.  A lot of us have grown tired of the "big splash and scrubs" approach that we have seen for years.  Arte always wanted to make a big splash, which in of itself isn't terrible, but if you want to do that, you have to supplement it with other moves that he never made.  So in that sense, it would have always been better to see what we are seeing now - a balanced approach that avoids stars and spreads "risk" across multiple middle tier type contracts.

He has spent about 50mil of "additional" payroll this year, and it has netted us 5 players:  Anderson, Urshela, Renfroe, Drury, Estevez.  This is a great use of payroll space, IMO.

[T.G.]

1 hour ago, Blarg said:

None of these off season contracts would rate as big money. 

 

1 hour ago, Docwaukee said:

what big money contracts did they take on this year?  

Any team spending above the luxury tax threshold has big money contracts.

[Angel Oracle]

4 hours ago, T.G. said:

Aren’t you the guy who always complained about big money contracts?

That’s why I said I liked what was done this off-season, no big contracts just good support players, something lacking the past several years.

No more AAAA players getting too many at bats

The big money focus needs to only be on Ohtani.

[Docwaukee]

1 hour ago, T.G. said:

 

Any team spending above the luxury tax threshold has big money contracts.

what does that even remotely have to do with what he posted?  

[T.G.]

10 hours ago, Docwaukee said:

what does that even remotely have to do with what he posted?  

I just interpreted what he said differently. That's why we discuss stuff here.

Edited December 22, 2022 by T.G.

[Jeff Fletcher]

On 12/21/2022 at 7:25 PM, Warfarin said:

I think he probably wants to see this team spend on reasonable contracts in the same fashion we have seen this offseason.  A lot of us have grown tired of the "big splash and scrubs" approach that we have seen for years

This is a narrative that I don’t get. The Angels have always supplemented their roster with middle tier players.

Cozart, Kinsler, Cody Allen, Teheran, Cahill, Harvey, Bundy, Cobb, Quintana, Iglesias, Loup, Tepera. These were not guys on minor league deals or waiver claims. They were major leaguers on major league deals. (The ones who were traded were salary dumps, so they were essentially free agents because the Angels just had to pay them, without giving up significant talent.)
 

Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The problem last year wasn’t that the Angels didn’t commit to any mid tier big leaguers.

The problem was that they didn’t commit to any mid tier position players.

In general there is going to be a pretty high failure rate on all these kind of guys, for the simple reason that these players are usually 30 or older. 

[Revad]

I’m assume Minasian would have liked this year’s budget last year but it was not available.   As it turns out he could have done better with what he had but I imagine he would have spent more if he could.

[Warfarin]

1 hour ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

This is a narrative that I don’t get. The Angels have always supplemented their roster with middle tier players.

Cozart, Kinsler, Cody Allen, Teheran, Cahill, Harvey, Bundy, Cobb, Quintana, Iglesias, Loup, Tepera. These were not guys on minor league deals or waiver claims. They were major leaguers on major league deals. (The ones who were traded were salary dumps, so they were essentially free agents because the Angels just had to pay them, without giving up significant talent.)
 

Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The problem last year wasn’t that the Angels didn’t commit to any mid tier big leaguers.

The problem was that they didn’t commit to any mid tier position players.

In general there is going to be a pretty high failure rate on all these kind of guys, for the simple reason that these players are usually 30 or older. 

Sure, I am happy to elaborate on that perspective.

First, admittedly it is an exaggeration, as it was not an entirely "stars and scrubs" approach.

But with that said - when we had Trout, Upton, Rendon, and Pujols on the payroll, that was effectively about 110mil + of AAV committed to just 4 guys.  This led to about over 55% of our dedicated payroll to 4 guys, 1 of whom was clearly broken, another of whom was not a particularly good player anymore.

Having that much money tied up to 4 players isn't in of itself bad, but when it represents a huge % allocation of your payroll, it means you need to either supplement it with heavily investing in your farm system infrastructure (which, from various accounts, was not really the case with Arte, as the minor league conditions have been well-documented for us), or you need to likely spend more money to help fill out your team.

With so much money tied up to 4 players, the Angels could really only take a few modest "shots" at supplementing the roster.  Even the best organizations, though, have only modest success through free agency, for the reasons you have stated (age, etc).  

Personally, I would have much preferred the approach we are seeing this year.  Minasian has not signed anyone to a large contract, but he has rather spread about 50mil across 5 different players.

TL;DR - I think every team needs a few stars (and the requisite contracts that come with it), but a team should be aware of its operating budget and try to reasonable spread money across multiple free agents (i.e., spreading the free agency risk and mitigating how much one failure hurts the team), while also investing in its minor league system.  I think our mistake has been allocating too high of a % in several players, leaving less money to take calculated gambles.

[Jeff Fletcher]

36 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

Personally, I would have much preferred the approach we are seeing this year.  Minasian has not signed anyone to a large contract, but he has rather spread about 50mil across 5 different players.

I think it’s the same approach as Eppler and Minasian have had, but just a little more of it. Instead of 3 guys for $30m, it’s 5 guys for $50m. But they are the same guys  

Arte should get some credit for upping the volume, but not really for changing the approach, IMO. 
 

And I think Minasian acknowledged that last year he shouldn’t have used all his shots on pitching while ignoring the offense. 

[Warfarin]

14 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

I think it’s the same approach as Eppler and Minasian have had, but just a little more of it. Instead of 3 guys for $30m, it’s 5 guys for $50m. But they are the same guys  

Arte should get some credit for upping the volume, but not really for changing the approach, IMO. 
 

And I think Minasian acknowledged that last year he shouldn’t have used all his shots on pitching while ignoring the offense. 

I do think every "little bit" helps though in this case.  An extra 20-30mil can help quite a bit in terms of trying to create depth and provide a better "safety net" for injuries, underperformance, etc.  In this case, imagine this same roster, but minus 20mil - so, not having Renfroe or Urshela added.  Those kinds of holes would be rather significant, so that extra financial wiggle room is important.  Part of the money we have to spend is because Upton's large contract is now off the books, so more money can be spread around instead.

It is largely hit or miss, but it did seem that Perry has, so far, had some more success in terms of finding at least serviceable options than Eppler did.  Maybe that was part of the problem too.  Eppler didn't have that much wiggle room for failure, and some of his acquisitions failed rather spectacularly (Cody Allen, for example), such that they were significantly below replacement value.  So maybe they both had the same "approach," but Minasian is more adept at finding options who will pan out decently than Eppler did.

Arte definitely deserves credit for upping the payroll, which I think a number of us have given in this thread.

[Docwaukee]

3 hours ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

This is a narrative that I don’t get. The Angels have always supplemented their roster with middle tier players.

Cozart, Kinsler, Cody Allen, Teheran, Cahill, Harvey, Bundy, Cobb, Quintana, Iglesias, Loup, Tepera. These were not guys on minor league deals or waiver claims. They were major leaguers on major league deals. (The ones who were traded were salary dumps, so they were essentially free agents because the Angels just had to pay them, without giving up significant talent.)
 

Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The problem last year wasn’t that the Angels didn’t commit to any mid tier big leaguers.

The problem was that they didn’t commit to any mid tier position players.

In general there is going to be a pretty high failure rate on all these kind of guys, for the simple reason that these players are usually 30 or older. 

To me it was more of the 'stars and stop' approach or maybe 'stars and pray'.  Don't get me wrong, payroll was nice.  But there was always 1 if not 2 players sucking up a big chunk of it with almost zero production.  And a lot of times, they fill a spot with a player that had a ton of question marks hoping to catch catch lightning in a bottle.  And the guy backing him up was a complete scrub.  Granted, some of that was fully expected considering the state of the farm and I get that you can't have an all star at every position.  

We've discussed the predicament they were in several times.  You've got Mike Trout so you were almost obligated to try something.  And I get that.  But how hard did they really try?  The commitment was half hearted in my opinion because we knew the severe limitations outside of the one thing that didn't absolutely have to and that was payroll.  

In years past, they'd have stopped after getting Anderson and Renfroe.  They probably wouldn't have gone after Urshela or Drury.  Payroll would be around 190m.  If it doesn't work, I'll gladly eat some serious crow but I'm more confident in this year's plan than any I've seen for the last several years.  But that extra 10% of spending can make a difference if done properly.  Or at least that's my contention.  

I've also mentioned that they were really bad at self evaluation.  There were seasons that it didn't make sense to bother with the Harveys and Cahills and Allens and Lucroys and Bours but instead they'd have been better off putting that money into one guy on a 1yr deal that they could trade at the deadline.  And instead of constantly trying to get a marginal talent close to the majors, go get some low level guys you've scouted extensively and build for the future.  

But it was that half measure pseudo commitment that they were trying to win.  This is the first year they've gone a bit above and beyond.  Really hope it's worth it.