A third Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher has hit the long-term DL with a torn UCL. What can the club do to prepare for what looks to be a rocky 2017?
Their ace, Garrett Richards, tore his ulnar collateral ligament in early May. Top prospect and another starting pitcher, Andrew Heaney, suffered the same fate to his throwing arm’s elbow later on.
Unlike Richards, who has chosen a less aggressive approach of rehabbing it, Heaney chose Tommy John surgery and will miss the remainder of 2016 and all of 2017.
Add to the list promising 25-year-old right-hander Nick Tropeano. The Angels announced earlier this week he also tore his UCL and will likely undergo the corrective procedure to remedy things.
Los Angeles isn’t playing for a berth in the postseason this year. They are ten games below .500 and tied for last place in the AL West with the Oakland A’s, another team who should be a seller at the trade deadline.
With the Angels’ 2016 outlook in the gutter, what should their approach be in the offseason as they prepare for the 2017 campaign?
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Everyone knows the biggest chip they hold is the biggest fish in baseball’s player pool — Mike Trout. Dave Cameron at FanGraphs previously wrote a piece suggesting the Angels need to consider trading the All-Star slugger to rebuild their talent pool soon after news of Richards injury surfaced. It’s certainly not an asinine venture to ponder, but it surely would be an unpopular decision amongst a Halos fan base.
Albert Pujols will turn 37 next year. He’ll likely never hit .300 again, but has experienced a nice upswing to his power numbers in 2016 with 19 home runs and 71 RBI. Whether he holds worthwhile trade value is debatable. After this season, he has $140 MM and five years remaining on his contract. Trout will have roughly $122 MM and four years remaining.
Outside of those two players, right fielder Kole Calhoun and the gifted defensive shortstop the Angels have in Andrelton Simmons, there’s not a lot of talent or youth to go around. The aging Jered Weaver could and should be dealt at the deadline for whatever can be had, as he’s a free agent after the regular season.
Matt Shoemaker has been a roller coaster this year and Hector Santiago has come back down to earth some since last season when posted a 3.66 ERA across 32 starts. The club has also imported Tim Lincecum as a reclamation project for the pitching staff to help occupy some innings.
So — where do the Angels go from here?
Trading proven talent for a bunch of unproven minor leaguers is one route. But that won’t get them a whole lot better in the short-term. The lineup is not incredible, but with players like Trout, Calhoun, Pujols and the upwards trending C.J Cron, they might be able to fix it some in free agency.
The rotation is where the glaring problem lies. Angels starters with the top five innings logged on the team have contributed 25 wins versus 27 losses and a combined wins above replacement number of 2.6. And that number doesn’t include Lincecum’s current -0.6 WAR.
Elsewhere in the division, the Seattle Mariners’ top five starters have amassed a WAR of 4.0, the Astros 4.7, the Rangers 7.0 and the A’s come in first with 7.8 WAR so far this season. Angels pitchers have been playing at replacement level for most of 2016 and replacing a large majority of them is just what management should be looking to do in the offseason.
It’s going to be a challenge, though. After Heaney, Sean Newcomb was the top pitching prospect in the system, but he was dealt to Atlanta for Simmons. LHP Nate Smith and RHP Victor Alcantara are the No. 4 and 5 prospects for Los Angeles, respectively, according to MLB.com.
Smith is 24 and in his second year of Triple-A, meddling along with a 3.98 ERA. Alcantara, 23, has a 4.80 ERA in his first season at the Double-A level. Both could be rushed along to make their debuts in 2017 given the current climate of the Angels’ rotation.
There’s not much pitching talent to be bought in free agency, either. While some coveted bats like Edwin Encarnacion (34), Jonathan Lucroy (31), Ian Desmond (31), Mark Trumbo (31) and Josh Reddick (30) will be scooped up early, the top projected starters on the market might be anyone in between Gio Gonzalez (31) to Andrew Cashner (30) to Doug Fister (33).
Unlike the past few years, there are no top tier arms capable of starting 30-plus games that will be looking to get paid before baseball’s winter meetings.
The Los Angeles Angels need a facelift before next year. Their best bet might be shoring up the seventh, eighth and ninth innings of ball games by signing a few players like Aroldis Chapman and Mark Melancon to pair with Huston Street.
From there, the rotation might be somewhat patchwork, but Mike Scioscia could lobby the front office for money to build up the offense and pray the club can maintain a lot of leads into the sixth inning of ball games in 2017.
Trading a player like Mike Trout might get your club two or three All-Stars plus some promising prospects for the price of giving up one guy. It’s not a pragmatic approach to trade away the best player in any sport, though.
Next: New York Yankees should become sellers
Look what it did for the Edmonton Oilers in hockey when they parted ways with Wayne Gretzky, shipping him to the LA Kings in 1988. But baseball is not hockey, and Trout is not Gretzky. All of that said, the Kings prospects for the upcoming season look a lot more promising than that of the Angels.