Anatomy of an Angels Rebuild: The Fire Sale

Welcome to Part III of our rebuild series: The Fire Sale. In Part I, we examined what a Slight Retooling of the Angels roster could look like over the coming year. Then in Part II, we looked into what a New Direction might mean for the Angels, which involved trading assets like Yunel Escobar, Hector Santiago, and Joe Smith at the trade deadline for prospects, then playing perhaps an active role in free agency over the winter. Today, we conclude the series by outlining what burning the whole thing down might look like.

A fire sale will typically happen when a team recognizes that they simply aren’t going to compete with their current roster, and opts to trade off most (if not all) MLB players of value and accumulate as many high-quality (and low-cost) prospects as they can. The idea behind this is that the team saves enough money and brings in enough high-caliber young talent that they can hopefully begin signing major free agents a few years down the road and really make a run for it in about five years. Fire sales will typically not occur until an organization is faced with no other viable option, as it tends to come with a bunch of baggage:

1. If a team won’t compete for another five years, you can expect to shuffle through at least a couple managers before finding the right fit.
2. As a team’s performance goes into the toilet, and fans don’t observe any discernible attempts at improving the team, attendance can plummet. You run the risk of losing fans, perhaps forever.
3. Some of the high-profile prospects you land simply aren’t going to turn into the great everyday players in the big leagues. It’s the nature of the prospect game: some work, some don’t. So if a significant chunk of young players don’t play up to their abilities, you run the risk of extending that five-year competitive window out even further.

So what would an Angels fire sale would look like?

Heading into the trade deadline, the Angels would have to be very far out of contention and their high-minors prospects like Kaleb Cowart, Kyle Kubitza, Nate Smith, Kyle McGowin would have flopped. With a weaker free agent class looming on the horizon, a new GM waiting to make his mark on this organization, and the owner suddenly stringently against spending money, a perfect storm forms that results in the Angels selling practically everything not nailed to the floor.

First, let’s start by getting this out of the way: NO, the Angels would not be trading Mike Trout in this scenario. That’s not a fire sale, that’s a monumental mistake that an organization could never live down. Aside from Trout (and probably Albert Pujols because of his contract), just about everyone else the Angels have that can pick up a baseball would eventually be traded.

This year the Angels would likely sell off Escobar, Santiago, Smith, Kole Calhoun, and Huston Street. They would likely be able to get quite a return back on that. This winter would involve relative inactivity, except perhaps for some shuffling in the front office. Minor leaguers would be promoted and given their shot next year and the team would ultimately cut some serious payroll by shedding Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson’s contracts, if they aren’t also traded by August.

Heading into the 2017 trade deadline, the Angels would then start trading off assets with more serious price tags: Andrelton Simmons, Andrew Heaney, Tyler Skaggs, Nick Tropeano, and C.J. Cron, all of whom would have had more of an opportunity to build up some value (and come back from injury). Then in the 2017/2018 offseason, Garrett Richards will have been fully recovered from Tommy John surgery (Ed. note: In this nightmare scenario, the stem-cell therapy doesn’t work). He could be dealt that winter or even at the next deadline. Due to the drawn-out nature of the fire sale, the Angels’ competitive window would ultimately reappear around the 2021 season, which both seems like a long time away and is.

As for the packages of players the Angels could expect in return, there’s no way to know what sort of return Escobar, Santiago, Street or Smith would have, but with Kole Calhoun, the Angels could land a solid collection of top prospects. Currently, the expected “buyers” at the deadline with a need in the outfield are the Blue Jays and Giants, though other teams could emerge that are wanting to trade for Calhoun for next year and so forth. From the Blue Jays, you could expect the Angels key on 3B/OF Vlad Guerrero Jr. For the Giants, RHP Tyler Beede, 1B Chris Shaw and OF Mac Williamson would figure to be high on the Angels’ lists.