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Article: Beating Vegas: The Los Angeles Angels

John Bonnes
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John Bonnes MVP

John Bonnes

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Show us you can beat Vegas and you can win a Harry’s Razor starter kit! The 2015 Angels went through hell early last year. Disappointed with their early season results, the team fired GM Jerry DiPoto, a move which seemed to wake up the team when they played their way back into first place with a midseason 25-11 run. But ultimately,they ended up in purgatory, finishing with 85 wins, just one game behind the Astros for the final Wild Card spot. A quiet offseason demonstrates they think this group can rally for one more shot at heaven.Vegas’ Line: 81.5 wins

 

What The Line Is Saying

"Your window is closing, and even maanger Mike Scioscia can't keep patching a winning team together from this bunch."

 

They’ll Beat Vegas If…

Mike Scioscia patches a winning team together from this bunch. It would help if Jared Weaver bounced back to anywhere near the pitcher he used to be. The good news is that last year's 4.64 ERA was a full run higher than the year before, so it looks like a big fluke. the bad news this was the fifth straight year his ERA has gotten worse; so it isn't likely to get THAT much better for the 33-year-old.

 

 If you beat Vegas, you can win a free Harry’s Razor starter set. Just leave a comment with your choice of the “Over” or” Under” and your reasoning. At the end of the season, for each team, we’ll randomly pick one of the winning predictions for a free Truman Razor set.  

They’ll Lose To Vegas If…

If Mike Trout has anything other than a MVP-type season. This offense was the 12th ranked offense in the American League with the most valuable player in the American League on their roster. If anything happens to the 24-year-old, the rest of that lineup is not going to be able to recover.

 

I’ll Bet The….

UNDER

This looks like a team stuck between being really competitive and needing a rebuild. Maybe Sciosica can squeeze another good year out of them, but last year felt like the last gasp.

 

 Now it’s your turn. Give us your prediction in the comment section (you’ll need to register first) and you’re automatically entered. We’ll be giving out a free Harry’s Razor Truman Set to one of the winning correct predictions for each team, so we’ll be give away 15 sets of razors! You can also click over to Harry’s Razors and get $5 off on your first order using the promo code ‘gleeman’.

 

Finally, prior to 4/5/16, you can also enter a prediction for any of the previous teams we’ve covered. Here they are:

 

AL EAST

Baltimore Orioles

Tampa Bay Rays

New York Yankees

Boston Red Sox

Toronto Blue Jays

 

AL WEST

The Oakland A's

 

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Vanimal46 MVP

Vanimal46

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I'd take the under too. Thin rotation, thin bullpen, thin lineup, no farm. Poo-holes is 36. Stick a fork in Weaver and Wilson, they're done. Pretty easy to imagine things going south quick IMO.

Agreed. It may be pretty ugly for the Angels sooner than later. They already spend $27.8 mill in dead money thanks to Josh Hamilton... Wilson and Weaver are both signed through next season and have been cooked for a while now. They may have to get pretty lean the next couple of years until the albatross contracts are over with.  

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Brock Beauchamp GOAT

Brock Beauchamp

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It must be tempting to trade Trout at some point, right?

 

You could get 2 Mets starters and a couple minor leaguers, right? something like that? Maybe?

 

what would it take, if you were them, to deal him?

If I traded Trout, I'd basically demand the other team's farm system.

 

Picking up MLB players in a Trout trade isn't a rational option unless you can flip those MLB players for more prospects.

 

If you trade away a talent such as Trout, you need to start over entirely. Raze the MLB team and start over from scratch.

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Willihammer Cedar Rapids Kernels

Willihammer

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It must be tempting to trade Trout at some point, right?

 

You could get 2 Mets starters and a couple minor leaguers, right? something like that? Maybe?

 

what would it take, if you were them, to deal him?

From Fangraphs 2015 trade value series:

 

 

#1: Mike Trout, OF, Anaheim
Controlled Through: 2020
Guaranteed Dollars: $134.25 million
2016 ZIPS WAR: +9.6
Five year ZIPS WAR: +47.0
Last Year: #1
What, you were expecting someone else? Most of us will probably never see another player this good at this age. We’ve gone from pulling out Mickey Mantle comparisons to having to admit that that might not be a fair comparison to Trout. ZIPS projects him for +47 WAR over the next five years; over that same time period, the system projects Paul Goldschmidt and Kris Bryant to be worth +46.9 WAR combined. Trout is literally as good — on the field, mind you, not taking contracts into account — as the 3rd and 4th place guys in this series put together.

But, you might say, he’s not that cheap anymore. The Angels gave him a $145 million extension last year, and because they’re the kings of backloaded contracts, 95% of the committed salary has not yet been paid. But think about what the market has been paying for wins of late, something in the range of $7 to $8 million per projected win on long-term deals. At that range, if you accept that Trout’s roughly a +9 WAR player going forward, Trout’s free agent price over the next five season should be something like $350 million. Yes, based on what’s teams are paying to acquire wins in free agency, Mike Trout’s overall production is worth something like $70 million per year, and if you really believe that teams will pay more to consolidate performance into a single player, you probably need to argue for something closer to $80 million per year.

I know it sounds crazy to suggest that any player is worth that that when the other stars of the game are getting roughly $30 million in AAV on their long-term extensions, but with all due respect to everyone else playing baseball right now, no one is even close to Mike Trout. Here are the ten highest five-year ZIPS forecasts for guys we’ve profiled in this series.

Trout

The next closest guy is +13 WAR behind Trout. +13 WAR over five years is a good big league ballplayer, probably in the range of what the Blue Jays were hoping to get from Russell Martin when they signed him as a free agent this winter for $82 million. And that’s the gap between Trout and #2, much less all the other guys who aren’t even at the Machado/Harper level.

No, Mike Trout isn’t cheap from a budgetary standpoint, but no player in the game brings a higher return on investment than Trout, even at $135 million over the next five years. He’s literally twice as good as any player you can buy in free agency, and there’s no reason to think he’s going to stop producing at a high level any time soon.

So, yeah, it’s Trout again. Sorry that there isn’t a lot of suspense on this one, but that lack of intrigue exists because we have the pleasure of watching one of the greatest players of all time. That’s a pretty good trade-off, I think.

 

So yeah, as a pure rebuild play, a fair trade for Trout would be the entire farm plus all the suplemental picks, international bonus pool, and maybe you're getting close.

 

Maybe they throw in Albert and pay for his entire contract to round it out.

 

I really hope the Angels tank now. 

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tobi0040 Ft Myers Mighty Mussels

tobi0040

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From Fangraphs 2015 trade value series:

 

So yeah, as a pure rebuild play, a fair trade for Trout would be the entire farm plus all the suplemental picks, international bonus pool, and maybe you're getting close.

 

Maybe they throw in Albert and pay for his entire contract to round it out.

 

I really hope the Angels tank now. 

 

Yeah, the guy is un-tradeable.

 

I bet they say no to an offer of Buxton, Sano, and Kepler.  Not many teams have three guys like that to offer.  

 

If we still had Duensing, maybe it gets done. 

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