“With money and power comes great responsibilty; to get butts in the seats now, but maintain that the future is on the way”
Welcome to my version of “If I were the Angels GM. In order to rosterbate responsibly, we will use the following guidelines:
- Payroll is to be $210 Million
- Use either MLBTR’s estimated free agent salaries or their counterparts at Fangraphs
- You can clear roster space by non-tendering players
- Run all trades through the trade simulator at Baseball Trade Values dot com
- (My rule) Show the full 40-man roster with payroll
It’s my favorite time of the year. A chance to sharpen my pencil, look at the players on the field, and come up with a plan to make this Halo team better. Let’s look at what we have: Gm-no, Manager -no, get rid of Arte -techicanlly no, 2027 season -it doesn’t look good. This must be the best time to start planning for your team and the 2027 season right? I do believe that this sale is going to be finalized and that we will be able to move forward with a blend of buying power now, with a mix of building a pipleline of good young talent for a championship window in 2029. My goal this year is to use the open payroll to improve the team enough to compete for a weak AL West title, sell tickets, and still aquire young talent. I also don’t want to block anyone long term. I need to keep an eye on our 40-man as we have players in the minors who could be lost to the rule 5 draft. (That last sentece was so satisfying to write!)
My needs this year are the following:
- Deciding who to keep, extend, or trade (kiss, marry, kill) of the following players: Schanuel, Detmers, Neto
- Aquire via FA the position that is traded away
- Top of the line starter to build this SP rotation into our strength
- Aquire a CF via FA or trade on a short term contract that doesn’t hurt the overall budget
- Aquire more future talent
- Clean up our 40-man to make sure our talent can’t get poached in the rule 5
Waive off 40 man
The following players will not be offered a contract, but still could have non rostered invites to ST: Teodosio, Campero, Porter, Lowe, Siri, Weiman, Saucedo, Martin, Kerry
This gives me a lot more room to add players to the 40 that I’m going to need.
Trades
I mentioned kiss, marry, kill earlier and here is what I decided: I’m going to kiss and keep Schanuel as is. He’s cheap, cost controlled and won’t bring me a ton in return
I’m going to marry Detmers. Top of the line pitching is so hard to get and I’m going to roll with him long term. I would sign him to a longer deal, buying out next year arb and extending another 2 years after.
I’m killing and trading Neto. The swing and misses and the injuries are just too much in comparision to the 30/30 potential he has every year. He’s also going to bring me a haul as I think I’ve got a local team that would want him.
Angels trade Zach Neto to the Dodgers for Kyle Tucker (OF), Mike Sirota (OF) #3, Alex Freeland (3B) Ronan Kopp (SP), Kellon Lindsey (SS/2B) #13 and $73.66 million in cash.
Here is why this works for both teams.
LAA: We are using buying power to bring in Tucker. At first you might think wow that’s a lot of money we are getting back. Let me explain why and how it’s being used. First of all Tuckers salary for 2027 is a whopping $82 million!! He then has two more years at $53.5 million left each year, plus another $30 million in deffered dollars. So the cash in the deal will work this way with the halos; We use $31 million for the 2027 season, $30 million that we collect when the defferments happen ($3million from 2036-2045) and we collect $12.66 million to pay Rendon his first year of deferments. (Something we forgot to add to the rules and the budget!) So the Dodgers give us $43.66 in 2027 and get Neto for about $6.6 million this year. The halos for taking on $157 in payroll for 3 years are able to pluck away players that I really like. Sirota had a huge step up this year and I believe would be ready to compete with Meckler for the LF position, or at the very least a platoon. Freeland is also MLB ready and will be battling for a 3B spot in ST with Guzman. Kopp is another strong young arm that could be a SP or RP and adds to our depth. Lindsey is more great MI depth in the low minors and could be a useful 2B in the future.
LAD: Tucker was booed most of the year and just hasn’t been a good fit in LA. They have OF depth to replace him and could even move Betts back to RF. They have a hole in the MI that Neto fills perfectly. Cost controlled and good for mutiple years. I’m scared that their analysis team fixes Neto’s hole in his swing and he starts to put up Mookie numbers in his prime. The CBA is also going to have something about payroll in it and I believe the Dodger are going to have to shed cap. This is a single trade that gives them a large boost to getting back to where the agreement will require them to be. All of the other prospets are blocked in their system so they aren’t losing the value like other teams might. If they don’t have to shed payroll, then this trade just opened almost $32 million in payroll for this season.
Angels trade Yusei Kikuchi and $11million to the Red Sox for Jarren Duran CF, Jovani Moran RP, and Yoeilin Cespedes 2B #14 prospect
I’m looking to upgrade our CF right now and I’m bringing home a SO Cal native in Duran. He’s fallen out of favor in Boston and is a perfect change of scenery canidate. Boston was already on the fence in giving him a $11 million contract for this season for his arbitration raise. We take the gamble and plug him in. At best Duran returns to form. At the worst, he buys our two young CF’s time in Sirota and Rada and waiving him costs us nothing. Moran is a bullpen flyer that at least gives us a better arm than we have now. Cespedes I like as his comp data says he comparable to Howie Kendrick bat to ball skills. Those seem to be the type of players we are changing our focus on and he meets that.
Why it makes sense for the Red Sox? They have a big need for good quality starting pitching as they are likley to lose Sonny Gray. Kikuchi has some sucesses against the AL East, and with the Angels adding cash, they add no new payroll as his contract would equal what Duran + Moran would be. It still gives them room to add another quality starter as they look to take a foothold on the AL East and Wildcard status. I don’t think they want Duran in the system and you turn him into a good starting pitcher that costs you your #13 prospect who is AA and prob 3-4 years away from the show.
Free Agent Signings
The Angels now have a hole in the infield and at SS. We also still have a ton of money to spend so I want that wow factor signing to get people back in 2027. Let’s fill the hole first, then go for that major signing:
Angels sign JP Crawford to a 2 year $16million contract
JP to me just makes too much sense. Local kid from Lakewood, plays above avg defense at SS and can move to 3B in a pinch, and his contract won’t block anyone coming up at this position. I know all will talk about he isn’t as good at SS, but is he better than what Neto was? I would say yes to that. He’s got playoff experience, he’s a vet now that can share things with our young core coming up, and his contract is super reasonable.
Angels sign Tarik Skubal to an 8 year $360 million contract
I’ve got the Static-X song Push it in my head right now. The lyric is “I see it, I need it.” Skubal at the top of this roation I believe gives a chance to win the west now. Are we a championship team? No. But I think we can sneak in to a wild card or win a weak AL West now and maybe get hot like the White Sox this year. Skubal, Detmers, Urena at the top means a possible sweep could actually happen. That would mean we could see shuffle bot more this year?!
The contract sucks I know, but we have so much room to do this and not hold back the future of this team. If we tank and still suck, we trade Detmers at the deadline and still have Skubal at the top of the rotation with a ton of young (and unprooven) arms on the way.
Angels sign Tyler Heineman to a 1 year $1.237million contract
No matter what I’m at least getting this right. LOL
Here is my depth chart now:
| Outfielders | Infielders | Catchers | Starters | Bullpen |
| Trout-DH/LF | Guzman 3B | Ballesteros | Skubal | Joyce |
| Tucker RF | Crawford SS | Heineman Bench | Detmers | Watson |
| Meckler LF | Grissom 2B | Urena | Natera Jr | |
| Duran CF | Schanuel 1B | G Rodriguez | Bachman | |
| Sirota Bench | Peraza Bench | (Battle for #5) | Fermin | |
| Klassen?? | Moran | |||
| Kochanowicz IL | R Johnson #6 |
Here is the complete 25/40 man with payroll breakdown for you:
| Kyle Tucker | $ 81,817,159 |
| Tarik Skubal | $ 45,000,000 |
| Mike Trout | $ 37,116,000 |
| Jared Duran | $ 11,100,000 |
| JP Crawford | $ 8,000,000 |
| Reid Detmers | $ 7,500,000 |
| Nolan Schanuel | $ 3,000,000 |
| Grayson Rodriguez | $ 2,100,000 |
| Oswald Peraza | $ 1,400,000 |
| Tyler Heineman | $ 1,237,500 |
| Ben Joyce | $ 1,100,000 |
| Sam Bachman | $ 1,100,000 |
| Samy Natera Jr. | $ 1,000,000 |
| Jose Fermin | $ 1,000,000 |
| Moises Ballesteros | $ 1,000,000 |
| Walbert Urena | $ 1,000,000 |
| Vaughn Grissom | $ 1,000,000 |
| Ryan Watson | $ 1,000,000 |
| Ryan Johnson | $ 1,000,000 |
| George Klassen | $ 1,000,000 |
| Wade Meckler | $ 1,000,000 |
| Mitch Farris | $ 1,000,000 |
| Denzer Guzman | $ 1,000,000 |
| Jovnai Moran | $ 1,000,000 |
| Mike Sirota | $ 1,000,000 |
| Jack Kochanowicz -IL #26 | $ 1,000,000 |
| All players here are MLB Min 1 Million | $ |
| Raudi Rodriguez | $ |
| Joel Hurtado | $ |
| Nicolo Pinazzi | $ |
| Camden Minacci | $ |
| Samuel Aldegheri | $ |
| Nacho Alvarez Jr | $ |
| Caden Dana | $ |
| Christian Moore | $ |
| Luke Murphy | $ |
| Gavin Stone | $ |
| Ronan Kopp | $ |
| Mason McGwire | $ |
| Alex Freeland | $ |
| Nelson Rada-#40 | $ |
| $ | |
| Total 40-man | $ 228,571,325 |
| Cash to Red Sox | $ 11,000,000 |
| Cash from Dodgers | $ 31,000,000 |
| Payment to Rendon | $ 12,666,666 |
| Total Payroll | $ 208,571,325 |
