Did the Angels just screw up their future with Mike Trout?

The Game Room
61

I didn’t really understand this move.

I don’t know what Trouts take on it is, but he is saying all the right things. But I have to believe this chaps his ass in a big way. He is eligible for arbitration in a year, so the Angels may have decided to do this knowing that 1) Trout is their property for the next few years, and 2) because of that, they have time to make up for this. But I think it is being penny wise and pound foolish, even if you give him a million dollar raise, he isn’t making a ripple in the Angels payroll pond. And it would show some good will.

Next year, he is going to go for big bucks in arbitration, and odds are he will win. Even if he loses, he will win, based on how arbitration cases go. If he asks for $10 MM, and the Angels offer him say $5MM, He will get at least the lower offer. And I’m sure his take home after his first year of arbitration, assuming he has a year similar to his last year, is going to be at least $10MM.

What the Angels may have done in the long run, though, is poison Trout’s feelings on the team long-term. That would be a shame, and if I were an Angels fan, id be pissed about what they did.

62

Oh, and one comment vis-a-vis the back and forth about A-Rod, Bay, and some others.

Remember when A-Rod signed the first contract, at $252MM, people like Bonds and McGuire and Sosa were still going strong. As it turns out, A-Rod was using PEDS too. My point? 5-10 years ago, signing a player in their 30’s didn’t seem like the huge gamble it really is, because players like Bonds were rarely hurt, and when they came back, they were better than ever.

I think the Bay contract reflects this thinking. When it was made, I didn’t think it was the worst signing of all time. But injuries are again a part of the game, and when a baseball player making that kind of money gets hurt, it makes the contract look very bad in retrospect.

Personally, I believe two signings stand out as being very bad in the last half decade. The A-Rod resigning by the Yankees, and the Hamilton signing by the Angels. Not because I think he’s a terrible player, but because of the huge risk he is. Maybe he never slips back into the drug scene, but I wouldn’t gamble that kind of money on a guy on the wrong side of 30.

And remember… It IS the wrong side of 30. Before PED’s and HGH stormed baseball, great players best years were behind them when they hit 35-36. Then, all of a sudden, the Barry Bonds syndrome made us forget that… He was having his best years in his late 30’s, and was getting better every year. That just doesn’t happen, but it made a lot of people forget how players really do break down after 35. Clemens is the poster child for the pitchers. Aside from Nolan Ryan, I can’t think of one power pitcher than hung around and was effective in his late 30’s and 40’s. Until HGH and PED’s, of course.

If PEDS were available like they were in the 90’s back in the 70’s and 80’s, players like Dave Parker would have been a shoe-in hall of famer with over 3000 hits behind a stellar career. But he’s all but forgotten now. His knees crapped out, he got older, and like most players, when you get into your late 30’s you don’t recover. He never got that 3000th hit, and I doubt he’ll get in the hall unless a veterans committee puts him in.

I think if baseball is truly on top of the PEDS, a lot of players are going to fail miserably at delivering on their $20+MM contracts.

63

What I’m saying is that this might be a brilliant strategy by Angels, not a foolish error, because of the high risks and high costs of signing a long-term big bux contract with a player in his mid-thirties, which is what Trout will be towards the end of a contract he will sign when he goes FA, so they’re resigning themselves to getting “only” his years from 21 through 26.

No way is Trout going to sign a contract now that locks him up long-term, anyway. The contract he would sign right now is a lucrative one that extends his tenure with the Angels a year or two beyond free agency, but at top dollar: say, a contract that runs through his season 7 or 8, at say 20 Mil per year. He would typically be offering the Angels one or two extra seasons of controlling him in exchange for a package that nets him 160 mil for his first eight years. At the end of that deal, he’s 28 and in a position to go FA if he’s still a star, and if he loses the gamble and is has lost his star ability, well, he’s still a rich guy.

The closer Trout gets to the end of his sixth season, the more willing he is to extend that contract out a few years, but neither the Angels nor he wants to make his first long term contract a career contract–it suits neither’s purpose: the Angels don’t want to gamble what a 21-year old will be doing fifteen years down the road, and the kid doesn’t want to sell his entire future for a contract now. He might be able to do even better if he signs another contract when he’s in his late twenties, and he can sign one that brings financial security anyway.

But what I’m positing here is that Trout may be so good so young that the Angels have decided that controlling his first six years may be the wisest tack: two dirt-cheap years plus four more at arbitrated rates, zero commitment to the long-term future, and unloading him for prospects towards the end of the six-year deal. They could get the best player in the game over those six years for a way below-market price total, and get some good young players, not bad.

As opposed to paying top dollar for years that may not be so productive in the distant future. It’s not a bad strategy, except to gushing fanboys whose money it’s not.

My point about A-Rod is a simple one, Rick: of the three teams that controlled his contract, the Mariners did by far the best in terms of the production they got for what they paid him. The Rangers overpaid him seriously, and the Yankees bought a lot of shit years for top dollar in addition to the few good years they got out of him. The Mariners, OTOH, got nothing but good years and paid him by far the lowest annual rate. Your claim that his leaving ruined the team is silly: as soon as he left, the Mariners won 116 games, thus completely disproving that. The fact that the team fell apart after that has nothing to do with A-Rod–the team fell apart because they didn’t spend the money on good enough players to replace the one who’d left, but they could have. A-Rod was not worth what the market (Tom Hicks) was willing to pay him, and they had to find a way to win without him, and they didn’t. But A-Rod was never part of that solution.

64

Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Walter Johnson, Bert Blyleven… actually, power pitchers last longer.

Oh, Dave was certainly taking drugs.

65

The really silly part is that I didn’t claim that. Holy moly.

66

In light of numerous top prospects signing long-term contracts within a year of being called up, can you substantiate this claim at all?

  1. Incorrect - the closer Trout gets to the end of his sixth season the LESS willing he’ll be to extend a contract out for a few years. Guaranteed money is the major incentive these days, and he’ll be itching for free agency, not just a year or two of a paycheck.
  2. 15 years?! Where the fuck are you getting the idea of a 15-year contract from?
67

The funny part here is the one thing we all agree on is that the Angels have done something odd here–shafting a superstar-level kid out of a few hundred bucks they’ll never miss, which could well create a sense of alienation in the kid that will make it difficult to sign him to a longterm deal at some point.

Seems to me I’m the only one trying to make some sense of what they’ve actually done. Everyone else here is tearing their hair out of their skulls, and screaming “Have the Angels LOST THEIR MINDS? This is Cuh-razy!”

68

I’m getting the 15 year contract from projecting the probability of Trout signing a medium range contract with the Angels that would lock him up a few years past his Free Agency say at age 24, and then signing an A-Rod like long range contract at the expiration of that deal. I’m suggesting that the Angels may be looking at that prospect and deciding, “Nah, let’s just get value out of his first six years, which may be his best six years and certainly will be his cheapest six years, and deal him off for parts after that.”

69

The reason, apparently, is because they can and because this is how they handle these situations: I read somewhere that the Angels’ policy is that they only give raises based on service time, not performance. So Trout will make a little less than Mark Trumbo this year. And it makes sense that they’re expecting Trout to just get over it when it comes time to talk about a raise since he holds no leverage at all. It’s of course true that they want to keep Trout as cheap as possible, it’s just a question of what they think are the costs.

The problem with your reasoning is that you have a lot of facts about past players and contracts wrong. And speaking of the idea of trading Trout, which of these do you think will get a better return: trading Mike Trout when he’s near the end of his rookie deal and close to free agency, or trading him if he’s locked up for a bunch of years to come at a relatively team-friendly rate? That’s if you were bound and determined to trade him for some unknown reason, since at the current date that sounds like a terrible idea.

70

You do understand that that’s a completely idiotic thing to assume, right? That absolutely no one here is operating under that assumption except for you, and this is likely the largest reason you’ve been talking past everyone, right?

71

I was going to say Vernon Wells, but he doesn’t really fit. Still, it’s a good case of a team getting burned signing even a relatively young player long-term. It does depend on how good the player actually is, and I’m sure there’s some salary level where even signing Trout long-term doesn’t make sense. (Especially if his career develops more along the lines of Cesar Cedeno than Mickey Mantle, say.)

72

At least a few of pseudotriton ruber ruber’s posts don’t operate under that assumption because he compares Rodriguez’s Texas contract to the deal Trout could get if he were a free agent at 26.

73

True - but your attempt to nail him down to one set of goalposts doesn’t seem to be having any effect.

74

All of my posts here assume that comparison. Which ones don’t? (Predicted **Marley **answer: “A lot of them! You suck!!”)

75

These:

I can’t find a post where you made it clear you were assuming Trout would get a moderate contract extension first.

76

Wells is a weird case, though I suppose all of them are. The Blue Jays were facing something of a PR problem at the time with waning support and the perception that ownership was disinterested in the team and couldn’t attract free agents, so they fell obliged to make a splash and sign the team’s marquee player at more than they knew he was worth. But he’s not really comparable to Trout, of course. Wells was 28 when he began his long term deal (actually, 29, but the deal didn’t take effect for a year.) What’s far more puzzling is why the Angels traded for him; as far as I can tell nobody in the world thought it was a good move.

What Trout will do in the future is hard to say; nobody’s ever been that good at age 20 before. He has very few valid comparisons. Some, like Vada Pinson or Cesar Cedeno, are somewhat cautionary (though you could do a lot worse than having Vada Pinson) and some are encouraging, like Frank Robinson or Ken Griffey Jr., or Ty Cobb if you wanna go back that far. But Trout was better than those guys at age 20. I actually think Al Kaline is the best comparison, really.

I do not think it impossible that 2012 will be the best season Mike Trout ever has. For one thing he could win MVP Awards and lead teams to pennants with brilliant campaigns, and still not have a year as good as last year; Baseball Reference credits him with over 10 WAR, which is insane. For another, some of those comparisons peaked at 20; it was the best year Kaline ever had. For still another, Trout in 2012 had an unimpressive K/W ratio for a person with his batting average. It’s very hard to foresee a player continuing to bat .329 while striking out that much.

77

I think that’s almost certainly not the case, since (as has been noted) the current Angels front office has proven to be not merely willing but *eager *to sign aged veteran stars to massive contracts.

However, for the sake of argument, I’d say that even if what you’re proposing is the plan, stiffing him out of $100K or so this year might well be a mistake regardless. Why? Because, when deciding between two actions, sometimes the choice that you judge to be worse is actually preferable if it is also the one that keeps your options open (I’m borrowing this concept from poker, but I’ll spare us the detailed analogy). If I were the Angels GM and had the long-term plan in mind that you propose, I’d nonetheless feel that $100K is a paltry price for the the ability to change my mind at a later date.

(Granted, I’m on record above as thinking that this one incident will have no bearing on Trout’s mindset when the the time does come to consider a new contract with Anaheim, but a lot of people seem to disagree, and I wouldn’t want to take the chance over a meager $100K. Mathematically, this is picking up pennies in front of a steam-roller.)

78

So what’s your explanation for the Angels stiffing the kid? “Uh, I forget what a good tip would be for a great rookie season”? Folks, something kinda big just happened here, and you’ve all done a great job of noticiing how strange it was, but I haven’t heard a word explaining why it happened.

79

That they didn’t want to pay out $100K they didn’t have to? And that it never occurred to them that the baseball media and/or public would notice and/or care? That wouldn’t be a huge oversight either, I don’t think: lots of people pay much closer attention to baseball than I, so maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t recall ever seeing this particular controversy before.

And, yes, your theory is indeed plausible, and maybe the explanation is that they’re planning exactly as you suggest (and are making IMO a small mistake by not giving him the bonus regardless). . .

. . . BUT, you have to admit that your theory is highly speculative; that in general it would be extremely unusual for a franchise to plan on cutting ties with their hugely popular, exceptionally successful young superstar like that (hanging on to this sort of uncommon and homegrown talent would be the first priority of most teams with decent payrolls); and that there’s some evidence against your theory, in that the front office in question is one of the least cost-conscious in all of baseball.

Before we get ahead of ourselves: is it actually that strange? There have been a handful of examples thrown around of breakout rookies in MLB getting that modest bonus that Trout missed out on, but (A) just how routine is this really within the Majors as a whole, and, more importantly, (B) how has the Anaheim front office, specifically, dealt with their successful rookies in recent years? Maybe the Angles are just less willing to take on this voluntary expense than other franchises are, and this is simply the first time they’ve had an extreme enough example to make people notice.

Or maybe not, I don’t know – but to my knowledge it’s not yet in evidence that this is, in fact, really bizarre.

80

I will admit that cheerfully. I don’t even necessarily agree with the policy, though it is more appealing to me than to some others. Look at it this way: there is a monetary value that is placed on players’ abilities. In theory, that value is equal to that ability, so a team should be able to say of a fair-salaried player, “I’ll take either the player or the money–they’re equivalent.”

But suppose some team has decided that the high end is disproportionate? That great players are worth a maximum of 15 mil per year, considering all the risks of injury, or flatlining, AND that extending contracts into infinity is really dangerous–that is, you might sing a player to a three- or four-year contract of above 15 mil IF you really need that player at a particular position and your team is otherwise competitive for World’s Championship, but you would be taking an outsized risk by doing so. You might, under those circumstances, roll the dice on one player for three or four year. Maybe you’d do it for two. But if you had a club policy of NEVER signing anyone to a long term deal (longer than five years, say) and NEVER signing anyone to a deal for more than 15 mil and ALWAYS letting your young superstars who could get such a deal from someone hit the open market when they’re eligible, you’d be able to get by–this again assumes that your research (or your gut) tells you that long-term signings above a certain amount are cost-ineffective.

One model I was choosing for Trout’s situation, btw, was Jose Reyes, who signed exactly the type of deal that young players often sign in the middle of their first six years: a star at 20 (though a lesser talent than Trout), Reyes signed an extension with the Mets that took him past his first bite at Free Agency, and made him wealthy, but extended only to his late 20s THEN signed a bigger bux, longer term contract as a FA with the Marlins, who immediately faced buyer’s remorse. The Angels might be saying that’s a headache that they want no part of.