Pancake Bear

I seriously don’t know how Tony Clark still has a job. He is utterly incompetent. 

i'm just going to keep saying it, if the angels trade adell or marsh, then they're Facking up. these are the two guys who project to have a legit shot as above avg. major league outfielders offensively and defensively. the angels need their 5 years of cost control in order to afford these other pitchers that we are supposedly buying this offseason. their outfield budget looks pretty productive and reasonable when you think adell/trout/walsh at 38 million per year.

I only believe the rumors from the reddit guy

why go after a defensively challenged OFer who is effectively a DH at this point and then make a trade when you could just spend that money on a pitcher.  
this is a hard pass for me.  Just doesn't make a lot of sense.  

Eppler’s office is tight, but what about Castellanos’ side? They’re the ones who’d have reason to leak his market to generate more interest.
I’m skeptical, especially since this dude isn’t exactly a big news breaker. Still, he says he’s an insider, so I suppose it’s possible. The fit just doesn’t seem to be there, though. 

I don’t see any reason to believe this guy...
That said, Castellanos’ one bit that works in his favor is his “ability” to play RF, LF, 1B, 3B, DH. He could find at-bats at all of those positions here, and give us a bat capable of helping carry the offense if a major hitter at one of those positions goes down. His contract prediction, I think I saw 4/$64m?, isn’t really all that bad either. Not good. But not JD Martinez expensive or anything.
After this year and after next year, he could ease into 1B/DH more full-time too. 

Considering the market for Grandal last year, 3 might get it done. Predictions from other sites are split on 3 or 4 years. 

myers has 3/68.5 left.  i think the max Grandal costs you is that spread over 4 years.  

this is absolutely it.
we need major league starting pitching right now. eppler can continue to develop the farm system, but we need to get quality pitchers now.
to me, about the saddest thing possible for this franchise would be to say in twelve years that mike trout only got to the playoffs one time in his career.

If you're referring to Pujols and Upton, this is false.
I can guarantee you that Upton will be a top 5 LF as far as productivity in 2020 if he stays on the field, which last year was really his only injury riddled season with us in what was a freak injury a couple days before the season started. 
Pujols like last season played in less games than he ever has while remaining healthy for the entire season. I think we're going to see more of that trend, with the Angels working in Thaiss/Walsh at 1B to spell even more games from Albert in 2020 and 2021. He's good for 20 HR and a good chunk of RBI's. 
There's a solid chance that between a 1B platoon of Pujols, Walsh and Thaiss that between the three they slash .260/.340/.490 with 35 HR and nearly 100 RBI. Same goes for Upton. 
Both of the players you single out in threads are not the problem here.
Starting pitching has been the problem for a long time and needs to be addressed now. If it is, the Angels will be a playoff contender. 

There is no collusion. That obviously wasn’t what he was saying. GM’s are allowed to discuss who is available on their teams. What they aren’t allowed to share is how they’re valuing various free agents, etc. There is no evidence that that is what he meant. 
Tony Clark is just a moron who is trying desperately to save his job by grabbing onto anything he can. 

There is no collusion. That obviously wasn’t what he was saying. GM’s are allowed to discuss who is available on their teams. What they aren’t allowed to share is how they’re valuing various free agents, etc. There is no evidence that that is what he meant. 
Tony Clark is just a moron who is trying desperately to save his job by grabbing onto anything he can. 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

GM's have to communicate.  It would actually be stupid for a GM to divulge what they value a player at in terms of price and share that with their direct competition for said player.  Of course they aren't doing that.  The player's union is pissed because they missed the boat on a completely obvious trend by every team which is to use advanced metrics to evaluate players.  Something they should have easily anticipated and prepared for.  And because they didn't negotiate the last CBA taking that into account they cry collusion.   

There is no collusion. That obviously wasn’t what he was saying. GM’s are allowed to discuss who is available on their teams. What they aren’t allowed to share is how they’re valuing various free agents, etc. There is no evidence that that is what he meant. 
Tony Clark is just a moron who is trying desperately to save his job by grabbing onto anything he can. 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

except they went the extra mile when they saw an opportunity.  3 years in a row of their 40man costing over 200m.  The Nats are a terrible example of being conservative and 'waiting it out' when it comes to money.  
Even the Astros have an anticipated payroll over 200m for 2020 without doing a damn thing.  
Last year Boston was at like 240m.  
The dogs were over 200m
The Yankees over 200m.  
The cubs over 200m.  
When was the last time a low payroll team won a WS?  The Royals?  The blew couple of nuts and went straight back to the kids table.  
The Yankees stopped spending like they used to and have gone 10 years without a WS appearance.  
 
So let's acknowledge the first and most important point.  It's not that fucking easy.  The Astros have had an absolute juggernaut of a team with three 100 win seasons in a row and they've got 1 WS to show for it.  They also had to go through a 6 year period where the averaged almost 100 losses per year.  6 years of almost 100 losses.  
Pretty much every team that spends some time being a winner for awhile makes financial commitments that end up less than savory down the road.  There are a bunch of teams that make those commitments who don't end up winners.  The ones that do have a core of home grown players contributing as well whereas those that don't.  Don't.  
So it's not really about if.  It's about when.  You are gonna have to do it at some point whether its that big contract or that disruptive trade or or that lengthy extension or all of them and you're gonna feel  the pain of that at some point.  
So it ends up being all about timing.  The nats signed Scherzer prior to the 2015 season and proceeded to go 83-79.  This was Scherzer's 5th year with the team.  
The Red Sox came off a 91 loss and then an 84 loss season then signed David Price and traded for Chris Sale.  
You just have to hope you have the right people in place to pick the right guys, pay them the right amount, keep the right guys, and trade the right guys.  
Ask yourself this.  Does you think we have a better chance of winning a WS or even making the playoffs over the next 7 years with Gerritt Cole or without him?
 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

Andrelton Simmons wins the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

Sounds like Maddon will be lobbying Arte to extend Eppler beyond this season.  Fine with me.  I'm cool with 5 years of Eppler / Maddon, just no more 10 year contracts.

Anytime I worry about spending $30M + on Cole, I remember we paid nearly $30M last year for Cahill, Harvey, and Allen for -1.2 WAR. Cole's WAR last year was 6.8 according to Baseball Reference.
 

Max Scherzer has had 7 amazing seasons since he turned 29. 

I wouldn’t. We couldn’t afford Cole or any other good pitcher if we did that. We need Adell, even though he almost certainly won’t be as good as Betts, because he’s cheap. Unless Arte commits to a massive payroll raise, the money just doesn’t work. Throwing in two more pitchers makes it worse. 
In a different roster position, yeah, I’d probably do that deal if we could re-sign him. As the team and payroll are currently situated? I don’t even think twice about passing on that.