What Could Have Been

[Troutipoo27]

What if we would just win ball games? No excuses we suck ass. What if the angels didnt come back in game 6? What if aj perzinsuckmydick didn't screw is over? What if Donnie Moore didnt give up the home run. What if Autry didnt buy the angels. What if Adam and Eve didnt eat the apple. What if the Big Bang never happened. What if what if what if.

[RenoHalo]

So funny to see all the butthurt over a fun little topic to discuss. Keep it up AJ, you are the kind of dude that would be fun to wind up sitting next to at a game..

[FabulousFabregas]

I need Brian Kenny to explain all of this to me.

[ELEVEN]

Here is my issue with all "what if" threads.  They don't exist in vaccuums.

 

Each move predactes another, each location may affect play. 

What if that wasn't true?

[Ohtaniland]

I know, I know - two things make this thread nothing more than an idle thought experiment - that hindsight is 20-20 and you never know how these players would have performed if they had stayed with the Angels. But for the sake of some fun, let's dial back to November last year and make a few changes. Just a note: I'm NOT saying what should or should not have happened, just looking at a different path the Angels could have taken.

 

1) The Angels keep Ervin Santana

2) The Angels keep Torii Hunter

3) The Angels sign Zack Greinke

4) The Angels don't sign Joe Blanton

5) The Angels don't trade Walden for Hanson

 

That gives them a rotation of Weaver, Greinke, Wilson, Santana, and Vargas. Not bad.

 

Now let's make two assumptions that I realize are a bit silly, but again, bear with me. Let's say that A) they did perform exactly as they did this year, but with swapped teams, and fWAR can be used to deteremine adjustments to win-loss records.

 

Ervin Santana (2.1 fWAR) replaces Joe Blanton (0.0) = +2.1 fWAR

Torii Hunter (1.8 fWAR) replaces Josh Hamilton (0.7) = +1.1 fWAR

Zack Greinke (1.1 fWAR) replaces Tommy Hanson (0.3) = +0.8 fWAR

Jordan Walden (0.8 fWAR) replaces a combination of reliever innings (~0.3) = +0.5 fWAR

 

So that's +4.5 fWAR, which we'll round up and say that the Angels would then have a 52-47 record. Not a huge difference, but enough of one to make this a very different season - only 6 games out of first place and 2.5 games out of a wildcard spot.

 

What about the difference in cost?  Well here's the rub. The Hamilton and Greinke contracts are basically a wash overall, although Hamilton's is more backloaded. But for 2013, the Angels get rid of about $27M this year but take on about $51M - that's $24M. The interesting thing is that the cost for each WAR is between $4.5M and $5M, which makes perfect sense given that WAR differential.

 

To put all that another way, this could be a better team - a contender, but not a dominant team - if Dipoto had assembled the pieces in the last offseason differently, but he would have had to pay much more.

 

Another alternate path would have been to not sign Hamilton and give Calhoun more at-bats, which would have likely resulted in equal or better results and a lot of money (and grief) saved, and a more flexible financial future. But hey, Arte wanted his big belly-flop splash.

 

I like everything about this. This is unraveling Angels Baseball one move at a time.