What will Jerry Dipoto do?

Earlier this week, I detailed what I would do if I were the GM of the Los Angeles Angels this offseason. As brilliant as my plan might be, apparently people would rather know what the “real” GM of the Angels has planned for this offseason. Yeah, apparently because Jerry Dipoto is “actually employed” by the team, that somehow makes his opinion more qualified than mine.

I’m not sure I agree with that sentiment, but I’m all about making my readers happy, so I guess I will humor you all and try and determine what exactly Jerry Dipoto intends to do to upgrade the Angels roster.

The thing about that is that JeDi isn’t exactly the most forthcoming of front office executives. We know for sure that the Angels won’t be going into the luxury tax. That’s a point that Arte Moreno has been pretty adamant about. Maybe getting swept out of the ALDS will change his mind, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Aside from that, the only comments Dipoto has made regarding his intentions came just the other day when he gave us this, via Mike DiGiovanna of the LA Times:

“We’d like to be as young, athletic and versatile as we can be … and we’ll continue to look for impact athletic players,” Dipoto said. “But we just won 98 games, we led the league in runs scored and put together probably the best pitching staff we’ve had in a number of years. We’re not necessarily looking to re-invent the wheel. We like the model we have.”

That is a long way of Jerry letting us know to expect more of the same. Given how little financial wiggle room he has to work with, it makes sense. Dipoto made a lot of moves last year to round out this roster. This winter, he’ll basically try and accomplish all the things he failed to accomplish in the last year. My guess is that he’ll start with…

Trading Howie Kendrick
Yeah, this probably isn’t going to go over well, but Kendrick figures to be on the trade block again this winter. Dipoto shopped Howie hard last offseason in search of quality starting pitching. He offered him to Detroit for Doug Fister. He offered him to the White Sox for Jose Quintana. Now Howie’s coming off a great season and Dipoto will be extra motivated to move Howie in order to shed some of his salary so that he has more payroll flexibility.

It also helps that there should be a bigger market for Kendrick this winter. There just wasn’t that many teams with needs at second base last year. However, the market is much more robust this year with teams like the Marlins, Braves, Yankees, Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, Rockies and Athletics all looking like they have a hole at second.

With Kendrick only having a year left on his contract, his value is diminished a little bit, but there is no reason to think that Dipoto won’t pursue similar deals to the ones he went after last year. Maybe Jerry changes his strategy a little bit and tries to flip Kendrick for prospects and financial savings instead of a similarly salaried veteran starter, but either way, Howie’s name figures to be quite prominent in the rumor mill over the next several weeks.

Add a reliable veteran to the rotation
As mentioned above, this will likely be the goal in trading Kendrick. However, it may not be feasible, which would force Dipoto on the free agent market. That would be a shame because this market is hot garbage. The top of the market features Jon Lester, James Shields and Max Scherzer. After that, it is all dog food.

Lots of folks are going to want the Halos to pursue one of those three pitchers, but they aren’t likely going to have the budget to do so, even if they dump Kendrick’s salary. There is also a big deterrent for Dipoto in pursuing Shields and Scherzer since they will both cost the Angels their first round pick. That pick will be the last one in the first round this year, but the Angels farm system can’t afford to be giving away picks and signing pool money. Lester won’t have that compensation attached, so I’m sure they’ll look at him to see if there is a way to fit him into the budget, but it is highly doubtful.

Instead, Dipoto will have to look at the middle tier of arms. He’ll be looking for guys like Matt Garza, who he nearly signed last winter. Unfortunately, there aren’t many Garza types out there. The closest equivalent might be Jason Hammel, another guy Dipoto pursued last winter and then again before the trade deadline. Jake Peavy might be another name Dipoto checks in on, but he might be a bit on the old side for Jerry’s liking.

Given how thin that list is, let’s hope that Dipoto is able to use Kendrick in trade to accomplish this task.

Find a decent LOOGY
So, the Sean Burnett signing and the Joe Thatcher trade didn’t exactly go the way Jerry planned. That doesn’t mean he’s going to give up on this whole left-handed reliever thing. I don’t suspect those two failures are going to convince him to give up on the idea though.

I also don’t think it will convince him to go crazy either and throw a bunch of money at Andrew Miller. Dipoto expended a lot of assets to improve the bullpen last year, but that went against his philosophy and I really question just how much more he is willing to invest in that part of the club. As such, a more modest signing would probably make more sense.

Pursuing a low-cost veteran for this role seems more like the move Dipoto would make. One name to watch closely is Craig Breslow. He had been a very good lefty reliever for several years, but was just terrible last season. That didn’t stop JeDi from kicking the tires on him before he pulled off the Thatcher deal though. It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if he went back to Breslow as a delayed version of his Plan B.

Beef up the bench
This is actually the one other thing we know Dipoto is going to do. He said as much right after the season ended. It is also something he tried to do last season to minimal success.

He signed Raul Ibanez and John McDonald to add veteran leadership to the bench, but neither of them actually produced anything but tears on the field. With the team chemistry vastly improved now, Dipoto can swing the pendulum back in the other direction. Finding a version of Ibanez that can actually hit and doesn’t have an AARP card and a version of John McDonald that can… do anything, really, should be pretty high up on Dipoto’s to-do list.

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Hopefully Jerry has a few other tricks up his sleeve, but with so few open roster spots, so few prospects and so little financial wiggle room, I really wouldn’t expect much. The only thing I do expect is that Dipoto will behave has he has in previous offseasons and wrap up all of his business rather quickly. His MO is typically to get started right out of the gate and wrap everything up by the end of the Winter Meetings.  That means we won’t have to wait very long find out how good or bad (probably bad) I am at reading Dipoto’s tea leaves.