Yesterday, we took a long, long walk down memory lane and reviewed literally every single personnel move that Jerry Dipoto made for the 2014 season. That was fun. 3,607 words of pure unadulterated fun. But I’m not sure it was actually all that interesting.
Those moves were moves that we’d all seen before and analyzed extensively previously. Sure, it is nice to be able to look back with a little more perspective and the benefit of hindsight, but ultimately it is just rehashing the same analysis. What we haven’t though about in a long time, if ever, are the moves that Jerry Dipoto did NOT make in 2014, either because he chose not to or simply was unable to pull those off. Those are the moves that could have changed the course of the entire season for a team and considering those hypotheticals that seldom ever get any real consideration.
Let’s give those non-moves some consideration now, because there are some real doozies out there for the Halos this season, some of which may have resulted in a very different end result (assuming it is actually possible for the Royals to lose a postseason game, the jury is still out on that one).
Trading Mark Trumbo instead of Howie Kendrick
A highly underreported rumor from the offseason is that in the Angels’ quest to find young starting pitching that they were pretty freely dangling Howie Kendrick. They offered him to the Tigers for Doug Fister only to be trumped by the Rangers swapping Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder. They offered Kendrick to the White Sox for Jose Quintana only to be trumped by that trade not making any sense for the rebuilding White Sox. Surely they offered him up elsewhere and we just never heard about it.
It makes sens that the Halos shopped Howie. The one thing they had in the system at the time was middle infield depth. Grant Green was waiting in the wings and Taylor Lindsey and Alex Yarbrough were both on the fast track to the bigs. Plus, there were plenty of solid veteran types like Mark Ellis on the free agent market.
Holding on to Howie worked out wonderfully as he turned in one of the best all-around seasons of his career. Moreover, it meant that they traded Mark Trumbo who had a miserable season thanks in large part to health problems, you know, like the ones that plagued him throughout his brief Angels career.
Frankly, they probably made out better by trading Trumbo as they got an exciting (and cheap) young arm in Tyler Skaggs plus whatever Hector Santiago is. The added bonus is that they still have Kendrick meaning they can (and probably will) shop him around this offseason.
Not signing Matt Garza to a four-year, $52 million contract
Now this is a whole hornets nest. A quick refresher on exactly what happened: the Angels offered Matt Garza a four-year, $52 million contract at the Winter Meetings but he was on vacation and didn’t want to be bothered with such matters so he didn’t respond but the Angels had given him a 24-hour window to respond, so they pulled the offer when the time expired.
Yeah, that was fun and kind of weird. Garza ended up signing with Milwaukee several weeks later for four years and $50 million. The Angels ended up signing… nobody, which is also weird. They were willing to hand out a contract worth $13 million per year to Garza but used the money nowhere else after they failed to sign him. Or did they?
The thing about that Garza contract is that it would have pushed them over or to within inches of the luxury tax. That would have been a gamechanger for the Angels, assuming they stuck to their stance on not wanting to pay the tax. It would have likely precluded them from trading for Huston Street as that acquisition certainly would’ve pushed them over the threshold. Perhaps they could have given up more or better prospects in the deal to get San Diego to eat more money on Street’s contract, but it would’ve been a major complication in negotiations.
Or maybe the Halos would’ve decided to cut salary in advance of the season to give themselves some breathing room. That could have taken the form of trying to salary dump Howie Kendrick or Chris Iannetta, both of which would’ve been major blows to the Angels offense based on what the two ended up producing this year.
There also would’ve been some interesting hypothetical depth chart fallout. Garza locking into one of the rotation slots would’ve bumped either Hector Santiago or Tyler Skaggs from the Opening Day rotation. It also would have given them more starting pitching depth, nominally a good thing. But with that extra depth, the Halos may never have had the need to give Matt Shoemaker the extended look he got. Let’s not forget, his first few starts were not all that impressive. But because of that lack of rotation depth, Shoemaker did get to stick around for a long time and blossom into an excellent pitcher.
Finally, I also would have really questioned what having Garza on the roster would’ve done to the team chemistry. That was an area of major focus for building the roster this season. Garza, however, has a bit of a reputation for being, let’s be nice and just call him “intense.” Honestly, he makes Jered Weaver seem like a Buddhist monk. That may not have been an issue, but you never know.
Only signing Raul Ibanez to serve as DH
This one bothered me the instant it happened. The Halos signed Raul Ibanez to serve as their primary DH and designated clubhouse yoda. He was pretty good at one of those things and pretty bad at the other. Dipoto never really seemed to plan for that potentiality.
There was ample evidence that Ibanez would have fallen on his face, but the best that Jerry was able to provide as a fallback plan was the pupu platter of MLB retreads (Carlos Pena, Brennan Boesch, Ian Stewart, Chad Tracy) that came to camp on non-roster invites. But even those alternatives made no sense because there was a very good chance that even in a less disastrous scenario for Ibanez that he’d only be capable of hitting right-handed pitching. They needed a potent right-handed bench bat as a potential platoon partner for Ibanez. It also wouldn’t have hurt to have one around in case Josh Hamilton struggled mightily with lefties again or if Kole Calhoun suddenly developed issues with southpaws. Hell, it is just a good idea to have better depth in general, something the Angels actually ended up needing when Hamilton and Calhoun both went down at the same time.
But no, Dipoto didn’t do that at all. He actually got lucky that Collin Cowgill played so far over his head during the Hamilton and Calhoun absences. He wasn’t nearly as lucky after the team finally had to cut bait on Ibanez. They turned to Efren Navarro and C.J. Cron but neither player was able to have sustained success. Even after all of this, Dipoto made no effort to acquire any help in this area at the deadline.
Granted, the Angels offense was a juggernaut at that time, so using Cron and Navarro at DH was palatable, but it still ignored the general lack of bench depth. That lack of depth really came back to bite the Halos in the ALDS when they really had no choice but to run the shell of Josh Hamilton out there to embarrass himself for three games.
Not acquiring additional starting pitching at the trade deadline
Not signing Garza (or anyone else) before the season was one thing, but failing to acquire additional rotation depth for the stretch run was another. Tyler Skaggs was lost the day of the non-waiver trade deadline, putting the Angels in a precarious position from a depth standpoint. About three weeks later, they lost Garrett Richards leaving them with nothing but bones in the starting pitching cupboard.
The logical move here would have been to acquire some sort of rotation depth via a waiver trade. The Halos were linked to players like A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon, Scott Feldman and Trevor Cahill. Dipoto declined to acquire any of those players, primarily due to concerns about the luxury tax implications in 2015. The pitching would have helped, but there would have been a big cost for a team that was virtually assured of a postseason berth already at this point of the season (though not the AL West, yet).
The problem was that it put a great deal of pressure on C.J. Wilson to stop being a raging greasefire on the mound. He actually did stop, sort of, for a few weeks, but fell apart again at the end of the season and on into the ALDS. Having a better alternative to Wilson in the ALDS would have been nice, but the real issue was the Angels’ inability to hit. Still, you never know what would have happened had they been able to win Game 3.
Of course, we never know if the Angels would have given Cory Rasmus a shot at converting back into a starter had he not been conscripted into the “bullpen day” starts he made the final month of the season. In a weird way, by not trading for more rotation depth, Dipoto accidentally created rotation depth from within.
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In all, Dipoto’s only real mistake in any of these non-moves was not giving enough attention to the need for depth. He seems to be aware of that though as his comments after the season ended strongly suggested that the focus of the offseason would be to build a deeper and more versatile bench. Adding rotation help was mentioned as well, but every team is trying to build a deeper rotation, so that’s not exactly news.
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