If the only goal is to reach $100 million payroll using the Trade Simulator without regard for other consequences (and whether the other team would conceivably bite), the task is actually quite easy. According to Spotrac, the top contracts by value for the Angels are as follows (in Lux Tax terms):
Trout: $35,541,067
Rendon: $35,000,000
Ohtani: $30,000,000
Loup: $8,500,000
Tepera: $7,000,000
Stassi: $5,833,333
Fletcher: $5,200,000
On top of these, MLBTR has the following arbitration projections:
Canning: $1,100,000
Rengifo: $2,400,000
Barria: $1,200,000
Wallach: $800,000
Walsh: $2,700,000
Ward: $2,900,000
Sandoval: $2,800,000
So, the goal is simple: trade as many as possible of these players as possible to any team, as long as the net result brings the payroll down to $100,000,000 (while ignoring such pieces of reality like NTC). Spotrac’s projected payroll for the Angels in 2023 (ceteris paribus) is $157,114,833, so let’s start from there.
Rendon has trade value of -132.3. That’s more than Ohtani, Detmers, and Ward (our top 3 trade values) combined. So he’s not moveable.
But Trout and Ohtani are, so here are some ideas:
Trout to NYY for Hicks, Cabrera, Wells, and Pereira:
In terms of money, this saves about $25 million. Hicks, if he ever gets healthy, becomes the CF option (but he probably won’t). It does get us 3 good young players. Oswaldo Cabrera joins possible starting mixture in the IF. Everson Pereira is a near ready OF who becomes an option as early as 2023 in the corners. Wells is a medium term catching option behind O’Hoppe.
Ohtani to LAD for Pepiot, Vargas, Graterol and Frasso:
Pepiot joins the mix for the 2023 starting rotation, Vargas becomes a RH power hitting 1b (and in a pinch, 3b and LF options…but he’s not expected to be an option at 3b, despite Dodgers giving him time there). Graterol becomes a late inning BP option with stuff, experience, and (still) youth (and upside). Frasso is a longer term BP option with power stuff. This saves about 27 million, since only Graterol is even arbitration eligible.
Ward Stassi and Loup to CLE: Civale, Nolan Jones, and Cody Morris:
CLE needs outfield help and, possibly, a veteran catcher to back up their top catching prospect Bo Naylor (and, no, in reality, they’ll never take on this much money). Nolan Jones gives another near major league OF option with power, this time, LH. Morris is a power arm (with health issues, it seems) who is still thought to have mid rotation upside if he puts things together. Civale, of course, is someone who can slot into the rotation now (his numbers aren’t great in 2022, but his peripherals are no worse than last year when he had better numbers overall. This saves us about $12.5 million.
Tepera, Herget, and Stefanic to PHI for Baker, Crouse, McGarry, and Miller.
Herget has trade value of 18! (Higher than Trout). This, I do not trust, and I might as well try to dump him for something while I could. Tepera has been good enough that he has 0 trade value and I needed to find someone with small positive trade value to even out this trade, so the Plumber needs to go to Phillies (do we even get to keep him after this season? he has been in the minors for a while…) These are not exactly top, top prospects. McGarry, Crouse, Miller, and Baker are all high upside guys with great stuff and some question marks, who might be ready next year or not. Probably headed to the bullpen. I do think cheap bullpen depth with options are great, so if you can pile up on interesting but flawed arms for what are essentially spare parts (and an expensive spare part at that), I’m all for it.
So, at the end of the day, after all these trades that are of varying degrees of feasibility (tending to the not so likely side…although I do think Dodgers would and could deal for Ohtani), payroll would be down to just under $90,000,000, and there’s actual depth in some needy positions (except in CF), and all these were put together going through the Trade Simulator semi-blindly with only some quick online references for the information on the prospects being obtained.
I didn’t even read past the first couple of paragraphs when I saw the Trout and Ohtani trades. They are not even slightly conceivable because you are GIVING them away. Again, the task is ridiculous and people are discussing it only because somebody (Gitch) pulled it out of his ass, and he’s a loser who just wants to wallow in mediocrity.
“Tearing it down” is not where this team is at right now. If and when that happens it will be because the new owner has made the decision to take that course. Until that happens it makes no sense to talk about who we should give the two best players in the game away to…
I just turned mine in yesterday so it’ll probably be posted at some point and you can go from ash milkshake bitter to strait ipecac shots.
You just don’t get it do you? The whole idea came up amongst some guys on a internet board who said that determining what the angels payroll and plan for this off season is tough because so much is up in the air. It’s the off season (for us) and we’re bored. So I half seriously said that if we aren’t sure about the parameters for the IIWPMs yet but you want something to tinker with, try figuring out what you’d do if Newonwerz demanded that the payroll get cut down to 100M. Like when you get in a flight simulator and practice crash landings. But, as is the case with many non-obtuse concepts, you just don’t seem to be able to grasp that and it really makes you pissy.
We are all very sorry we have failed to police our wandering thoughts in a way that keeps your ass from puckering. Please don’t take us to the Lubyanka. The Angels FO isn’t actually going to do any of the things we’re suggesting and if they do it won’t be because we suggested it.
You’re going to be OK. Now go take your Lithium and Clozapine.
To me, that actually is the point. Of the troika of the big salaries, only Trout and Ohtani are the only tradeable pieces AND they are not going to being the kind of return we’d like.
Personally, I took that to mean that realistically shedding payroll is impossible. While I appreciate the logic of trading Ohtani, I’m not so sure if that can turn out well. (Although the same us true with the other outcome, ie Ohtani walks).
Or, in other words, there’s no “good” way out of this mess except for manna from heaven, and I’m not so sure if we are the chosen people.
I’ll add that the exercise is actually extremely simple: the only way to get to the payroll goal is to trade Trout and Ohtani. That’s math. There’s no other way. I think the useful info out if this are:
1. What are the assets other teams have in general?
2. What are the packages that we can deal besides Trout and Ohtani that we can imagine? I think getting hung up on “Trade Trout/Ohtani? That’s madness!!” is silly because that is the only way to make this happen.
Kind of. Though you can also sweeten the “mega trade” pot…. say Ohtani, Ward and Sandoval to the Cardinals for a bigger pile of players, then flip some of those prospects along with some of ours to lose Rendon? It’s hard, but may be doable.
I actually looked at Ohtani, Sandoval, Juarez and Herget to the Rays so they can make a big push for a title and give us a pile of young talent.
My real life preference is to keep Trout because I want him to be my best friend and go camping with me and we can sing songs together and cook some stew. But yeah, trimming down the payroll by all that much and keeping anyone I like was tough…. in fact, I kept almost nothing I like in my version of the game.
I will say that I keep seeing folks comment to the effect of “No team can possibly trade away this much talent and gert away wid it!” or “No team has eveh torn down like this! You’d have no fanz!”
Which is true, for a couple years. Until you start winning. But when your attendance has already slipped by more than half a million a year I’m not sure paying 120M a year in salary to maintain 2M in attendance is any smarter.
Actually, I really like your idea, which is a far more comprehensive long term scheme than anything so far. If you tear down big time and send off the golden idols to the heathens, you (the GM) would be crucified one way or another and there’s no point in not taking things to the logical extreme. We, as fans, are naturally averse to it and can’t bring ourselves to go that far.
I know these are done for fun but wow. The results could yield a team that wins 30 and loses 130.
The Yankees trade is painful. No on Hicks. Don’t really want the others either.
No to trading with Dodgers and don’t want Graterol.
The rest are trades of anyone who is any good. There are salary restrictions, but this avalanche of salary dumps is brutal.
The entire bullpen has been traded plus the three best hitters and others.
You have formed a triple A team. Hopefully it will never get to this. No one will watch if it does.
30 would be optimistic with this roster. Not at all a fun exercise, but it does force you to look up what kind of prospects other teams have.
How about the Angels become a farm team for the Dodges then we go over there to see out favorite players?  đŸ˜‰ 
I think Ohtani to LA makes the best sense. They have interesting pieces. I’d look into adding Rendon to that deal. Dodgers were known to be in on Rendon when he was a FA and Justin Turner is done.
Good work on the CLE trade. That one actually makes a little sense in the long run and is feasible. The other two I don’t think would happen. Thanks for also taking a stab at this. It at least gives us and the site some fun things to do as we wait for our new lord and master to sign on the dotted line.
Like I was saying, I put this together semi blindly in about 30 minutes, without much thought of how realistic the trades might be. (Although I couldn’t really keep the reality out of mind for the LAD/NYY scenarios.). As Jeff said, this is probably close to the maximum teardown we can semi realistically achieve: after these, there’s nobody left on the team who are making good (beyond arb) money other than Fletcher. If you were slightly more aggressive in tearing down, so I suppose you could theoretically hit $80 million, but I don’t think that could ever actually happen so I stopped short of that.
I wanted to shore up OF and pitching options and that, I suppose, shows. I am a bit bummed that there weren’t more pieces that I liked to add to the IF and CF mix that I could find even in the full fire sale exercise.
PS. Any GM who actually does something like this will get torn to pieces and deservedly so, but this is a theoretical exercise in how far we can go tearing down and what available pieces might be at a quick glance.
Yah. This is either a GM who is being told to do it by an outgoing ownership or a brand new GM and owner and the GM’s been told his job is safe but he needs to do the tear down before he gets to build.
Either way it’s a public bloodletting. but it’s been done before and teams come out of them fine once they start winning again.
Thanks for your work on this. It’s appreciated!
A full fire sale. Some of these aren’t realistic but they do give some idea about player values, or lack thereof.
Thanks for adding to the site.
Good thoughts. I personally would rather see Ohtani in SD as opposed to LA, but if you could get a haul from the talented Dodger Org, that’s not a bad idea.
Trading Trout is definitely aggressive but NY would likely bite. Trout would probably waive his no trade clause as well.
The hard part of doing any of this is that you have to ignore anything that currently feels good because that player has value. If you want to build solid long term depth you have to trade who ever will get you the most value per trade to whom ever will give you that value even if it’s a team you hate.
The idea being you’re gonna spend a couple years with your pants down anyway, so you might as well own it and then try to build a team that will wreak unholy vengeance on your division for ten years when the pain is done.
You sir, obviously put a lot of work into this dissertation. I can only imagine the amount of hours this took.
Therefore, I feel compelled to grant you your PhD in Baseball Operations.
You can now call yourself Doctor of Baseball Operations.