Brent Maguire

Eh, I feel like there are two outcomes here. Either the rest of the team continues to play as they have all year, in which case we weren't likely going to make the playoffs regardless of how good Trout was, or this team reacts positively to this and rights the ship well enough to stay right where they're at, .500ish and in the WC hunt, at which point a Trout return in 6-8 weeks would still probably keep them around the same odds they have now. 
This team wasn't going to go anywhere with Mike Trout shouldering the entire team all year, so if they don't respond now, it probably wasn't going to happen even if he was healthy. And frankly, we have enough underperforming players that if a few do turn it around, I think we can stay in the mix. 
Wild Card is entirely up in the air still. Houston is the only team really running away with anything.

The sooner we quit caring about the traditional triple crown the better.  Trout/Pujols may help us in recognizing that RBI's are not an important stat in evaluating a hitter.  RBI has already robbed Trout of two MVPs.  If it happens again maybe the writers will start to figure out that you shouldn't grade down the best player in baseball over something out of his hands.

Schwarber is definitely going to bounce back some but he was always a tad overrated coming up. He's a well below average defender in left field, doesn't run the bases well and has some contact issues. Dave Cameron slapped a Mike Napoli comp on him at Fangraphs, which seems like a fair comparison. Napoli is a lifetime .249/.349/.477 hitter whose racked up 26.6 WAR. I think that's a realistic outcome for the career of Schwarber. 

They shouldn't draft with Trout's clock in mind. They should draft the best possible player, at least with a deep draft like this one. If either Adell or Beck falls to the Angels, I say go for it.

I have seen so many different names floated around at #10 that it could be anybody at this point but Jo Adell is one I've seen more than a few times now. He would fit the super high upside/high risk mold that makes sense for the future of this organization. 

Elvin Rodriguez is another young arm who could be throwing 92-94 with just a little uptick in velocity. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/daily-prospect-notes-53/

Elvin Rodriguez is another young arm who could be throwing 92-94 with just a little uptick in velocity. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/daily-prospect-notes-53/

The reports on Marsh and Rodriguez have been outstanding so far. I want to see them in real affiliated games already. 

You are literally the love child of CALZONE and Troll Daddy.

A 28 year old waiver pick up from 2016 is currently the best Angels starter. That's partially a knock on the Angels rotation but also a credit to Billy Eppler for acquiring a high octane arm and turning him into a starter whose maintaining his stuff and command late into games. 

Elvin Rodriguez is another young arm who could be throwing 92-94 with just a little uptick in velocity. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/daily-prospect-notes-53/

The reports on Marsh and Rodriguez have been outstanding so far. I want to see them in real affiliated games already. 

If they nail this draft and are active in the international spending period, it's hard to not see them moving into the 20-22 range for farm systems, which is a huge step forward for the organization. 

Relax, he's starting on Thursday.  Also... Barbaro is starting on Wednesday.
LOL...   So when other than this year have you seen his pussified pitch counts?   Certainly not last year when he threw 615 pitches in his 6 starts.   You didn't see it in 2015 either when he was coming back from the knee injury -- he hit 100 pitches in his very first start and averaged more than 100 over his first 9 starts.   He had two 99 pitch starts and one 98 pitch start during that run.   On the season he made 32 starts and topped 98 pitches 25 times..  Overall he threw 3250 pitches -- tell me what that averaged out to?  
For his career, Richards has averaged 98.5 pitches per start, Archer 99.6....    
As always -- good to see the facts supporting your hyperbole.

There's three ways to look at it. 1) They have a different approach to scouting and drafting than what the consensus is/has been. That was the case when they picked Trout. Sheesh I miss Eddie Bane. 2) They are going cheaper in the first round when there isn't that much of a difference between the talent level in the first round to allow them more money to persuade some kids to go away from college who might have gone, especially if they weren't drafted in the first round. 3) They clearly have a strategy (whether it is a good or bad strategy is debatable) and they have to take a certain player to fit into that strategy and they don't think they will be able to get him later on.
 
Clearly when they drafted Ward first, they went with strategy #3. And, clearly, last year with Thaiss, they went with strategy #2 (however, my point remains that they still viewed him as a better talent than their #2 or #3 round pick, just that there wasn't enough of a difference between him and the other players available to them in the first round).
 
This year, I really hope we go for the best player available and spend fully on that in our early rounds. If we have to go overslot to sign some of them, go cheaper in the later stages of the first 10 rounds so that we can get some true impact players. I hope we aren't ever drafting this low again, or at least for the foreseeable future, so, I don't want to waste it. Get the best impact players early on while we can, and if we have to scrimp on money, do so later when the picks are much less certain.

Yes and yes.
Trout is potentially worth that using a basic $/WAR system under the current average value of $8M-9M. Trout is worth a lot more than $500M but let's be honest a MLB team is not going to pay more than they have too and giving Trout $500M would break the mold of any contract ever given before even though it doesn't actually pay him what he is worth simply because he is a totally unique player not unlike A-Rod when he signed his 2nd mega-deal. That contract set the bar for all other contracts that followed. However no team was going to pay him more even if their metrics (and those metrics were not nearly as prevalent as they are now) told them he was worth it.
There is something I am not getting through to you. The $8M-9M is an AVERAGE. Mike Trout is 5-7 standard deviations outside the bell curve. He breaks the bell curve even. But any MLB team, even the Dodgers and Yankees will not pay him $800M. They will take the highest free agent contract ever awarded and build a financial model that justifies paying him 20%, 30%, 40% (whatever they decide) more than the highest contract ever delivered. It would be highly unlikely that they'd go higher that about $500M simply because it would raise the bar too high for all players in terms of ask price on contracts. Notice how the best players have over the last handful of years have slowly slipped in to the $200M range and only one, Stanton, has crested $300M. Harper will break $400M. Trout could break $500M.
You also seem to place a lot of emphasis on his family. I think you are placing too much but I agree that he really loves them and that could definitely be a factor. I'm just saying that money and family don't always drive decisions. Living in California is great for the most part (depends on where you live of course). Trout has a place in Newport Beach so I think you'll be hard pressed to admit that it isn't a draw to live here. None of us are in his head or friends with him so unless we hear from a reliable source that Mike Trout is dying to go back to New Jersey or he's dying to play for Philly or New York, or he misses his family too much or his wife/fiancee likes Texas or he thinks that the Angels will never compete I think we should run under the assumption that it is a coin flip. I am sure that Eppler has communicated to Trout and Trout's agent what their long term rebuilding plan consists of and how they want to build a winning team around Mike, the team will leave nothing to chance in trying to retain him. I'm betting he stays.

Great article. Until the end when Barry Bonds is the first name on the list of all-time greats. 

@tdawg87 after reading this article. 

 

Scotty, you and I are both thinking on the same page. I wrote a similar article late in April about these surprise performers. http://thesportsdaily.com/angels-win/the-angels-surprisingly-good-bullpen/
This is not only great news for this year but for the future as well. If Billy Eppler has a real skill in finding bullpen help on the cheap, that means more money can be allotted towards starting pitching, 2nd base, 3rd base, etc. moving forward. 

Houston is 27-12. I think the Angels would be in a better spot if most of their guys stayed healthy(most teams are in the same boat) but the division looks out of reach this season. Wild Card contender for sure if they were healthy. 

Yesterday's outing was the first one in Alex Meyer's career where he struck out 30% of the batters he faced and walked less than 10%. He also had a swinging strike rate greater than 10%, something he hasn't done a ton. Encouraging signs. 

He's just having a fluke career. 

Lorenzo Cain would be a pretty good get on a 4/80 deal. Bring in someone like Todd Frazier for 3B and a mid tier SP(Estrada) and you'd have the makings of a pretty good offseason.