IheartLA

Nope, I'm sure this conversation will be repeated and repeated until  the end of time - or 2021, whichever comes first.  
The backloading of this contract probably seemed a good idea at the time - but makes it nearly impossible for him to walk away.   Sure, it costs more - money now is worth more than money later - but if we'd have front-loaded it, he'd find it much easier to walk away.  Owing him, what, $114m over the next four years?  He's not going anywhere.   
I mean, look at Fielder - he announced he would no longer play; but didn't retire - he wanted the money.   Pujols won't retire even if he's in a wheelchair - why should he?  
 

If Cozart halves his WAR he's still more valuable than Moustakas was last year. Moustakas would need to maintain his 2.2 WAR while moving to a worse hitter's park. He's also the same age that Sandoval fell apart, similar body type. Cozart will bring defense/OBP at least even if his home runs fall.
And Espinosa was a local kid as well, does that mean we should have kept him? I don't see how that matters. Freese wanted to stay here as well, a lot of players would be allured by SoCal. Doesn't change their skillset.

Eppler's exact words were that obp is the biggest correlation with scoring runs. If Moose regresses a little he becomes Valbuena, if he falls apart like other big bodied players then he's Pablo Sandoval. We have too light a farm system to risk our present/near future with two potential 1.0 WAR players (pujols/moose). That would be $40M tied up, I'd rather get Cozart even and move one of Kinsler/him to 3rd base before Moose.

My point was people want Moose because he's left handed and hit 38 homers. Well if you pro rate Cron's at bats he'll hit 30 homers too, adjust for park effects and he's effectively a 1B Moose. Slow, stone hands, bad body, low OBP. Valbuena had a 94 WRC, you can't count on him/pujols/plus the dh. That's potentially 3 black holes, we can easily compete for a WC berth this year. But Valbuena needs to be a bat off the bench or if Pujols is putting up negative WAR again you can put him in. If he's in a platoon with Marte at 3B, Pujols/Cron at 1b/DH that's a huge problem. 
If you get Headley you will move Valbuena to a backup 1b/3b role which is a better look. Big teams like the Astros, Dodgers utilized their bench. We got rid of Maybin and he played a key role for them off the bench/defense. We can't have our entire bench being trash like Featherston/Cowart/Valbuena/Marte all with below 100 WRC. 

Getting Headley/Kinsler is a great move. No serious contending team would count on Valbuena/Pujols after the years they had. The only reason they're on the team is because of their contracts. We couldn't seriously take Pujols at bats away last year because the other options were not credible.
We need to have a full lineup w/o Ohtani since at most going to DH half the games and we have no idea how he's going to hit. And I think it will be even less than that. Maybe 1/3, because it will be rest, pitch, rest, dh, dh, dh, IF he dh's every game outside of the usual schedule. I think he'll dh twice out of the six days. 
Every player we bring here seems to hit worse then ever, our stadium is a tough place to hit. We had a full rotation's worth of players on the DL, I'm not counting on any of them staying healthy. We need to keep all of our starters. Richards/Ohtani/Skaggs/Shoemaker/Bridwell/Heaney/Barria - until Tropeano/Ramirez throw I'm not going to count on them. You can count on two of those first seven being hurt at some point. 
The reason I like Headley/Kinsler is because they are only here one year. I would hate for them to Valbuena someone and then we're stuck with them another year or longer, like Moustakas..
Look at the Indians/Astros/Dodgers they have ELITE talent, not a bunch of average players. Next offseason Machado/Donaldson/Kershaw will be FA. I honestly think we could sign two of those, the Dodgers played hardball with Greinke/Stanton, I don't think they'll offer Kershaw a 7/8 year deal. It's his last chance to get paid and he could stay in So Cal. We will be >$60M under the cap, more if we don't resign Richards, who by the way is also on his last chance here.

I made the Cron analogy, but yea Cron/Trumbo/Mousatakas 
All could easily be negative war players if they regress some hit skill since their secondary skills are so bad. Cron was negative in '14 and barely above 1 the last three years. Trumbo is an empty 30 home runs a year. Pujols/Bautista are in the same boat. Matt Adams/Lucas Duda are available for nothing. No need to pay anything for these type of players.

Trout - 1st
Upton - 2nd
Calhoun - 15th (but previous years was top seven-ish)
Simmons - 5th (bbrWAR has him 1st btw)
Maldonado - 27th (I'm putting him with the guaranteed starters since I think he is in their minds b/c of defense and the fact that catcher is treated differently from the other positions). 
So we have:
1b - 26th out of 30
2b - Kinsler (low babip, could bounce back, but getting to age where decline could be a steep cliff) but we were 28th out of 30...
3b - 21st out of 30
DH - Dead last.. 17th out of 17
The three teams that won 100 games had beast up the middle combos:
Lindor/Ramirez
Correa/Altuve
Seager/Taylor (I think they'll move him since they have 6 outfielders)
Nationals, Yankees, Cubs had stacked teams, almost everyone was top ten. Twins have a phenom coming up to play SS with Dozier. It's going to be hard to compete without elite talent. The thing is WE DO have elite talent, but our black holes are SO bad. To have half our lineup being below 100 wrc, 1 WAR is a disgrace.
 
 

Trout - 1st
Upton - 2nd
Calhoun - 15th (but previous years was top seven-ish)
Simmons - 5th (bbrWAR has him 1st btw)
Maldonado - 27th (I'm putting him with the guaranteed starters since I think he is in their minds b/c of defense and the fact that catcher is treated differently from the other positions). 
So we have:
1b - 26th out of 30
2b - Kinsler (low babip, could bounce back, but getting to age where decline could be a steep cliff) but we were 28th out of 30...
3b - 21st out of 30
DH - Dead last.. 17th out of 17
The three teams that won 100 games had beast up the middle combos:
Lindor/Ramirez
Correa/Altuve
Seager/Taylor (I think they'll move him since they have 6 outfielders)
Nationals, Yankees, Cubs had stacked teams, almost everyone was top ten. Twins have a phenom coming up to play SS with Dozier. It's going to be hard to compete without elite talent. The thing is WE DO have elite talent, but our black holes are SO bad. To have half our lineup being below 100 wrc, 1 WAR is a disgrace.
 
 

So arguably, we just need to replace our black holes with average players, as we already have several elite players occupying spots (Trout an Simmons for sure, Upton can probably be considered elite in LF too).
It's very easy to upgrade from #30 to #15.  The hardest (and much more expensive) trick is to upgrade from #15 to #1.
Adding Kinsler lifts us from 28th to middle of the pack fairly easily.  Could be even higher if he rebounds a little bit to, say, 3 WAR.
*IF* we sign, say, LoMo (at 2/25), then I think 1B is improved a bit.  It'll be brought down by the fact that Pujols will be rolled out to play 1B 1-2 times per week, I guess.  Still, going off of last year's production, his presence would likewise bring us to the middle of the pack at 1B.
As for 3B, well, we'll see.  If we roll with Valbuena/Marte, we may not improve much there, but I do expect Valbuena to bounce back a bit.  Let's say we stay the same though and don't really improve there.
DH - yeah, well, we're stuck it appears.  BUT, adding Ohtani does mean perhaps 3 days a week of him batting.  He's a great unknown, so can't really project much, but I'd like to think he'd help us climb a bit higher than dead last.
As an aside, WAR doesn't take into account pitch framing.  So as for Maldonado's ranking, I'm not sure how much things change when you factor that in, but I'm pretty certain he's quite a bit more valuable than #27.
So to summarize, I'd say we have definitely improved now at 2B, likely to improve at one of the corners, and probably improve a little bit at DH with Ohtani aboard.  Those upgrades are probably enough to put us right in the thick of wild card contention, which is definitely a step in the right direction.

If Richards gets hurt again he's gone, this year is a huge question for our pitching. We have so many guys that we just don't know what we are going to get, basically our entire starting rotation.
I also never said Harper..we already have the highest paid OF.
and LOL at Maldonado for $10M, he put up a 1.1 WAR. Suzuki put up 2.7 WAR and got $3.5M. Maldonado was 27th in WAR among catchers, he will get maybe half that.
Cabrera got AAV $31M, Trout $34M, Cano $24M, Stanton $30M. Harper/Machado will not want to be free agents at age 35+, I think they'll prioritize "years" over annual value, kinda like Cano did. Maybe $25M but no way they get 15 years at $35M. And besides I'd rather sign Donaldson for 5 years at $30M, if Kershaw isn't going to resign with the Dodgers his next choice would probably be us since he's so invested in the community/his family. He's not taking less than what Scherzer/Greinke/Price got and I don't think the Dodgers will give him that so I think Arte might pounce. 
Look at the Yankees, they made Stanton work by getting rid of a solid player in Castro , if we got Donaldson/Kershaw and we were near the luxury line like your post suggests, then they would probably flip Calhoun. Our top prospects are all OF's and by this time next year one of them could be in AA knocking on the door like Gleyber Torres is for them.
You make it sound like it's dumb to want to sign elite talent, the dumb thing to do would be to sign a 2 WAR player that has no secondary skills for $18-20M. Are you Moose's real life friend or something?

That makes no sense, Moose isn't depth. He can't play any position well. He's a DH, corner infielder. Depth is Chris Taylor, Kike Hernandez, guys that can play multiple positions and give you flexibility. "Flexibility" is a word Eppler was using at his presser earlier. The last thing we need is a third base Cj Cron. If you give Cron 650 at bats he'll hit 30 homers but have a low OBP/bad defense/baserunning. If you add the RF wall we have it's unlikely Moose hits 38 homers here. Eppler has stressed OBP and defense versatility, which Moose doesn't fit AT all.

I think some people are forgetting that signing Moose means losing their 1st round pick...