Wisconsin27

Thanks for the deep dive @Inside Pitch. You just talked me out of wanting anything to do with Bellinger. I already was against the signing initially but started to warm to the idea after losing Ohtani. 

Bellinger is the guy I'm most afraid Arte pushes for. He just screams typical Moreno-era Angels free agent bust to me. More gut feeling than anything, but your post seems to back that a little. 

In the very short-term, sure.  Having a bad system will prevent you from much needed additions internally and via trades.
But over 8 years, it doesn't hold water.  Eventually there should be good draft picks, selling pieces for prospects, etc.  The funny thing is they got Ohtani as a freeby basically -- no draft pick.  Sure he cost their int'l money, but those guys are lottery tickets at best.  Ohtani was a sure thing and turned out even better. 
OK, maybe a bad GM screws things up...well, they've gone thru what like three now the past few years.  I mean seriously, can you mess things up even more?  A top 5-10 ML budget, Trout and Ohtani....yet can't even get to 500.  Time to walk away from the table, cash in what you have Arte and move on to let someone else take your spot on the table.  

Agree 100%. I would rather look at 2024 as a developmental year instead of pretending that Snell and Bellinger make us a WC contender. 

They both suck.  That's the problem.  We got rid of a bad player that we gave over 80 innings to for another bad player.  They've added 4 bad pitchers to the 40 man roster so far this off season.  4 guys who are less accomplished and less likely to perform well than Aaron Loup and Ryan Tepera.  
What is the likelihood they're going to have signed these guys to major league deals and then replace them with better players before spring?  
Adam Cimber, Adam Kolarek, and Luis Garcia all have a really good shot at making this team.  Jimmy Herget is still on the roster.  Jose Suarez and Zach Plesac are likely competing for the swing spot in the rotation.  
The discussion isn't the shit show.  It's the roster composition that's a shit show.  

You know your Hot Stove is a Sterno can when Zach Plesac has 5 pages and is the most notable offseason acquisition!

I mean... it could be the plan if there's a potential sale coming.
Reminds me of the 2019-20 Mets maybe. The 2018-19 offseason they were pretty active, with the Diaz trade and some other bigger moves. After 2019, lost Wheeler and only signed a few relievers and back end starters coming off a 3rd place finish. Then, September 2020, sold to Steve Cohen.
Probably wishful thinking... but......

Someone has to cover starts when there’s injuries.  Before Plesac, assuming our current rotation is Detmers-Sandoval-Canning-Anderson-Silseth, our options for that are…. Kenny Rosenberg, Sam Bachman, and Davis Daniel?  An optionable starter is a need

arthroscopic.  No labral or cuff repair.  Just cleanup.  Plus, it's one year.  Perfect type of flyer.  15m with at least middle rotation floor and a little more 2/3 potential.  High trade value upside if they're out at the deadline.  Good bridge to next year for a better FA class.  

This was a missed opportunity in my opinion.  

They added Sale, Bummer, Lopez, and Kelenic without losing anyone and you can’t see how they’re better?

Lmao thank you Perry for not doing that.

I mentioned guys by name early -- most have been signed.   As far as guys capable of getting 2 fWAR seasons, Soler, Stroman, Manaea, Rosario probably -- they all carry some risk but I don't think they would require crazy money.  

There there are all the usual high risk reclamation guys with upside -- Paxton, Montas.
I like Jordan Montgomery because no QO -- he'll fall into the big budget category, likely gets paid like a back end 1/top end 2 and more likely performs like a good three.  Dude could turn out being another Sonny Gray where he pitches better than his stuff would lead you to believe.
Hernandez is a guy that could go either way -- his neutral park data was really strong, still runs well, his defense is meh -- but he likely wants 4 years.
There are a ton of 1 fWAR guys that they could get but thats where you run into grenades IMO.

They sign three guys legitimately capable of putting up 2-3 fWAR seasons, that would IMO be more aggressive than they have been in a while.  
The mistake they made with Ohtani was not aggressively shopping him when they had the chance.

Yep, team needs more 2 fWAR guys.  Honestly a few 1 fWAR guys would be nice.

LOL...
I know the Ohtani situation may be the new Angel fan hate fulcrum, but NOTHING used to unify Angels fans as quickly as the anger about Bobby Grich not being a HOFer.
 

Agreed.  And I will keep posting this glaring data.  Here is list of guys by lifetime WAR from Johnny Bench at 75 to Kenny Lofton at 68.
It is literally grating to my nerves to see Bobby Grich effectively equal to Derek Jeter in lifetime WAR and he gets zero traction on being recognized by the museum whose purpose is to display the best players.

Lofton is extremely underrated.

When you look at Lofton’s offensive numbers and compare them to Ichiro Suzuki, who is almost certainly a HOFer, Lofton, should have been given much more consideration.
Ichiro was on base 363 more times than Lofton, but Ichiro played in 550 more games. 
Career OBP:
Ichiro .355
Lofton .372
Career BA:
Ichiro: .311
Lofton: .299
Doubles:
Ichiro: 362
Lofton: 383
Triples: 
Ichiro: 96
Lofton: 116
Home Runs: 
Ichiro: 117
Lofton: 130
SB: 
Ichiro: 509
Lofton: 622
Runs:
Ichiro: 1420
Lofton: 1528
Ichiro struck out more often as well 
They both had identical lackluster OPS+ of 107
This should be fun.  
 

Blasts from the past when credentialed at major press conferences. 
 

At the time, in order (as best as I can remember these):
Vladimir Guerrero - he was such a criminally underrated talent, I was psyched we did it, since it appeared we weren't even trying.
Shohei Ohtani - so pleased he chose us - said maybe the franchise was going in the right direction ...
Rod Carew - I always loved Carew, unconventional and classy, and was happy to see him come over
Fred Lynn - Limited by injuries, he still did well for us.
Torii Hunter - Hunter was always such a pleasure to watch with the Twins and a great personality 
Reggie Jackson - Felt over-the-hill, but I under-estimated him he still had some gas in the tank  And still, he was Reggie so ...
Zack Grienke - thought we gave up too much for him, but ...
Bartolo Colon - between him and Vlad, thought we were building something
Bobby Grich 
Mark Teixeira - never much liked him for some reason, but liked his production.  Hated him again when he left.
Bartolo Colon - between him and Vlad, thought we were building something 
Mo Vaughn 
Dan Haren - just felt like the right deal but at the wrong time
Mark Langston 
Nolan Ryan - my memory is kind of fuzzy, here - we gave up a lot for him (I thought) and he sounded intriguing but no more - he quickly became the most interesting player on the team)
Anthony Rendon - always had bad vibes about him - living near DC, it was clear to me the club had reservations about him, people should've loved him - but they didn't
Albert Pujols - Cardinals fans did a great job of pointing out his quickly declining production before the signing, and I didn't like it.   I figured we'd get 3 or 4 good years out of him, then years of regret- turns out that was optimistic - I knew his contract would cripple the team, and the Cardinals seeming so relieved he declined their offer never set well with me  
Josh Hamilton - Criminal stupidity - weirdly, his stats don't suggest he was a bad player, but I thought he was overrated
Adding:
GMJ - The best thing about the GMJ signing was the discovery that a casual fan like me could still be smarter than a baseball executive 
Vernon Wells - I was livid over this - like GMJ, I was astonished to realize just how stupid a baseball organization could be.  I no longer remember the number, but did a back of the envelope calc that suggested the Blue Jays needed to send us somewhere between $40m and $60m to make that a fair trade. 
(don't really recall my reaction to Frank Robinson)

 

we don't know what the current team actually is.  there is a variance from 'replacement level' to 'borderline all star' for probably 2/3rds of the lineup, probably 4/5ths of the starting pitchers, and pretty much the entire bullpen.  
I'm back on the depth train.  
The avg number of plate appearances per position is 681 per year.  Or about 6100 total.  The top 9 in PA for the angels last year totaled about 3800 PA.  
Right now, those additional 2300 PA would go to:
Matt Thaiss, Michael Stefanic, Jo Adell, Trey Cabbage, Francisco Mejia, Chad Wallach, Alfonso Rivas, Evan White, Charles LeBlanc, Kyren Paris, Livan Soto, Jordyn Adams, Willy Calhoun, Jake Marisnick, and Orlando Martinez.  
That's 38% of next year's at bats going to what I consider a collection of guys that might produce at a replacement level and probably worse.  

Just because you are 65 to 70 mill under lux tax does not mean you have to spend it. Maybe better opportunities will be next off season. Let's see what young players can do. I hope they stay away from Snell, Bellinger, Hernandez, Chapman (3B). 

betting that the increased payroll last year was a one time deal to try and keep Ohtani.  Doesn't make sense to me why that would work but I bet it did to them somehow.  
My guess is that payroll goes back to around 190ish.  Maybe it creeps up to around 200m.  Going through the roster as of today, I'm actually more concerned about the offense than I am starting pitching.  So much uncertainty with Ohoppe, Neto, Schanuel, Ward, Moniak, Rendon, and Regifo.  We've gotten burned hard by situations like that in the past.   The OF in particular has me very uncomfortable.  
I still view the bullpen as a hot mess personally.  I get the whole 'volume' argument, but that also has disaster potential. 
Again, I'm still in the mindset of trying to mitigate downside risk.  Contrary to what most might think, they actually did a pretty decent job of that last year.  It only failed when the injuries piled up and the guys traded for who were supposed to fill those gaps just failed.  
On the surface, the depth approach seemed not to work as well as we would have hoped, but I think we'd have lost 100 games if they didn't take that route.  Keep doing it.  It's really the best way for this team to have any chance at success.  

Exactly 
If Arte truly wants to win, he understands that in addition to the worth of the team, he also has over $2 billion additional net worth.
That plus ticket sales each year should be enough to continue to push against the tax and even go over a little.
If he can’t handle that heat, get out of the kitchen and sell the team to owner(s) with at least twice his net worth.
I think we can all agree that the Halos have far underachieved these past 8 seasons.   Arte Moreno is the one and only constant.