To buy or rent? For the Angels at this coming trade deadline, there shouldn’t be much question. The combination of their bloated payroll and the increasingly thin free agent crop should have the Angels looking to find a left fielder of the present and future rather than one that can just pitch in for three months.
The Angels need a left fielder, desperately. The pack of stooges the Halos have run out there this year have combined for a wRC+ of 66, the worst mark in the majors by a lot. Like, A LOT a lot. That’s actually the good news because it means that for the Angels to get better production from left field they really just need to acquire somebody who knows which end of the bat to grip. What the Angels have been looking for though is someone who can be a legit middle of the order bat.
Small problem, there are only one or two of those guys and they are both rentals. If the Angels did somehow manage to swing a deal for Justin Upton (which is highly unlikely, but stick with me for a minute), they’d be right back in the market for a left fielder in 2016. Getting someone like Upton this year might help them win a World Series in 2015, but after that, he’s gone because the Angels can’t afford him.
The Angels entered this season with a payroll a bit over $145 million. That seems to be the sweet spot for what Arte Moreno wants to pay and what they are able to maintain while staying below the luxury tax. Next year, the Halos already have $130 million in contract commitments on the books for a mere seven players (plus Josh Hamilton‘s poltergeist). Factor in Kole Calhoun hitting arbitration for the first time and Garrett Richards and Hector Santiago being due for big raises in their second year of arbitration and the Angels are going to sail right past the $150 million even if they fill out the rest of the roster with pre-arb players.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with pre-arb players, mind you. They just need to be good players, good players that were produced by your farm system… which the Angels don’t really have. They’ve improved their prospect pipeline in recent years, but they are still exceptionally light on position player talent, especially in the outfield. The Angels literally don’t have anyone in their system who could be considered to start or even platoon in left field next year, maybe not even 2017.
As such, if the Angels paid through the nose to rent a left fielder in 2015, they’d have to cough up more prospects again in the offseason to get another left fielder to plug into the lineup in 2016. The Angels don’t have the prospect depth to pull that off successfully.
They’ve got the goods to make one trade, so they better make it count. What they really need is a left fielder that is under control through at least 2016 and preferably at a below market rate. The lower the salary the less salary the GM-to-be-named-later will have to dump in the offseason to get back under the luxury tax threshold.
Acquiring such a player is easier said than done though. Teams aren’t exactly falling all over themselves to give away outfielders with years of below market control left. That’s why deeply flawed players like Ben Revere and Nick Markakis are showing up on the Angels radar. Revere is probably a bit overpaid for his talent level, but it isn’t a big salary in the grand scheme of things. Markakis is probably overpaid as well, but one would think a condition of acquiring him would be Atlanta covering some of his salary.
Jay Bruce is probably as good as the Angels can do (because apparently the Rockies aren’t going to release their iron grip on Charlie Blackmon, no matter how many times I beg them to). When things are going right for Bruce, he’s a three-win player and well worth his $12.5 million salary. That’s kind of a big number, but not so big that the Angels can’t find somewhere else on the roster to shed salary in order to make Bruce’s contract fit under the luxury tax.
The only other way the Angels are going to solve their long-term left field problem is by biting the bullet and paying the luxury tax in 2016. Doing so wouldn’t cost them all that much money since it is their first time paying the tax. It also might be their last time as the CBA expires after 2016, so the threshold will move up in all likelihood and the Angels also happen to shed some big salaries after 2016 that should make it easy enough for them to stay under the tax even if it doesn’t move. Arte Moreno hasn’t given any indication that he would ever do that though. Until he does, the Angels need to be thinking about both this year and next at the trade deadline and do what they can to avoid filling left field with a rental so that they don’t have to go back through this same process three months from now.
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