Seems like the wrong place to trim a few bucks off the payroll.
That’s the thing with collective bargaining: If you want the benefits of the group, you have to live with some of the downsides.
The Angels were being charitable by giving Trout more than they had to; teams often do in that situation since the cost is (relatively) low. Every team does it, though. I doubt there’s any tangible effect on his free agent future. In fact, what’s more likely to happen is that Trout has another good year and the Angels buy out his arbitration years plus perhaps a year or two of free agency for a large sum of money.
Even within the constraints of the CBA, that was exceedingly cheap of the Angels. Jeff Fletcher notes that the reigning rookies of the year for the last 5 years have received an average of 21.7% over the minimum. Trout got 4%.
It seems like a big risk considering how little money it is by MLB standards. We’ll see if he gets over it when they go to arbitration or another round of contract negotiations in a few years.
This seems like the type of event that could precipitate a client running into the arms of Scott Boras. In which case the Angels will eventually get bent over.
I wonder if the Angels haven’t decided to bargain hard with Trout, keep him from every cent they can legally keep from him, and swap him out 5 /1/2 years into his MLB career from some team for all that a superstar will get, which is considerable.
Don’t know instantly if that’s smart, but it does look like they’ll be getting the best salary: performance ratio in Trout’s MLB career by doing that and quite possibly getting a fair return for him in the bargain.
It just seems so bizarre to me. I’m equally baffled by their decision to move him out of center for Peter Bourjos, who isn’t any better a fielder and has a lot of unanswered questions as a major league hitter. As wonderful as Trout is, the Angels seem to have had thier weird hate on for him, this undying insistance on playing someone, ANYONE ahead of him despite all the evidence of the stupidity of such a move. He didn’t even start 2012 on the big league roster.
They should be offering the kid a 10-year contract now to save huge bux down the line.
If they’re going to start Bourjos, does it matter who plays in center and who plays in left? Bourjos is actually a fantastic fielder so playing him in center makes sense. It saves Trout some wear & tear in the field without compromising their defensive performance.
Also, to sign Trout to a 10 year deal would probably require paying $200m. Doubt the Angels are excited to do that while still paying the contracts of Hamilton, Pujols, Wells, and others.
If so, they’ll be trading him away just as he approaches his prime. That seems like a very bad idea. It’s also a weird time to get so cheap since they got a huge TV deal and opened their wallets in such a spectacular way last year. If you can shell out for all these free agents, is it worth it to save the most possible money on your best player?
I think he started last year in the minors because he caught a bad case of the flu during spring training and missed a bunch of time. That said, it was arguably the biggest reason they missed the playoffs.
You would think so.
Then they shouldn’t have signed Hamilton! If you asked anyone in baseball if they would rather pay Mike Trout $200 million over the next 10 years or Hamilton $125 million over the next five, do you think anyone would pick Hamilton? If they signed him this offseason at the cost of losing Trout in a few years, that is an absymal decision - and I wasn’t against signing Hamilton. But in that context it’s a horrible move.
For my part I am wondering if they are just taking the most aggressive possible stance ahead of arbitration in 2014. They know they’ll have to give him a big raise and they’re trying to keep it as small as possible.
But they can probably have both! They can wait a year or two before giving Trout a big-money extension, and by that point the Wells contract will be off the books and they’ll be a couple years into the Hamilton deal.
The Angels really have most of the leverage here.
That could work out. And yes, the Angels hold all the cards here.
I agree that defensively it’s more or less a wash, based on the evidence we have before us; the team is really no better or worse off if you switch them back and forth. Whether there’s a physically significantly greater amount of wear and tear in playing center field I am not sure of, though. You make some more plays but not THAT many more, and you’re less likely to crash into a wall, I’d think.
I guess for me it’s just the team’s overall antipathy towards Trout; I don’t really understand why they’re giving away money like the world’s running out of it to past-their-prime sluggers, but being cheapskates when it comes to the best player on the team and one of the most exciting young players in the history of the sport, and then on top of that telling him, in effect, “you weren’t good enough to keep your job as the center fielder, so we’re moving you to the position where most teams hide shitty fielders.” It’s Trout’s job to suck it up and play the best left field he can, but why are the Angels seemingly making extra effort to piss off this immensely valuable player, when they have the money to give $125 million to a dull-witted junkie who’s ten years older and, at best, half as valuable?
I understand the Angels shouldn’t want to give money away for nothing, but there’s playing hardball and there’s being an asshole, they’ve never demonstrated any interest in fiscal responsibility BEFORE. Do they have some personal thing with Trout?
Trout’s strong rookie year may be working against him in the Angels’ thinking, Unlike most rookies who must improve to earn a big contract, all he has to do to be one of the Angels best players is play at his rookie level–and he will most like improve on that anyway. Until the 2019 season, five seasons away, the Angels can pay him on a year-to-year basis, risking very little (if he breaks his spine, the team is off the hook for future payment), and factoring the pre-arbitration years (2012 and 2012) his average pay for these first six years will be low, while his performance if healthy will be spectacularly high. They can trade him in late 2018 for a package of young players on a contending team that would like to acquire Trout for its pennant run, most of which will have their thrid outfielder playing MUCH below Trout’s level–teams will be tripping over each other to acquire Trout, if he’s healthy.
Meanwhile the Angels will certainly be able to avoid the A-Rod trap. Do you think the Yankees are pleased with their investment right now? I can’t believe they’re foolish enough to offer Cano an A-Rod-like deal–they ought to be running like scalded dogs away from offering Cano a multi-zillion, multi-year deal. I think the Angels may be on to something very, very smart here.
Trout will probably be arbitration-eligible in 2014, which means his salary will go up that year either because the Angels will give him a better deal or an arbitrator will. He can be a free-agent after 2017, when he will be 26. Comparing this to the new contract A-Rod signed when he was 32 does not make any sense.
Sez you. He’ll have 2 dirt-cheap years (I meant 2012 and 2013 as dirt-cheap year above), and 4 more seasons, without being on the hook if Trout suffers unforeseen health issues, sudden decline, etc. that are probably equivalent to the rate he would get in a multi-year deal. Let’s say that’s 20 mil per year–so his total compensation for his first six years would be 81 mil (1 mil for 2012 and 2013, 80 mil total for next four arbitrated years.) That works out to under 14 mil per year for each of his first six years, none of which (other than the current year’s deal) the Angels are committed to paying. Towards the end of the six years, they can deal him off for prospects, or offer him a blowout A-Rod style contract if they like–either way they’re not gambling that he’ll be worth 20 million in ten years, which is the A-Rod error. A-Rod’s first contract with the Rangers blew up in their faces, and so did the contract he signed with the Yankees to extend that contract.
It’s not just “sez me.” You’re comparing a 26-year-old who should be just getting to his prime to a 32-year-old who should have some strong years left but is getting ready to decline. The differences ought to be obvious.
He’s worth more in a trade if he’s got several years left in a team-friendly contract than if he is about to be a free agent. By that point he may be the best player in the majors and the Angels’ other current big deals (except Pujols) will have already expired. With all that payroll freed up and all the TV money they have, why would you trade Trout for prospects at that point? They’re not the Rays.
The error is overpaying for the wrong years, not signing long contracts. You may have noticed that more teams are signing their prospects to longer-term contracts earlier in their career. And over the 7 years Rodriguez played under the contract he signed with the Rangers, he was as good as expected. Likewise paying Trout now (or in two years) for the next seven or eight or ten is a good bet because the deal will end around the time he’s 30, not when he’s in his 40s.
No, it didn’t. They failed to build a good team around him because of their own ineptitude and then their owner went broke. They also screwed up in the first place by bidding against themselves for him.
Right. They guaranteed him 250 Million for ten years (at around Trout’s age when he’ll become a free agent), then paid the Yankees 67 million for the privilege of taking over the contract, then the Yankees over paid him a few years later. Both clubs are sorry they ever signed him to anything, and according to you, both were smart signings. According to me, the only smart ones here were the Mariniers, who got some of A-Rod’s best seasons, some of them for very cheap.
This is kind of weird wording. They guaranteed him $252 million, wound up paying him $66 million for three years, and then paid (say) $67 million of the remaining money when they traded him.
I never said both were smart signings. I said he lived up to that first contract. In those seven seasons he won three MVP awards, hit 47 home runs a year, etc. etc. etc. and Baseball Reference says he was worth 100 wins more than a replacement player. The Rangers couldn’t build a good team around him, but that’s not because they overpaid him, it’s because they were stupid. They thought Chan Ho Park was going to be their ace. (I have said in the past that the Yankees were more or less stuck with A-Rod after he opted out of that contract in 2007 because it would have been very hard to replace his production. Now they are really stuck with him and they clearly regret it.)
You’ll have to define ‘smart’ here, because they’ve been in rebuilding mode for most of the last decade. And they just signed their best player to a huge contract in his mid-20s, so I don’t think they learned the same lesson from that story that you did.
Well, the Mariners had their greatest year immediately AFTER unloading A-Rod, so I’d say they got maximum production out of his first six years in the league, paid him relatively little, and didn’t suffer for losing him. In regard to him, and his value, and his contract, I’d say they played it smart. They certainly didn’t over-pay him for what he gave them, as the Rangers and Yankees have. Sure he had some big years for both Texas and NYY, but I think both clubs are full of regret they ever got into bed with him, partly for the money he took off the table for both clubs.