Everyone wants the Angels to make a trade desperately. At least I assume everyone does. Angels fans definitely do, but I imagine fans of other teams do as well because nobody can possibly enjoy watching a lineup as comically inept as the Angels lineup. Even AL West rivals have to see that this isn’t the kind of incompetence that you mock and take glee in but rather the kind that you mock and take glee in but secretly kind of pity. So, yeah, there needs to be an Angels trade and it needs to happen NOW.
Small problem. Making trades this time of year is not exactly easy. By “not exactly easy” I actually mean unprecedented in recent history. Other than that, this plan is foolproof.
OK, I am exaggerating slightly. Making a trade isn’t impossible. All it takes is the right buyer and the right seller and the right motivations. It just doesn’t happen very often before the month of July.
Look back to 2014, the first “real” trade, which I define as a trade that wasn’t just some DFA’d player being sold to another team for peanuts (like the Angels acquiring Kirk Nieuwehuis today) nor two Quad-A players being swapped for each other, didn’t come until June 27th. You should know that trade well because it was the swap of Ernesto Frieri for Jason Grilli. If you want to stretch the definition of “real” trade, there was a Troy Patton–Nick Hundley exchange a few weeks earlier, but those are two pretty fringy players. That isn’t the kind of deal the Angels are looking for.
In 2013, there were two more of those fringy swaps when the Mets acquired Eric Young Jr. for Collin McHugh, but this was before anyone knew McHugh was any good, and then a week later they sent Collin Cowgill to the Angels for a minor leaguer. Those trades happened on June 18th and June 25th, respectively. They also barely count as “real” trades though. The first unquestioned “real” deal of that season came on July 2nd when the Orioles acquired Scott Feldman from the Cubs for Jake Arrieta and others.
Turn the clock back another year and we see some earlier action with the first trade going down on May 3rd. You should remember this one as well because it was the Angels trade that first brought Ernesto Frieri to Anaheim. Granted, nobody really knew who Frieri was at the time, so it was probably seen as a fringy transaction. If you want a more notable name to be moved, you’d have to wait until June 25th for Kevin Youkilis to be dumped on the White Sox.
The two years before that, there was no “real” trade that happened before the calendar turned over to July. These were years before the Jerry Dipoto era began in Orange County. Not be Angels-centric about it, but that is pretty significant because the three years we looked at in-depth in all feature Dipoto getting the trade party started early.
In other words, if there is a GM out there that is going to be able to get a deal done soon, it is Gerard Peter Dipoto. The catch is that it takes two to tango and right now there isn’t a lot of other teams looking for a dance partner. This damned second wild card and parity has made his job pretty difficult. At a minimum, Dipoto has started laying the groundwork. We’ve already heard about the Angels trade rumors relating to Ben Revere and a few other outfielders. That’s a lot further along in the process than most other teams are in any of their pursuits.
Maybe Dipoto can pull something off soon after all. He certainly has history on his side, although it is awfully Ernesto Frieri-based and I think we’ve all had just about enough of that for a lifetime. More importantly, the Dodgers and Braves might’ve already paved the way for the deals to begin with their bizarre Uribe-Callaspo swap yesterday. Maybe, just maybe, that means the trade season has begun early. If it hasn’t, Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of lousy Angels offense.
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