Angels Winter Meetings Checklist

As the baseball world converges on Nashville this week, Billy Eppler will look to finish up his holiday shopping. He’s picked up a shortstop of the future, which is the baseball of acquiring a Furby or Turbo-Man. Geovany Soto and Cliff Pennington are necessary and appreciated but they’re socks and toothbrushes in your stocking.

Angel fans eagerly await unwrapping a big-ticket item that can propel the club back to the playoffs in 2016. Below is my Christmas List for Eppler to peruse as he wades the tricky winter waters at the helm of a franchise for the first time.

1A) Left Field

I’ve made my case for the Angels throwing all of the money at Jason Heyward—the tl;dr version of my argument is that Heyward will improve the Halos in every facet of the game and, while certainly expensive, is just about to enter what we consider the prime years for position players.

Even if the Angels don’t land the offseason’s best position player there’s a bounty of corner outfielders to choose from, so many that if the Angels don’t land any it would be an early embarrassment in Eppler’s tenure; it should be impossible for the Angels to not upgrade their weakest 2015 position. On the free agent market, the best players available after Heyward are Alex Gordon, Justin Upton, and Yoenis Cespedes. If the Angels want to save some money and swing a trade, Brett Gardner is an option. Literally any player the Angels man left field will be an upgrade. Put a Double Gulp cup in left field and it’ll probably have greater defensive success than Matt Joyce.

1B) Third Base

The only reason third base isn’t on equal ground with left field is because the Angels don’t really have a suitable replacement for the corner outfield. At least with third base, the Angels could theoretically hand over full-time duties to Kaleb Cowart and assure themselves excellent defense. Pairing Cowart with Andrelton Simmons would easily give the Angels the best defensive left side of the infield in baseball…with simultaneously the worst offensive production. Cowart has offensive upside, but he struggled during his brief stint in Anaheim last summer, and he’s not that far removed from nearly hitting himself out of the hot corner in the minor leagues.

Unfortunately the market for third basemen is shallow. David Freese is the best player available. David Freese! The guy Angel fans (unfairly) hate! The Angels elected to forgo offering Freese a qualifying offer, because in their estimation the risk of him signing for $15.8 million isn’t worth an oft-injured player that grades as a poor defender. Yet, there are reports the Angels are in talks to bring Freese back, presumably for more years but fewer annual dollars than the qualifying offer. I would love to bring Freese back on a 2-3 year deal, thus buying the Angels some time to figure out a long-term solution if that solution isn’t Cowart. Freese is unspectacular but he’s an above average hitter, and the offense cratered when he went down for an extended period last season.

The next best third base free agent was Jae-gyun Hwang, I guess, but no one ended up bidding on him. If Arte Moreno was willing to part with a posting fee, Hwang’s actual big-league deal would have come much cheaper than Freese. Alas, Hwang’s actual MLB performance will remain unknown for at least another year.

If the Angels don’t sign Freese or Hwang, Trevor Plouffe has been rumored as an option. Anything the Angels do at the hot corner is going to elicit a “meh” reaction from most corners of baseball media and fandom, so if you need to get your hopes up in something save it for left field.

3) Bullpen

I’m not going to even begin to guess who the Angels could or should bring in to bolster the bullpen, I just know the pen needs some ammunition. When the Angels won 98 games in 2014 they did so on the backs of an elite offense (2014 was a long time ago) and a dominant second-half bullpen. Then Jason Grilli and Kevin Jepsen departed, Mike Morin struggled, and both Huston Street and Joe Smith regressed while battling injury. The result was middling finishes among AL bullpens in park-adjusted ERA, FIP, and xFIP.

They don’t have the bullets to pull off a trade for Aroldis Chapman—and even if they did they shouldn’t—but there’s still reliable arms to be had. Several weeks ago the Angels were rumored to be in the Joakim Soria sweepstakes. If the Angels want to target a much-needed left-hander, Antonio Bastardo or Jeff Mays-approved Tony Sipp look like good choices. They’re relievers, who the hell knows how they’ll turn out.

Oh hey, Ryan Madson is also a free agent. (Update: Welp, never mind. $22 million!)

4) Starting Pitching

David Price and Zack Greinke are off the board, but the Angels weren’t likely to flirt with the belles of the ball anyway. Jerry Dipoto stockpiled a ton of starting pitchers, which is why Eppler was so comfortable trading a couple of them for Simmons in the first place. None of the them are excellent, but the sheer depth the Angels possess would be the apple of many an organization’s eye.

By my estimation Mike Scioscia has eight realistic rotation options for 2016: Garrett Richards, Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson, Matt Shoemaker, Tyler Skaggs, Nick Tropeano, Andrew Heaney, and Hector Santiago. Other than Richards none of them have ace potential but none are Joe Blanton circa 2013 disasters, either. Unless Eppler can attract one of the elite arms on the market that is clearly better than a Nick Tropeano then it’s probably not worth the money or losing a draft pick. Johnny Cueto is appealing because he’ll be much more affordable than Price or Greinke and he wouldn’t cost the Angels a draft pick, but the Angels must decide if his performance with the Royals was a red flag or a fluke. Mike Pelfrey or Ian Kennedy? No thanks.

With all that depth the Angels could trade to fill one of their other holes. But remember, that depth isn’t going to last forever—Weaver and Wilson are both (mercifully) free agents a year from now and Eppler just traded the two most likely farmhand candidates to replace them. The 2016 Angels have starting pitching depth on paper but trading all that depth would be foolish unless they’re able to sign a free agent or two this winter. As the cliché goes, you can never have too much starting pitching.

Signing a starting pitcher would be nice, but Eppler can afford to be cautious. That’s the gift Jerry Dipoto, now the Ghost of Christmases Past, has left for all of us.

5) Second Base?

Is second base a need? Because I don’t know. On the one hand, Johnny Giavotella fits into the Freese-mold (pun not intended, I think) of a position player that’s “fine.” Johnny G was worth 1.1 fWAR last season in only 129 games, fine provided the rest of a lineup is up to snuff. On the other hand, 2015 represented Giavotella’s first full season and there’s the risk that was his ceiling. Giavotella is the worst defensive second baseman in baseball and his remarkable string of clutch hitting is bound to regress. Giavotella sported a .351/.362/.439 slash line in high leverage thanks to a .432 BABIP. Even if Giavotella does have a special skill that gives him an extra edge in important at-bats, the BABIP dragons will take a bite out of his high-leverage production; if the production doesn’t improve in lower leverage plate appearances, Giavotella is nearly replacement-level. If Giavotella isn’t good enough to start then he doesn’t have a role on a Major League roster because of his poor glove; his bat won’t play at most positions and I shudder to think of what he would do as a utility infielder that has to man shortstop if Simmons suffered an injury.

There’s a chance Giavotella continues to be a fine bottom-of-the-order hitter. He’s only 28, improvement at the plate or with the glove isn’t out of the question. Given the holes elsewhere on the roster the Angels’ best efforts are spent trying to shore up one of the above positions. The second base market isn’t particularly strong, either. I won’t complain about Ben Zobrist in Halo Red, but at his age and the money he’ll command I assume Eppler & Co. will take a hard pass. Reuniting with Howie Kendrick would be fun, but he’s 32 and he graded horrifically with the glove last year,* not to mention he’ll require much more money than Giavotella.

* Defensive metrics are weird and can fluctuate wildly from year to year, so the typically sure-handed Kendrick may have just been a victim of that randomness. Or he’s a 32 year-old second basemen in severe decline. Doesn’t building a team sound like fun?!

Signing Zobrist or landing a second basemen via trade aside, it’s probably worth riding with the Magic Cajun Elf for another year. Be sure to write down “Roberto Baldoquin Improvement” on your Santa List.