MLB Offseason Preview - Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

LA Angels

American League	West Division
74-88	21 GB of Division Lead
Manager Mike Scioscia	GM Billy Eppler
AAA Affiliate Salt Lake Bees	AA Affiliate Mobile Bay Bears

2016 Rankings

Hitting	AVG – 9th	OPS – 22nd	Runs – 17th	HR – 25th	SB – 17th
Starting Pitching	ERA – 20th	K/9 – 25th	H/9 – 26th
Relief Pitching	ERA – 18th	K/9 – 30th	H/9 – 25th

Top Hitters

POS.	Name	AVG	OBP	Slug	HR	RBIs	WAR	SB
CF	Mike Trout	.315	.441	.550	29	100	10.6	30
SS	Andrelton Simmons	.281	.324	.366	4	44	4.2	10
RF	Kyle Calhoun	.271	.348	.438	18	75	3.4	2

Top Pitchers

POS.	Name	Record	ERA	IP/Saves	K	BB	ERA+	WAR
SP	Matt Shoemaker	9-13	3.88	160.0 IP	143	30	102	2.0
SP	Ricky Nolasco	4-6	3.21	73.0 IP	51	15	124	1.4
RP	Cam Bedrosion	2-0	1.12	40.1 IP	51	14	358	1.3

Trades that Occurred During Season

• Traded SP Hector Santiago and Alan Busenitz to Minnesota for SP Ricky Nolasco and P Alex Meyer

Impending Free Agents

• SP Jered Weaver
• SP C.J. Wilson
• C Geovany Soto
• SP Tim Lincecum
• 1B Brendan Ryan
• RP A.J. Achter
• LF Nick Buss
• RP Andrew Bailey
• SP Kyle Kendrick
• LF Trent Oeltjen
• C Jose Molina

Top Prospects

• The Angels actually have no prospects in the 100 lists of Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, or MLB...their farm system is horrible

Team MVP

• This is probably the easiest decision for any team that I have reviewed/previewed and will write about.  It's Mike Trout.  Trout is the best hitter in baseball, and it's not even really close, and is on the path towards being an inner circle Hall-of-Famer.  He had a .300/.400/.500 season which is always a sign of a good season and not many players accomplish this during a season.  He managed to drive in 100 runs on a really bad team and helped Albert Pujols drive in a 100 runs in his own right.  He played great defense, creating 6 defensive runs saved at the premium position of center field.  He has a very good chance at winning his second MVP Award, although he should have at least three by now, and if the Angels were even a competent team, he would run away with the award this season.  The sad news is that Trout has been the Angels' best player since he became a full-time player in 2012 and is just now entering the part of his career that is generally thought of as a player's prime, and yet the team is wasting his career.

Success/Failure

• Failure - With as much money as the Angels had on their payroll this season, the only reasonable expectation for the year was making the playoffs, and more likely, winning their division. Instead, they finished next-to-last in the division so they're stuck in a sort of no man's zone where they're not good enough to make the playoffs but not bad enough to get a high draft pick. The Angels had a horrible pitching staff, both in the rotation and in the bullpen, and the former suffered significant injuries to the likes of Garrett Richards, Matt Shoemaker, and Andrew Heaney.  They also had a bad lineup with the exception of Mike Trout, Kole Calhoun, Albert Pujols, Yunel Escobar, and Andrelton Simmons.  They probably should have considered selling off some of their assets at the trade deadline since it was obvious that they weren't going to make the playoffs and may not have the core to be successful next season either.

Offseason Outlook

• The Angels need to seriously start considering a re-build instead of the plan that they have been going with in recent seasons.  If they were to go all-in on a re-build and trade all of their marketable pieces, this would help to reset their franchise.  This would include trading, and I'm afraid to write this, Mike Trout.  Trading Trout would completely restart their farm system from the worst ranked farm system in the league that it currently is.  A return for him would be the biggest trade in baseball history and would yield the Angels players for their MLB team, plus numerous top-50 prospects.  I think I will write a post soon about which teams could even create a strong enough of a package in order to make this trade even possible.  A quick glance over teams' farm systems and young players shows a relatively small number of teams that could even come close to making this trade a reality.  The Angels owner Arte Moreno and GM Billy Eppler have shown resistance to even discussing the possibility of trading Trout so this probably won't even come close to surfacing, but it is fun to talk about.  Coming off the 2016 season, starting pitchers Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson's contracts are both coming off the books which will give the team $40.7 million in space for next year.  There are numerous free agents available for the Angels to pursue this offseason if they want to chase talent and just re-tool their major league team.  Mark Trumbo and Edwin Encarnacion are both available and the Angels have room for both players.  Trumbo and Encarnacion are both coming off 100 plus RBI seasons which would go a long way to increasing their offense, but they will both come with a high price tag.  On the pitching market starters Rich Hill and Hisashi Iwakuma are available, as well as Aroldis Chapman, Mark Melancon, and Kenley Jansen as big-name relievers.  It will all depend on how deep Arte Moreno's pockets will be this offseason as to how good of a team they field in 2017.  I also think that they need to consider firing manager Mike Scioscia, who has been the manager of the Angels since the 2000 season and has struggled to adapt to the analytics age of baseball that is currently taking place.

*All stats and information come from baseball-reference.com, fangraphs.com, espn.com, rosterresource.com, baseballamerica.com, and spotrac.com