Revisiting a Blog: "In Dipoto We (Don't?) Trust"

[Angelsjunky]

Looks like my fears from last November were prescient.

 

A couple quotes:

 

"Dipoto is now in the situation where he must re-sign Greinke. If he doesn't, he's going to be scrambling all offseason to sign and/or trade for at least one starter, probably two - and the Angels farm system is already depleted, easily in the bottom third in all of baseball."

 

"One could envision a worst-case-scenario in 2013 where Greinke signs elsewhere and neither Pujols or Wilson have better years."

 

This happened. Greinke is gone, Wilson has had a similiar, maybe slightly better year, and Pujols was quite a bit worse.

 

"He also has to figure out what to do with Vernon Wells and the $42 million owed him – whether to continue to block better, younger players in Peter Bourjos and Kole Calhoun, or see if he can find someway to at least take a few million off what’s owed in a trade."

 

As to the last, Dipoto did better than expected - but the problem is that he replaced one problem (Wells) with another (Hamilton).

 

"...what moves he makes over the next month or two will determine not only the fate of the Angels next year, but perhaps his own long-term fate as the Angels GM. If I’m Arte Moreno I wouldn’t give up on Dipoto yet – far from it – but I wouldn't tolerate a second disappointing year in a row, not with the money that Dipoto has had to play with."

 

Things turned out worse than anyone thought, so let's not be surprised if this comes to pass. Of course Arte could show previously un-seen self-awareness and realize that his splurges are part of the problem.

 

[Mark68]

Looks like my fears from last November were prescient.

 

A couple quotes:

 

"Dipoto is now in the situation where he must re-sign Greinke. If he doesn't, he's going to be scrambling all offseason to sign and/or trade for at least one starter, probably two - and the Angels farm system is already depleted, easily in the bottom third in all of baseball."

 

"One could envision a worst-case-scenario in 2013 where Greinke signs elsewhere and neither Pujols or Wilson have better years."

 

This happened. Greinke is gone, Wilson has had a similiar, maybe slightly better year, and Pujols was quite a bit worse.

 

"He also has to figure out what to do with Vernon Wells and the $42 million owed him – whether to continue to block better, younger players in Peter Bourjos and Kole Calhoun, or see if he can find someway to at least take a few million off what’s owed in a trade."

 

As to the last, Dipoto did better than expected - but the problem is that he replaced one problem (Wells) with another (Hamilton).

 

"...what moves he makes over the next month or two will determine not only the fate of the Angels next year, but perhaps his own long-term fate as the Angels GM. If I’m Arte Moreno I wouldn’t give up on Dipoto yet – far from it – but I wouldn't tolerate a second disappointing year in a row, not with the money that Dipoto has had to play with."

 

Things turned out worse than anyone thought, so let's not be surprised if this comes to pass. Of course Arte could show previously un-seen self-awareness and realize that his splurges are part of the problem.

Ah, but did Dipoto actually have that much money to play with? If Arte was the one who wanted Pujols and Hamilton (as has been widely reported), then Dipoto was hamstrung financially to replace Greinke (and Santana and Haren).