What to expect from the Angels at the trade deadline

The trade deadline is coming up fast and the Angels are one of the few teams that you can guarantee will be making some moves. That is a sentence that I had confidence in a week ago when Jerry Dipoto was still the general manager. Now… not so much. No one really knows anymore what to expect from the Angels at the trade deadline.

The team’s needs haven’t changed. Their sense of urgency hasn’t lessened. This recent offense outburst changes nothing. The problem is that the front office leadership has changed. Jerry Dipoto, a man never shy about triggering a trade, has been replaced by Bill Stoneman, a man infamous for his reluctance to make a deal. Factor in a meddling owner and a manager who has just gobbled up all the organizational power like so much lasagna and something has to give.

In one scenario, Stoneman, who has remained involved with the club as an advisor (an actual advisor, not an “advisor” like Tony Reagins was), should be plenty familiar with the assets of the club. He might even be so familiar with the club that he could have fallen in love with certain prospects in the pipeline and resort to his prospect-hoarding ways of yesteryear. He could easily be convinced that the lineup is finally starting to “come around” and feel comfortable in overvaluing his farm system, like he do. Oh, sure, he’ll make one minor transaction to bring in another reserve outfielder just so he can say he did something, but the Stoneman we all know would have no problem just riding this crest of timely hitting all the way down the stretch.

Of course, there is a very good chance that Stoneman is actually a convenient strawman. As I’ve mentioned before, appointing Stoneman as general manager gives them a GM who won’t care about being publicly scrutinized for whatever happens over the rest of the season. He’s also a guy who will happily just do someone’s bidding because he doesn’t have to worry about his next job. If anything, being an obedient puppet will only ensure that he continues to draw a paycheck for whatever he was doing as an advisor up until a week ago.

The question is whose bidding will he be doing?

If it is Arte Moreno, then we should be ready for anything. Maybe Arte wants new star on the roster, so he commands Stoneman to acquire Carlos Gonzalez. Maybe Moreno wants to push all his chips in and go for a title this year and implores Stoneman to trade away guys like Andrew Heaney and/or Sean Newcomb. Or maybe Arte tries to prove that he isn’t a maniac with a checkbook and refuses to take on more salary, despite all the room under the luxury tax that Dipoto worked so hard to create.

It could also be Scioscia calling the shots into Stoneman, what with him having more power now. In that case, Scioscia might want to try and solve the lineup problems by remaking the lineup in his 2002 image. That Ben Revere trade that Dipoto wouldn’t pull the trigger on? Make it happen. Forget about another station-to-station lefty slugger to hit behind Pujols, get Rick Hahn on the phone and give him whatever he wants to send that scrappy little bastard J.B. Shuck back to Anaheim.

Then again, it might not be anything that nefarious. Stoneman could still just be acting as an advisor, only with a fancier title. The front office has remained almost entirely intact, so the Angels may not want to disrupt all the groundwork they laid by having Stoneman take things over. Instead, he can just hold the hand of whoever Moreno and Scioscia want to groom to be the general manager next year.

Many have speculated that assistant general manager Matt Klentak could be the heir apparent. He was Dipoto’s right-hand man, has been heavily involved in trade talks and is widely considered a top GM candidate around the league. More importantly, he supposedly gets along with Scioscia. If Mike is serious about proving that he’s evolved, letting the Ivy League youngster with no playing experience become a GM-with-training-wheels would be a good way to prove that. If that’s the case, then it will be business as usual. Matt Joyce will be replaced with some other low average, high walk rate platoon slugger and some random reliever will be acquired for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

But Klentak isn’t the only in-house GM candidate. Pro scouting director Hal Morris interviewed for the Diamondbacks job this winter, another GM gig where he would’ve been more of a second banana than a true shotcaller, so he’s clearly open to taking orders from a respected veteran manager. Being a former player probably buys him some credibility with Scioscia, even if he was a Dipoto hire. The problem is that Morris is a relative unknown as far as how he would operate. Yes, he’d probably be heavily influenced by Scioscia, moreso than Klentak would, but this would be a big audition for him both in Anaheim and elsewhere. He’s going to want to put his stamp on things to some degree, we just don’t know that that stamp will look like. As the director of pro scouting, he’ll have guys he likes, but we don’t know if they are the same guys that Dipoto liked and had him focusing on.

With so many different scenarios on the table, the only thing we can really expect from the Angels at the trade deadline is the unexpected… and the Spanish Inquisition.