The Angels 2021 Offseason Checklist, Pt. 1
By Jay Sheehy
Reading time: The rest of your day. Sorry.
What can a new GM do to improve his team in these uncertain times? Glad you asked…
The Los Angeles Angels 2021 offseason checklist reads a lot like the previous (counting…) decade more or less: Get PITCHING. Yet, with the unceremonious end to Andrelton Simmons Angels career, questions surrounding most of the Angels young players and the health of catcher Max Stassi, new GM Perry Minasian (and the new executives he hired) has many decisions to make before the start of Spring Training.
While it’s difficult to predict contracts during a normal offseason, this year it’s basically impossible. Yet, with the help of salary predictions at FanGraphs (the excellent Craig Edwards, read here) and MLBtraderumors (Tim Dierkes is fantastic, read here) we will try to piece together what moves the Angels front office should look to make to improve the roster for 2021.
FINANCES
Nothing to see here since owner Arte Moreno said the Angels would not reduce payroll. Where do things currently stand? For starters, the Angels payroll has operated in the $170 million range over the last four seasons, without counting dead contracts (For example: In 2017, the operating payroll was $166,161,209; that didn’t include Josh Hamilton’s $26.4m, Cameron Maybin’s $7.4m or Danny Espinosa’s $5.4m. Yikes.).
The 2021 salary cap is $210 million. It’s highly unlikely that the Angels even approach that number. The only locked-in salaries for 2021: Mike Trout ($37.1 mil), Albert Pujols ($30 mil), Anthony Rendon ($28.1 mil) and Justin Upton ($23 mil). Roughly $118.2 million. This is the last season of The Machine’s contract (celebratory cheers in Anaheim). To estimate the Angels current overall salary would be a Sisyphean effort, so instead we will look at the numbers predicted by other sites.
These numbers take into account the minimum raises of pre-arbitration players in the first three years of their career plus arbitration estimates. It seems likely, given the financial implications of the 2020 season, that multiple players from the Angels will be non-tendered. But, we will get to that later. Here is each site with set money (in bold), arbitration money and pre-arbitration money split up.
Baseball Reference: $118.2m $35.3m $6.44 = $159.9 million
Spotrac: $118.2m $30.0m $6.33 = $154.5 million
MLBtraderumors: $118.2m $26.0m None (we’ll split the difference; $6.385) = $150.6 million
Thus, the Angels are in the $150-160 million salary range before they decided on players to non-tender. That’s a wide range. But, it’s just a starting point.
ANGELS NON-TENDERS
The Angels bullpen was terrible in 2020, so it should come as no surprise that four members of said bullpen are good bets to be non-tendered. Due to the unusual 2020 season, and the lack of profits across baseball, it seems likely that more players will be non-tendered this year versus years past.
Justin Anderson - A 5.55 ERA and Tommy John surgery in July makes Anderson an obvious candidate.
Matt Andriese - Although he was steady out of the bullpen, Andriese’s 2021 salary will likely be $2ish million, likely higher than what the Angels will want to pay before they sign free agents.
Keynan Middleton - Key hasn’t looked good since 2017. Relievers with a 1.36 career WHIP are a dime a dozen.
Hansel Robles - The Julio Teheran of their bullpen, Robles still stands to earn about $4 million in arbitration. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t sit well with the Angels after he sported a 10.26 ERA this season.
Although each of these pitchers could take a lesser contract to remain with the club, a possibility given the uncertainty surrounding free agency, for now we will assume that GM Perry Minasian moves on from them. From a salary perspective, this will save the team $7.4-8.7 million (from the earlier sites).
Baseball Reference: $151.2 million
Spotrac: $146.4 million
MLBtraderumors: $143.2 million
From here on out, we will use the average of the three numbers for decision making purposes: $146.9 million. Although it’s a bummer to focus on salary at the top of the article, baseball is a business to Arte Moreno. Therefore, to make financial moves outside of his comfort zone is utterly pointless. The salary figure gives the new front office with somewhere in the range of…$30 million?
ANGELS 2021 OFFSEASON CHECKLIST:
#1 - Keep the team salary in the $175 million range for the 2021 season.
CURRENT ROSTER
C - Max Stassi, Anthony Bemboom
1B - Albert Pujols, Jared Walsh
2B - David Fletcher
SS - ????
3B - Anthony Rendon
LF - Justin Upton
CF - Mike Trout
RF - Jo Adell
DH - Shohei Ohtani
Bench - Luis Rengifo, Franklin Barreto, Taylor Ward or Scott Schebler?
SP - Dylan Bundy
SP - Andrew Heaney
SP - Griffin Canning
SP - Jaime Barria
SP - Patrick Sandoval
Bullpen - Mike Mayers, Felix Pena, Noe Ramirez, Ty Buttrey
Closer - ????
This would mean that 22/26 roster spots are filled. Now, let’s take a closer look at the pitching staff and what avenues GM Perry Minasian has to improve the team in that area.
PITCHING: THE ANGELS HAMARTIA
Obviously, the pitching staff needs work. The Angels offseason checklist centers around finding a starter or two. Every Angels fan knows the ubiquitous “Mike Trout hasn’t won a playoff series” line that is followed by an insult about the starting rotation. Yet, maybe things weren’t as bad as they appeared in 2020…maybe they were worse. To decide which statement is closer to the truth, let’s look at some baseline numbers from the season.
Overall - FanGraphs WAR: 4.5 (16th in MLB)
Baseball Reference WAR: -0.5 (21st)
Starting pitching - FanGraphs WAR: 2.9 (21st)
Baseball Reference WAR: 0.6 (18th)
Relief pitching - FanGraphs WAR: 1.7 (13th)
Baseball Reference WAR: -1.1 (19th)
ERA - Overall: 5.09 (25th)
Starters: 5.52 (29th)
Relief: 4.63 (21st)
Simply terrible. Although the bullpen looked better based on ERA, much of that was unfortunately derived from low leverage situations, which explains why the relief WAR is lower than the starters WAR. No, it wasn’t due to the discrepancy in innings pitched: starters only threw 270.2 innings versus 254.2 for the bullpen.
STARTING PITCHING
As I wrote in an article for Last Word on Sports, much of the disastrous starting pitching ERA boils down to a handful of starters. I brought up five in that piece, but it should have been narrowed to four: Julio Teheran, Patrick Sandoval, Shohei Ohtani and Jose Suarez. Dillon Peters was an emergency starter during a double-header and Matt Andriese pitched poorly in his only start, but he was solid out of the bullpen all season.
Here’s a look at the 19 starts from those four. Angels fans beware, this is incredibly dark.
Again, the Angels missed the playoffs by only three games in 2020. The common narrative from baseball heads is the Angels MUST get an “ace” or they’ll miss the playoffs again in 2021. The problem with this belief is that it doesn’t prove true in 2020. Not with the acquisition of Dylan Bundy and the improvement of Griffin Canning.
But you want proof, don’t you? Fair enough. Here is a list of teams who made the playoffs, with the fWAR and bWAR of their top 3 pitchers. As you will see, the Angels didn’t miss the postseason because of their top 3 starting pitchers.
According to FanGraphs, Dylan Bundy was better than the average #1 starting pitcher on AL playoff teams. If you take out Cleveland’s world-beating starters (#1 being Shane Bieber, AL Cy Young winner) the difference is somewhat substantial over a 60-game season. Baseball Reference has him a bit worse. The Angels #2, Andrew Heaney, is better than average on both (despite an unsightly 4.46 ERA — bad luck) and #3 Griffin Canning is right there on FanGraphs and dominates on Baseball Reference.
So what does this all mean? For starters, an “Ace” shouldn’t be the main priority this offseason, especially given the lack of options available in free agency. Simple put: Trevor Bauer, and his roughly $30 million annual salary, is not a good fit. BAUER IS OUT! If a Blake Snell/Yu Darvish/German Marquez becomes available, and the deal makes sense, do it! Or, if a Sonny Gray/Kyle Freeland/Zach Plesac deal better fits the short and long-term direction of the franchise, pull the trigger. It just shouldn’t be something that GM Perry Minasian empties the cupboard for when one pitcher isn’t the Angels only need. They got rid of Julio Teheran and that alone makes the pitching staff better.
ANGELS 2021 OFFSEASON CHECKLIST:
#1 - Keep the team salary in the $175 million range for the 2021 season.
#2 - Acquire a quality starting pitcher (or two)
a. Do NOT sign Trevor Bauer
b. Do NOT sell out the farm
Next up…
In Part 2, we will look closely at the Angels bullpen, middle infield and catching options in the organization. As it stands, after we non-tendered those four pitchers, the Angels will need at least three relievers to complete their staff, though four seems more likely.