By Gitchogritchoffmypayroll
So we spent 21 million clams on Syndergaard. Could be really good, could be bad. We all hope this is just the start of a larger than expected spending season from the Angels. What if it’s not? Is all hope lost? Well, I wanted to see. What possible nuggets of gold can still shine in our pan this winter? We still need a SS, a back up catcher, at least another solid starter, and some bulls in the Arm Barn. We’d also like to make the play offs.
We started with 45 million. I’ve released Gosselin and Guera (+2.7M) so our starting total is 47.7M. Then we signed the God Of Thunder at 21M.
That leaves 26.7M to spend. So what now?
First, make a trade:
Angels get: Mike Minor (SP), Josh Staumont (RP), Cam Gallagher (C), Angel Zerpa (RP) and Joel Payamps (RP)
Royals get: Jo Adell, Jaime Barria, Taylor Ward, Luis Rengifo and David Calabrese.
Added payroll: 10.85M leaves 15.85M
Second, make a trade:
Angels get: Amir Garrett (LHRP) and Luis Cessa (RHRP)
Reds get: Jose Marte, Livan Soto, Brennan Lund and William Holmes
Added payroll: 3.5M leaves 12.35M
Now, sign some baseball players:
Sign Josh Harrison (UT) 3M (2 years/7M backloaded)
Sign Leury Garcia (UT) 3M
Sign Tyler Anderson (LHSP) 6M (2yrs/14M backloaded)
Added payroll: 9M leaves 3.35M
Now, I know, I know. “Where is Stroman? Gausman? Castillo, Gray, Bassitt or also the other Gray? Where is our championish shortstop? My needle is not moving.”
All I ask is that you remember that good teams are built on solid players around stars. We have stars. We need solid… and better pitching.
I too wanted Castillo. We don’t have the juice to trade for him. Well, how about Sonny Gray? Well, here’s the thing. I looked at what other orgs on the trade calculator could throw at Gray in a trade, we’d need to take on a contract like Moose or at least Akiyama in order to compete. That would mean no bullpen help, we couldn’t even afford to take on Cessa/Garrett at that point.
But the Royals want out of Minor’s contract. They want a cheap innings eater. They want a fast, powerful outfielder. Here’s the kicker, look at Minor’s numbers. Now look, really look, at Sonny Gray’s. Now realize, in the trade sims I had to give up Adell and Barria either way, but for Gray I had to give more, didn’t get any extra relief help, and had to pay about 10M more in payroll. In this scenario I add Staumont. If you don’t know him, look at him. So hot. So cost controlled. So ready to be a leverage arm and let Sam Bauchman become a starter in the minors.
These savings allow us to sign Alex Cobb. Or, if he costs too much, Tyler Anderson. Tyler is that girl you never notice in school, then see her at the lake in July with her glasses off and her hair down. She’s still not Becky Girven, but she’s way prettier than you realized. A fine back end pitcher. Don’t believe me? Can’t get Jon Gray’s long legs out of your mind even if they want 18M a year? Look at his career stats compared to ol’ Ty Ty.
If you are a geek like me and actually look at the scouting report on Zerpa, and check out the mixed level numbers on Payamps, they should get a shot in the pen and be an upgrade. Zerpa may even start someday. The Royals just have so many arms ahead of him. Garrett is a solid lefty reliever who had a meh year last year. Cessa is a solid reliever who can handle leverage innings that Staumont and Warren don’t. The Reds cut Wade Miley to save 1M dollars. They are already thinking of cutting Garret. I’ll give em some prospects for Garrett if they’ll give is Cessa too. And as an added bonus for all you fans who love seeing baseball players get into fights and act tough instead of doing it yourself, Amir Garrett isn’t willing to just fight a batter, he tried to fight the Pirates. All of them. How’s that treating your needle?
So we wanted to address pitching. This group of 8 pitchers, including Syndergaard, has a lifetime WHIP of 1.21 and a K/BB of 3.01. Final fun fact, in this plan, all these pitchers accept Thor will be here next year if we want them, many of them pre-arb. The point is to replace crap innings with better innings. This does that, albeit with some risk. Someone may get hurt or just suck. Though, on the happy end, only Minor is over 30 on this list (33).
The rest….
Josh Harrison. Josh Harrison is just plain cool. You want grit? How about a guy that plays everywhere? Is it OK if the grit can hit or is part of the fun of grit acting like the guy who has it doesn’t suck? Harrison is a leader with a winning heritage. Harrison is a solid 2B. Here in lies the big risk. Fletcher moves to short. His arm, it’s a risk. We’d have to see how it goes. Velazquez is a solid defensive sub/off day starter at both spots. Mayfield’s still at SLC.
Cam Gallagher. Say hello to your #2 catcher who is not Bemsuzbooki and smile. Get a whiff of that sweet 77 OPS+ and rtot/yr that isn’t in the negative.
Leury Garcia. He can hit OK from both sides of the plate. He plays like 7 positions… just none of them that well… well, RF and 3B OK. But he’s multi purpose depth. Chris Taylor has an OPS+ 28 points higher and sucks at many of the positions he plays. He will also cost four times as much. Note: If some guy like Rosario or Canha falls down into the 6-7M range for some reason I’d snap them up instead.
Oh. And we have 3.35M to spare.
| Starters | Bench | Rotation | Bullpen |
| 1B Walsh | Gallagher | Ohtani | Staumont |
| 2B Harrison | Velasquez | Sandoval | Cessa |
| 3B Rendon | Garcia | Syndergaard | Warren |
| SS Fletcher | Minor | Garrett (L) | |
| RF Trout | Anderson | Mayer | |
| CF Marsh | Suarez | Zerpa (L) | |
| LF Upton | Junk/Naughton | Payamps | |
| C Stassi | Canning/Detmers | Wantz | |
| DH Ohtani |
I like it a lot – very clever and deep thinking. You worked well within your hypothetical budget constraints. I also think the trades are within reason. I believe the reality is one of Marsh or Adell has to go to obtain pitching via trade.
The only thing I will say is that Minor’s numbers are not really similar to Gray’s in my opinion. I’d much rather have Gray and am not a huge fan of Minor. But as you point out that comes at a cost. And Gray has pitched most recently in the NL which makes his numbers better.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but how different are Minor’s numbers to Grays? Honestly, I was a bit curious why the simulator has Gray’s value at over 28 and Minors at 1.9 when Gray is just a little cheaper over 2 years. Minor’s value was what allowed me to get Staumont, that was the key.
who do you see as the closer?
Staumont, primarily, with Cessa, Warren and Mayers getting time as well. The Tampa Rays method. Hope is not a plan, so I wouldn’t list it here, but Amir Garrett actually has some filthy stuff, he just walks too many guys. If he were to improve in that area he’d suddenly be a viable closer too.
But I’m pretty solidly in the “leverage innings” camp. We don’t need a closer, we need three guys who can come in with a man on second and one out in a one run game and get five outs while we hopefully score a couple more with all those bats. We may need one of them in the sixth inning, then another in the 9th, then another in the eighth inning the next day, etc. I think that’s how you beat offensively threatening teams in a three game series.
Staumont would be a good “get”. I don’t think that’s a real English word but…eh.
I like Adell and would cry for a few minutes if we traded him but that’s quite a deal.
Really don’t want to part with Adell. Gut tells me he is an elite talent and it will be proven sooner than later. Another big jump in development in 2022..
Going to request Gitchogritch swap Jordon for Adell in this trade, even knowing we will need to add another player or higher level prospect.
Interesting and well done…Perry should be reading CTPG daily for the IIWPM..his job might be easier.
Yeah. I’d like to swap Adell for Adams too. The trouble is, on the simulator, it may allow you to pile up a 3 “4 point” prospects to equal Adell’s 12 points, but the Royals probably won’t. They will want offense to go with the pitching that’s arriving this year in hopes they mature together. Waiting 2 years to see if Adams ever gets good won’t sell to KC. Especially if you’re getting a starter they know they can trade AND Staumont.
Their OF has sucked. In this trade PTP can sell them on an OF of Ward, Adell and Benintendi that’s solid this year if not next.
Using your best reliever for the high leverage inning(s), wherever those may be, was a strategy the brilliant Bill Rigney used when he managed the early Angels. He called that guy his “stopper,” and his stopper was usually Art Fowler.
This is an excellent scenario: not a lot of flash (since we did get the thunder and lightning…bad pun?) but adds a lot of very solid players who provide depth all around. Something tells me that, with the commitment to Thor, the D-cell ship may have sailed, and I’d rather have several solid players like this.
Why would Minasian choose 130-ish innings of Syndergaard in 2022 instead of three years of Raisel Iglesias?
Maybe he thinks it’s easier to replace Raisel with cheaper options, while even a meh starter like Joe Musgrove is a very expensive commodity? Not sure. I didn’t even ask myself that because Thor’s signed. That’s the reality I was working with.
Before Thor I actually tried to work something like this out with signing Scherzer for 32M a year… it was really hard. Could still add Garret and Cessa maybe, and some sort of Starter like Anderson, again, maybe. But Velazquez would start at short, etc.
It doesn’t matter:. Syndergard has been signed and the rules are that there is only so much room in the budget, and getting several inexpensive pieces with upside makes more sense than Syndergard, Iglesias, and a few random dudes making league minimum. Now, things will be different if PTP really has 60-70 million to work with, but i probably wont believe it even if I see it
This situation is exactly the type I would see Arte going over budget on though, if he ever does. Get Thor, get another starter, get a solution to SS. Oh, what’s that? Raisel will come back for 3/50? OK, go over budget some for that.
Raisel’s important. He’s also a known commodity. I think this is the most likely type of spending increase for ol’Cheap n Evil.
I pray to God that that is the case.
I like this scenario a lot. This would give Minasian plenty of time to find an upgrade at SS and one more impact arm or two to create a beast of a team for 2023. Like you, I am a Harrison fan. Another unheralded veteran I would love to acquire is Starling Marte. Maybe use that leftover 3.35 MM, backload a short, multi-year deal, and eat the rest of J-Up’s contract? Offer him an assistant hitting coach job to smooth over hurt feelings?
Marte
Trout
Ohtani
Walsh
Rendon
Oh my!
I’d love Starling Marte, but there’s no way that guy’s backloading 12-15M this year. He’s gonna have a lot of strait quality offers cause the CF market is mush.
I thought Arte cared about the lux tax cap, not the actual payroll…. And backloading doesn’t do crap for lux tax.
Through out the vast ocean of complaints about Arte I’ve heard both. That Arte won’t pay the tax, and that Arte won’t let raw payroll pass a certain limit. It could actually be both. I mean, I like Marte, but he’s way over to the left of what the team needs… unless he can pitch. Marte’s not gonna get 200M but he is going to get a large contract… like Upton’s but a little smaller.
At least that’s my guess when I look at CF market. 5/100, something like that.
All that aside, you’d have to backload a ton to sign Marte with 3+ million left in the budget. Even if it turned out Arte gives us an extra 10M I’d skip Marte and try to sign more pitching. Maybe skip Harrison and try to get Villar and a pen arm. But some pitching.
Always pitching. Forever and ever.
Really nice bullpen. With the way the game is played nowadays, getting 6 innings from a starter is a plus. At best you need two guys to get to your closer.
My secret favorite part of this plan, though I don’t think wishes are plot points, is that this would work like gangbusters if we started to implement it and then we got a larger salary infusion. Turns out we can spend 190M? Fine, try to sign Stroman instead of Anderson. Turns out we can spend 187M? Go get Knebel… or Mark Canha… or Chafin.
We have all our bases covered fairly well, so any uptick in payroll allows upgrades instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul. AND we don’t have to re-invest all this again next season (unless of course all these guys suck). By the time Staumont, Cessa, Warren etc are expensive we will have some of those newly drafted arms fully seasoned. We could even trade a guy like Staumont once his arb number gets high for prospects and replace him with that kid from Vandy, for example.
So mutch depth to this. Great job! Now imagine your plan, but with arte giving you the ok to get the pretty girl!!
No. Arte only approves of semi-pretty girls…. and Buicks, not Caddies, Buicks.
I regretted I couldn’t figure out a good trade for Cessa last year.