Perry Minasian says the Angels would love to keep Shohei Ohtani. Of course they would. We’ve all seen Shohei. Here is Snowhei. This is what the FBM patch looks like on the Angels uniforms. Fangraphs did a deep dive article concerning Jaime Barria’s propensity to throw first pitch sliders. Shohei Ohtani also throws a lot of first pitch sliders according to one of the graphics in the article.
This article is an overview of the new rules which will begin in spring training and be enforced during the regular season. The Angelos family appear to have worked out their differences in Baltimore.
Ian Kinsler got a job as Special Assistant to Chris Young, the Rangers General Manager. Stephen Piscotty is crossing the bay. He just got a minor league contract with the Giants and has a spring training invitation. The Giants also signed Sean Newcomb to a minor league deal.
Max Fried lost his arbitration with the Braves and will have to make do with $13.5 Million. Ronald Guzman is attempting to become a two way player.
I wonder what possessed this guy to throw his bat into the safety net.
Last week’s Assault Player of the Week, Khalil Lee, just got DFAd by the Mets.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Not sure about the two step off rule. So I’m a runner, and the pitcher has already done his two tosses to first. What’s to stop me from taking a ginormous lead?
Nothing. And if the pitcher only gets two throws over I’m taking a longer lead than usual.
The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Though later it says that if he makes a third throw, and it’s an out, then it’s OK.
It looks like if the pitcher tried to game the system by throwing to second or just walking toward the runner himself, those count as “disengagements.”
I guess you need to save your pickoff attempts for when they really count.
Bored at work again. So I was wondering. If we pay Ohtani/Rendon/Trout how thin will we be at the other 22 spots on the roster?
What we are stuck with in 2024 with their millions listed:
1B
2B – Fletcher (6)
3B – Rendon (38)
SS
RF
CF – Trout (35.5)
LF
C – Stassi (7)
DH
Bnch – Drury (8.5)
Bnch
Bnch
SP1
SP2 – Anderson (13)
SP3
SP4
SP5
SP6
Pen – Estevez (6.75)
Pen
Pen
Pen
Pen
Pen
Pen
So. According to sportrac that’s $124,438,094 (signing bonuses included) now ad 50M for Ohtani. $174,438,094.
Now, yes, I know that “but actually” guy can point to some details about how Lux Payroll is actually calculated and what Arte seems to use as his budget indicators and blah bloop bloop. But we’re just dealing with big, raw chunks of payroll.
The Angels are at a 212M payroll this year. How high do I realistically expect an owner to go even if they are hurr durr “all in”? I say 242M. That would rank us 3rd this year. It’s waht the Phillies are spending now that they added Turner, etc. 242M.
Is that a payroll that Phillies fans should expect to be maintained for the next ten years? No. Neither should we.
So. In 2024. With Ohtani at 50M. What does that leave us? $67,561,906
That’s not too bad right? I mean, entire teams exist on that. It’s 3.8M per roster spot.
One last consideration. Our Arb2 players that year are: Sandoval, Ward, Walsh, Barria, Rengifo, Canning.
Why does that matter? Well, we need most of those guys to be good. But if they are good they will all make more than 3.8M in 2024.
So do you see this working out in a way that will really make you happy? Or will you just rail against an owner who won’t go to #2 in payroll…. then #1….? Or will you simply demand that 12 roster spots be filled by league minimum guys? Which ones? Do we have the guys for that?
I’ve heard PTP is stupid. So please, show me how a smart person will do this. I’m gonna look too if work stays slow, see if I can kind of prioritize spots to get a little extra payroll and find example players getting paid that on sportrac….
So. Upon some further looking….
I’m gonna go ahead and assume Jared Walsh continues his gold glove defense and bounces back to normal offensively this year. I’ll keep that. In his arb2 season I am going to slot him a bit lower lower than the D-Backs Christian Walker’s arb2 of 6.5M. I’ll say 5.5M.
I’m also going to go ahead and slot in all my league minimum guys. I will go with a ray of hope here and say 4 spots in our pen will be filled by league minimum arms of some sort from our system. So 4 pen spots. Making a good guess I’ll also say Detmers, O’Hoppe, Wantz and Mystery Arm Starter (Silseth?) will also be on the team.
So that’s 740,000 x 8 = 5.9M
That’s 9 more spots covered by 11.4M.
Just for the sake of easy I’m also gonna live in a dreamland where all of our arb1 players perform fairly well this year in addition to Walsh. So I’ll give Canning 3M, Rengifo 4.5M, Ward 6M and Sandoval 6.2M. I cut Barria and Wallac.
That’s 19.7M added for 4 players. Man, if all those players are good enough for fairly large arb2 raises that’s a steal.
So we have $67,561,906 – 31.1M = basically 36.5 million. And this is what we have….
1B – Walsh
2B – Fletcher (6)
3B – Rendon (38)
SS
RF
CF – Trout (35.5)
LF – Ward
C – Stassi (7)
DH – Ohtani
Bnch – Drury (8.5)
Bnch – Rengifo
Bnch – O’Hoppe
Bnch –
SP1 – Ohtani
SP2 – Anderson (13)
SP3 – Sandoval
SP4 – Canning
SP5 – Detmers
SP6 – Silseth
Pen – Estevez (6.75)
Pen – Torres
Pen – Murphy
Pen – Joyce
Pen – C Rod
Pen – Wantz
So. I have 36.5 M to spend on a SS, a 4th OF and a RF. And that’s if we can all agree that the above roster is any good and there are no spots we need to spend more on…
So, 12.2 M to spend on each of those three needs…. of course 4th OF will be cheap. That’s doable, you can get a sort of Andrew Benintendi/Hunter Renfroe type and even almost get a Dansby Swanson size payment into SS….. if those type players are available and want to be here. With all that evil.
I dunno. If you’re comfortable going with a pitching staff that thin, and you won’t be adding any big arms via FA for a long time, then the sign Ohtani and up the payroll to just extremely bloated instead of massively bloated may work….
as long as the team still turns a large profit at 242M payroll. No owner’s gonna eat SPAM for eight years to keep this going.
Rumors that the Halos are still up for sale? Should I keep saving up? Cal-Gon take me away!!
Source?
I believe it was a sourceless teaser on a legit story. Clickbait.
Sounds like most of MSM then.
The fight for starting 2B will be interesting, right. The competition for the 6th spot in the rotation will be fun to watch too.
Fo’ shizzle G-Pa!
Prediction: Griffin Canning looks good in Spring. We get our hopes up. He’s on the IL after two starts.
After slamming head first into Rendon’s knee for some damn reason.
Canning will hyperextend his forearm picking up a rosin bag…book it
You thinking about ST already like me or maybe even the WBC? I still have a lot of snow to melt off out there. Bigger bases will be interesting, but the no shift rule is going to really help the game out imho, as I hated the shift, hated that the players were not capable of going the other way more often, but that’s just me. No More Shift, Yessss!
Yo Angels management, let’s get the RF fence line back up. Shohei don’t need no stinkin’ low line. 😍
I’m looking forward to the shift limits also. I want to see guys stealing bases and contact hitting. I hope it happens.
I’m not even worried about base running. I think the risk aversion to running yourself out of innings isn’t going away and I don’t think young modern guys will be coaxed into practicing good base running skills.
I am just hoping that “The Hitter” reemerges from all this. Basically, I want guys with contact skills and gap power (and yes foot speed) to be valuable again. Guys like Lonnie Smith, Roberto Alomar, Paul Molitor. 15 HR/30 2B type guys. Then guys who don’t have Pete Alonso’s raw power can stop with the launch angle BS but still get paid and we can all stop watching 30 warning track fly ball outs a week.
Good morning my friends, we are getting closer to St, can’t wait to get started. 😀
Nice to see Ian Kinsler get a job with the Rangers as assistant to the GM. Good for him 🙂
I like the idea of the pitch clock; games will be much the more seamless and move along at a quicker pace.
No Robo Umps, good thing imho, keep the game with real Umps, just train them better maybe.
Trout projected to hit 39 HRs and Shohei 35 this coming season, I think both over 40, but that’s just me. Rendon 25 and Walsh 25 HRs and Ward and Renny 20 ea. Not unrealistic if we are to compete. BUT;
Pitching is where we will excel, especially with our SP.
Let’s speed up the calendar and get this show on the road 😃
Buenos dias G-Pa.
On the pitch clock G-Pa, I saw somewhere that it will only affect a very small amount of pitchers. We’ll see.