Early on, I felt like Arte spent top dollar for marketing appeal, regardless of how little baseball sense it made - just to achieve the magical 3 million attendance figure.
The Pujols and Hamilton signings are what opened his eyes. Attendance did not increase, nor did it plummet when those guys began to suck in 2013-2014.
Now, he's only spending enough to preserve the attendance status quo. He had to extend Trout to ensure that would happen.