Pancake Bear

Why do you think direction hasn’t been decided?  They brought in Washington to compete now. They aren’t changing to your preferred direction based on Ohtani. 

At this point i want to see Ohtani resigned just to hear the bellyaching from fans of other teams.

Per reports, bidding is already over $500m. Even at 12 years that's an aav over $40/. I probably wouldn't go over 500. It's just too much. 

The reality is that as much as I'd hate to see Ohtani on another team, it's hard to justify both the aav and term for a guy who is unlikely to stay heathy and elite (to the degree he would need to do to justify the salary) if we want to compete unless Arte goes nuts like Cohen with the payroll, which is extremely unlikely. 

Who do you think will be the biggest name traded? Soto to Toronto
Who will sign during the Winter Meetings? With what team? Ohtani. Head says Dodgers, heart says Angels.
Who will the Angels trade for? Shane Bieber.
Who will the Angels sign? Candelario.

Who do you think will be the biggest name traded? Soto to Toronto
Who will sign during the Winter Meetings? With what team? Ohtani. Head says Dodgers, heart says Angels.
Who will the Angels trade for? Shane Bieber.
Who will the Angels sign? Candelario.

I will let the people paying the salaries decide that.  Maybe I am wrong, but at this point in Moreno’s ownership, I believe the “payroll room” can be quite different year to year depending primarily on two things (and the relationship between the two):
1). His personal opinion of how effective the spending would be on actual wins and losses
2). How long he intends to keep the team.
It doesn’t seem all that unrealistic to see them spend a lot on this team should Moreno view the next 1-3 years as his chosen time to go for it.
I have no idea what they are willing to spend right now and I don’t believe the long term history of what they have spent in the past is necessarily a reliable indicator. . . because we don’t really know how long Moreno wants to keep the team and/or how thirsty he is to win immediately.

I think you stumbled onto the wrong site. You need to take that left turn at Albuquerque for Dodgerswin. 

I think you stumbled onto the wrong site. You need to take that left turn at Albuquerque for Dodgerswin. 

It'll be us or the Dodgers. I really don't think he'll go to Canada and I do not think he'll go to Chicago. Obviously that could be way wrong but I believe he'll stay on the west coast, as well. 
Does he go to the team that he thinks is a piece or two away with a hell of a farm system and an already stacked lineup? Or does he buy into what Perry is pitching, the youth we have coming up the pipeline, and maybe get an assurance from Arte/Perry that they're going to go all in if he commits and finish what he started here in Anaheim? I'm going to continue to believe he's going to stay with the Angels. 

Ohtani will get a truck load of cash, but I don't think it comes down to the highest bidder. 

First, defensive metrics are the murkiest of all stats.  BB-Reference's version of WAR focuses on DRS, FGs on UZR they are pretty similar, but DRS throws in subjective analysis using stringers to determine the difficulty by employing Baseball Info's Solutions, "Good Fielding Plays/Defensive Misplays (GFP/DME) system", it does this to try to be more comprehensive but in doing so it can cause some double dipping which they then employ yet another methodology to try to factor that out.  It's there where the differences (however slight) make for "fuzzy" results and what many see as bWAR overrating a player's actual defensive production. 
Offensively they grade around OPS+ whereas fWAR uses wRC+ which is built on wOBA and if I have to explain to you why that makes one stat better than the other then there are multiple discussions that need to be had before even starting on the differences in bWAR and fWAR.  wOBA is built around the proven reality that getting on base (not making an out) is the biggest factor to scoring runs while OPS is treating OBP and SLG equally.
fWAR had Moniak as a 1.5 player.  It seems pretty clear that the version properly adjusting for the importance of not making outs is giving you a better idea of how well Moniak performed.  
Defensively it's back to the slight difference and added components.  DRS uses rPM (runs minus plus saved) to rate the player against the league average -- UZR uses RngR (range above runs average) to try to do the same thing -- both of these stats get their data from the same source (BIS), and RanR like rPM gives Moniak a positive score so it comes down to how much you really want to buy into subjective human analysis vs math.  
I don't know of a single person who prefers bWAR to fWAR.
And yet we see so few do that.
Total number of OFers in all of MLB to post 2-3 WAR seasons among qualifiers 
2018 - 41, 
2019 - 36 
2021 - 32
2022 - 30
2023 - 34
Here are the actual names per year if you want to try to find the "plenty of guys" taken off the scrapheap who managed a 2-3 WAR season.
2018 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2018&season=2018&pagenum=1
2019 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2019&season=2019&pagenum=2
2021 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2019&season=2019&pagenum=2
2022 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2022&season=2022
2023 https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pos=of&team=0&pageitems=30&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2023&season=2023&pagenum=2
More importantly, here are all the Angels OFers to produce a 2.0 fWAR season since 2012 when Trout came up
Trout (every year). 
Hunter (2012)
Trumbo (2012)
Calhoun (2014, 2015, 2016, 2019)
Goodwin (2019)
Upton (2016, 2017)
Ward (2022)
12 seasons, 36 starting spots, another 1-2 back up spots, so anywhere between 36-60 spots and it's happened exactly once with Brian Goodwin.

I don't have any interest in discussing whether or not Yelich at 125 mil from age 33-37 (LOL), would be worth doing.  But let's not downplay just how valuable and yes RARE a legit 2 fWAR player is.  The Trout era Angels will likely be a case study on just how valuable and important a team full of 2 WAR players is .vs the eggs in one (or two) baskets approach the Angels have followed.
Sorry for the long post full of abbreviations and information very few of you likely have any interest in but out of respect for all parties involved I figured I'd do it this way than just say BULLSHIT! and dropping some snark... (like always)
Thank you and may God bless the Angels during these winter meetings.
"Hallelujah, Holy Shit! -- Where's the Tylenol!" 

Five more years. He kinda peaked in 2018-2019. Hasn't been anywhere close to that before or since. He's a solid enough player, but not worth $130m ($26m/) for the next five years.
That said, assuming he's bounced back from the odd 2020 (small sample) and 2021 (back injuries), he's still serviceable. He fills a need in the outfield and would allow us to trade Ward to fill other holes, who may or may not have decent value still (BTV says he does). Also, the end of his contract coincides with Trout and Rendon. 
I'd probably want Milwaukee to pay at least a small amount of Yelich's yearly salary, maybe $5m per.

First, thank you for taking the time to think it through and coming back with a reasoned response. I appreciate that.
Last year, Mickey Moniak put up a 2.2 WAR season (according to Baseball-Reference) for league minimum.
Take Jo Adell's numbers...he posted 0.3 WAR in 58 ABs. That's almost a 2 WAR pace like Heyward if you stretch out the ABs to the same as Heyward and Moniak.
Every year at the end of ST there are plenty of guys that a team can get out of the scrapheap that can and probably would put up 2-3 WAR (not guaranteed that they would, but have the potential, but the same is true for Heyward and Yelich) who can potentially put up 2-3 WAR for near league minimum. So. if you average out all the FAs like Heyward and all the non-tender candidates, etc. the cost for an OF who can put up those numbers on a year-by-year basis isn't really that high. 
I would certainly say that Yelich is the better bet over Heyward. But is it $19 million better? I think for around $11-12 million, we could get close to Yelich on a yearly basis. That's how I came up with my gross overpay on Yelich's contract. 
And, remember, Yelich is 31, which is when most OFers start to level out and then decrease by 34. We'd have ages 32-37, so, how do you project him aging? (I think he will hold up, which is why I'd do the deal).
How much of an overpay do you think Yelich's contract is on a yearly or total basis? And, how do you justify it?
I'm willing to take on ALL of Yelich's contract because it's only my money (and it's not my money!!!!), and we get a year of Burnes to work with him and Borass to work out an extension. Plus, it solves several of our holes for less than what we will most likely spend on Ohtani. 
Now, to be clear, I'd still go after Ohtani, and I believe Arte would go over the luxury tax to keep the unicorn because his international star power has the economic draw to jusity it. But, thre rest of my plan was to sign JD Martinez and improve the BP. All of what I'm saying can be done without breaking the luxury tax and would make us a better team. 
I don't want to argue Yelich's defense, as there are widely varying opinions on that. Let's just say it's average for LF or ignore it entirely, as he's not elite enough to justify him being a glove first defender.

Where is the age, history, and the rest of his stats? Not enough info there to make a real pick between the two. 

If we had a healthy Trout and Rendon playing at least somewhat close to what they did when last healthy (Rendon 2020, Trout pre-injury 2022), that would go a long way towards making the lineup elite, even without any significant additions. I'm not expecting that, but if it happened, it would be huge. The reality is we never really had a healthy Trout and Ohtani performing at a high level at the same time for very long. It was always either one or the other. 

Really excited about Enright. What I dig is that he's got a good pedigree, being mentored by a guy like Strom. He also seems to have a good sense of what went wrong last year and what these guys are capable of.
My favorite part of the Q&A, though, was when he said the front office is backing off their one-size-fits-all approach and leaving the data in the hands of the coaching staff to appropriate as needed. I.e. Perry is hiring coaches he trusts and then trusting them to disseminate the information they're getting from the analytics department in whatever way will be of most benefit to the pitchers. That all gives me hope that we'll see some of these guys get back to where they were or maybe even take a step forward. 

Really excited about Enright. What I dig is that he's got a good pedigree, being mentored by a guy like Strom. He also seems to have a good sense of what went wrong last year and what these guys are capable of.
My favorite part of the Q&A, though, was when he said the front office is backing off their one-size-fits-all approach and leaving the data in the hands of the coaching staff to appropriate as needed. I.e. Perry is hiring coaches he trusts and then trusting them to disseminate the information they're getting from the analytics department in whatever way will be of most benefit to the pitchers. That all gives me hope that we'll see some of these guys get back to where they were or maybe even take a step forward. 

Five more years. He kinda peaked in 2018-2019. Hasn't been anywhere close to that before or since. He's a solid enough player, but not worth $130m ($26m/) for the next five years.
That said, assuming he's bounced back from the odd 2020 (small sample) and 2021 (back injuries), he's still serviceable. He fills a need in the outfield and would allow us to trade Ward to fill other holes, who may or may not have decent value still (BTV says he does). Also, the end of his contract coincides with Trout and Rendon. 
I'd probably want Milwaukee to pay at least a small amount of Yelich's yearly salary, maybe $5m per.

Chuck in shambles. 

Really excited about Enright. What I dig is that he's got a good pedigree, being mentored by a guy like Strom. He also seems to have a good sense of what went wrong last year and what these guys are capable of.
My favorite part of the Q&A, though, was when he said the front office is backing off their one-size-fits-all approach and leaving the data in the hands of the coaching staff to appropriate as needed. I.e. Perry is hiring coaches he trusts and then trusting them to disseminate the information they're getting from the analytics department in whatever way will be of most benefit to the pitchers. That all gives me hope that we'll see some of these guys get back to where they were or maybe even take a step forward. 

And the Rangers are still a bottom of the AL West team in 2023. Except...oh....wait for it...teams can improve. 

I disagree, they need to get a TOR arm, and a MVP Caliber hitter. They will not rebuild while Arte owns the team, they are retooling each year and expect to compete. 

The Angels are in on Snell. The Angels are in on Cease. They're enamored with Burnes. Either these reports are all bullshit or the Angels are prioritizing a TOR arm this offseason. 
Wondering how much Ohtani is clogging up the market, though. Obviously just a DH in the short term, but the financial commitment he'll require probably means any team in on him wants that situation resolved before looking at any other big contracts. 

FWIW I think Anderson could bounce back this year, and we’d be selling low if we dumped him now, unless it was helping consummate a larger deal. I don’t think he’s going to be anywhere what he did in 2022, but think there’s a good chance he pitches well enough to get moved at the deadline.