Tag Archives: American League West

Even Trout has his limits

Image

Reply
Mike Trout

The greatest position player in Angels history may yet become fed up with the Angels’ lack of loyalty in return for his.

When Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers in December, the nearly-universal observation—by those not wanting to trash his merch in protest—was remembering he was well on record as saying he wanted to win above and beyond his own performance papers. At least two trade deadlines featured thoughts about the return the Angels could have hauled in in a deal for him.

Then they let Ohtani walk as a free agent, knowing his would be one of the most high-ticket free agencies in baseball history. While he begins life as a Dodger, the eyes of those who still care about the Angels turn to the other big ticket in their fatigues, a guy who sacrificed his free agency-to-be in return for staying with the team that unearthed, nurtured, and let him shine, while building nothing truly serious around him.

He’ll never put it into just these words, but even Mike Trout has his limits. And he’s no longer just the child prodigy who delivered more prodigiously than any other player during his time. Now, he’s man of the house. But his team doesn’t behave that way.

The man Baseball Reference holds as the number five all-around center fielder ever to play the game doesn’t need any more accolades. The 32-year-old from New Jersey who leads all active players at this writing with a .997 OPS and a 173 OPS+ has already punched his ticket to the Hall of Fame several times over.* If and when the Angels elect to retire number 27, it’ll be for Trout and not for Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero, Sr.

It’s one thing for Trout to smile upon the Angels giving their too-often-suspect bullpen a big overhaul this offseason. But with significant free agents still unemployed as spring training is in full operation, Trout is no longer shy about saying what, oh, every last Angels observer thinks and he in his heart of hearts knows.

“I was in contact with both of them, just pushing, pushing, pushing,” Trout said before the team began its first full-squad workouts this week, “them” being owner Arte Moreno and president John Carpino.

There’s still some guys out there that can make this team a lot better. I’m going to keep pushing as long as I can. Until the season starts or until those guys sign. It’s just in my nature. I’m doing everything I can possible. It’s obviously Arte’s decision. I’m going to put my two cents in there.

And, while he reiterated his intent to remain an Angel for life, something the glandular contract extension he signed in 2019 made clear enough, even he would be amendable to a trade in the near future if things come to that. The same trade deadlines that pounded with thoughts of the return haul for Ohtani pounded likewise for Trout, even during the seasons when injuries kept him off the field for long, long periods.

“I think the easy way out is to ask for a trade,” he added. “Maybe down the road, if some things change.” Meaning, probably, that he still sees the Angels’ administration trying for real, but if he senses they quit trying even his loyalty isn’t going to hold for very much longer.

Praising Moreno’s willingness to spend up to certain points is one thing. So is praising general manager Perry Minaisian for the bullpen overhaul. But the Angels haven’t yet overhauled their starting rotation or the lineup around Trout. Asking them for the same commitment to actually winning, overall, that Trout’s made, is something else entirely.

“[W]hen I signed that contract, I’m loyal. I want to win a championship here,” Trout insisted. “The overall picture of winning a championship or getting to the playoffs here is bigger satisfaction [than] bailing out and just taking an easy way out. So, I think that’s been my mindset. Maybe down the road if something’s changed, but that’s been my mindset ever since the trade speculations came up.”

Moreno—the man who made his fortune in marketing, the man who still seems to think more like a marketer than a baseball man when he does move toward big or semi-big signings—isn’t making it easier for Trout. “I’m not going to spend money just to show that we’re going to spend money,” he told an interviewer, “unless it’s going to substantially change the team.”

Trout’s told at least one reporter and possibly more that, if that was exactly what Moreno told him directly, it didn’t exactly mean he was going to hit what free agency market remains now. “It’s, uh, yeah, no, you know how Arte is,” he said. Some said he laughed a bit. If only it was really funny.

Ordinarily, when an eleven-time All-Star talks, his team listens. Trout may well be perfectly content still to be where he is, but even he has his limits. Until now, he’d never hinted that greatly about those. But they’re there. For the moment, Trout wants to play a full season unimpeded by yet another injury in the line of duty.

Loyalty is supposed to be a two-way street, right? For Trout, as for Ohtani, loyalty in return means building a viably contending team around them with brains more than the kind of impulsiveness that saw the Angels plunge all-in last July . . . only to have it blow up in their faces (an 8-19 August) and into waiving five players—including two they acquired at that trade deadline—when September arrived.

Ohtani was lucky the Dodgers had a readymade contender awaiting him. He’s lucky that his new team has won ten of the past eleven National League West titles and gone to eleven straight postseasons. He’s lucky that, barring unexpected catastrophe, the Dodgers are liable to reach to the postseason to come at minimum. That’s a guarantee the Angels haven’t been able to hand Trout.

They can’t just put nine prime Mike Trouts into their starting lineup. They can barely build something to sustain the one Mike Trout they’ve been blessed to have. “I’m going out there and play my game,” that one Mike Trout said. “I got to put a full season together and see what happens.”

Uninjured, he may yet have another couple of seasons of the kind of play that punched his Cooperstown ticket in the first place. Whether it means anything above and beyond his place in baseball history isn’t up to him, and never has been.

———————————————————————-

* For those who gaze upon wins above replacement (WAR) without seeing it the be-all/end-all of a player’s value, but still an extremely valuable way to measure him, be advised at this writing of this: Trout’s 65.1 peak WAR and 85.2 career WAR are, respectively, 20.4 and 13.6 above the average Hall of Fame center fielder.

And, despite his recent injury history, Trout still holds the number one slots among active players for: offensive winning percentage, adjusted batting runs and wins, situational wins added, and power-speed number. He also enters this season with a lifetime .301/.412/.582 slash line.

For perspective, the last two entries on the lifetime slash are higher than those for Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Henry Aaron, and his lifetime .301 “batting average” thus far is one point below Mays.

For further perspective, according to my Real Batting Average (RBA) metric, this is how Mike Trout would look among Hall of Fame center fielders who played all or most of their careers in the post-WWII/post-integration/night-ball era, if he were to retire this instant and await his call to Cooperstown. (One more time: RBA = total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances.)

Center Field PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Mike Trout 6521 3142 964 119 55 99 .672
Mickey Mantle 9907 4511 1733 148 47 13 .651
Willie Mays 12496 6066 1464 214 91 44 .631
Ken Griffey, Jr. 11304 5271 1312 246 102 81 .620
Duke Snider 8237 3865 971 154 54** 21 .615
Larry Doby 6299 2621 871 60 39** 38 .576
Andre Dawson 10769 4787 589 143 118 111 .534
Kirby Puckett 7831 3453 450 85 58 56 .524
Richie Ashburn 9736 3196 1198 40 30** 43 .463
HOF AVG .587

** Sacrifice flies weren’t official until 1954. Doby and Snider played a third or more of their careers before the rule. How to overcome that hole? I found one way a few years ago: take their recorded sac flies, divide them by their total MLB seasons under the rule, then take that result and multiply it by their full number of MLB seasons.

The formula, for you math nerds: SF / SFS x YRS (years). Thus a reasonable if not perfect number of sac flies you could have expected them to hit for their entire careers.

Season lost, Scherzer gone

Posted on by
Reply
Max Scherzer

Scherzer waived his no-trade clause to go from the deflating Mets to the AL West-leading Rangers.

The contemporary Mets fan, to whom a season is usually lost over one terrible inning in early to mid-April, sees Max Scherzer speaking without boilerplate about talking to the front office regarding, stop, hey, what’s that plan, after the Mets traded solid relief pitcher David Robertson to the Marlins for a prime-looking prospect. And, is barely amused.

Then, they see the three-time Cy Young Award-winning future Hall of Famer traded within a day or so to the American League West-leading Rangers, for a more prime-looking prospect. They are somewhere between dryly amused and snarkily contemptuous. Not to mention terribly inattentive or misinformed.

Nobody questions that age has begun to catch up to the righthander. Assorted small injuries plus lingering issues with his back and his side did a little too much to keep him from resembling his vintage self. One moment, Scherzer did a plausible impression of what he once was. The next, he did a plausible impression of a piñata.

There are some who see this year’s 9-4 won-lost record and say, so there! There are others who see this year’s 4.01 ERA and 4.73 fielding-independent pitching rate (FIP) and see a man whose youth and prime may not be visible in the rear view mirror anymore.

When the Mets traded Robertson a few days ago, Scherzer didn’t hold back. He was neither nasty nor snarky about saying it was time for him to talk to the Mets’ front office about the rest of the season and just who projected what. But, first, he was honest enough to begin with a sober assessment of the Mets’ deflating season thus far.

“[O]bviously, we put ourselves in this position,” he said. “We haven’t played well enough as a team. I’ve had a hand in that for why we’re in the position that we’re at. Can’t get mad at anybody but yourself, but it stinks.”

Then he went forward: “You have to talk to the brass. You have to understand what they see, what they’re going to do. That’s the best I can tell you. I told you I wasn’t going to comment on this until [owner] Steve [Cohen] was going to sell. We traded Robertson. Now we need to have a conversation.”

That was after Scherzer looked a little like the old Max the Knife against his old team, the Nationals: striking seven out in seven innings, scattering six hits one of which was a solo home run, and the Mets rewarding him with a 5-1 win, not to mention their seventh win in eleven games. But still.

Some Met fans think the front office elected to punt on third down, metaphorically speaking. Others think that, when Scherzer said they “needed to have a conversation,” it might have meant a conversation about Texas being the next destination for Scherzer himself.

If that involved Scherzer agreeing to go from the sinking Mets to a division-leading troop of Rangers in return for a prize prospect who turns out to be Ronald Acuña, Jr.’s promising brother, it probably took less than we think (even allowing the time) for Scherzer to say yes to one more active, not passive pennant race.

Scherzer had to waive his no-trade clause and exercise his contract’s 2024 opt-in to make the deal. Luisangel Acuña is a middle infielder and center fielder with a live bat (if not always as powerful as big brother’s) who can hit pitching from both sides readily, and wheels to burn on the bases. (42 stolen bases in 82 games; an .894 stolen base percentage.) Most known analyses of him say his challenge is to harness his aggressiveness.

The prime issue for Scherzer at 38 is staying healthy and avoiding home runs. His 1.9 home runs per nine this season are a career high. Yet, his tenure as a Met overall hasn’t exactly been a wash. His Met totals include a 3.02 ERA, a 3.52 FIP, and a 1.02 walks/hits per inning pitched rate. And, a 10.05 strikeouts-per nine rate with a 5.54 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

But they also include his having run out of fuel in Game One of last year’s National League wild card series, battered for four home runs that accounted for all the Padres scoring in a 7-1 loss.

“If [Scherzer] can limit the long ball and stay healthy,” observes The Athletic‘s Brittany Ghiroli, “he should help the Rangers fend off the Astro in the AL West and avoid the wild-card round. What’s more, his competitive personality and postseason experience could rub off on his new teammates.”

He’ll join a Rangers rotation that took a hit when former Met superpitcher Jacob deGrom went down to Tommy John surgery, but resuscitated itself via Nathan Eovaldi and Dane Dunning. He’ll be backed by a bullpen anchored by Will Smith. And a roster hitting .274. So far.

Mets players said goodbye to Scherzer Saturday night, during a rain delay before a game against the Nats that ended in an 11-6 Nats win. Surely they also started wondering what else and who else after Max the Knife could be talked into waiving his no-trade clause. They might have cast eyes first upon Justin Verlander, who’s showing his age as well, but who shook an early injury to look a little better than his old Detroit rotation mate this year.

“It’s not a certainty that Verlander will be traded,” say Athletic writers Will Sammon and Tim Britton, “but the Scherzer deal offered a blueprint of what to expect should the Mets decide to unload their other top starter. Verlander has performed better than Scherzer and, in theory, should net a better prospect.

“However, Verlander also has a no-trade clause in addition to being under contract for 2024 with a vesting option for 2025. It’s also unknown whether the Scherzer trade made Verlander feel any different about playing for the Mets.” Not to mention whether reported serious interest from the Dodgers, the Rangers, and Verlander’s old team in Houston might compel him to revisit his feelings.

The Mets barely said goodbye to Scherzer when Sports Illustrated reported they were in, quote, deep talks with the Astros about bringing back the future Hall of Famer who won an unlikely Cy Young Award in their silks last year but signed with the Mets as an offseason free agent. Unlikely because Verlander’s the oldest pitcher to win the prize after returning from late-career Tommy John surgery.

As with Scherzer, the Mets will likely demand a choice prospect or two (or even three) while the Astros will likely insist the Mets help them pay for Verlander’s return, including his 2025 vesting option. As the Rangers did with Max the Knife, the Astros may not be averse to helping the Mets continue their farm replenishment and remake for the privilege of one more term with JV.

There’s just one problem with that idea, from the Houston side, encunciated by Three Inning Fan podcaster Kelly Franco Throop: “[T]hey have nothing to give: they are considered to have one of the worst farm systems in the game.”

So much for providing a delicious pickle in the AL West, the two who once headed the Tigers’ rotation together going against each other to help decide that division. As of this morning, the Astros were only a game behind the Rangers in the division and in a dead heat with the Blue Jays for AL wild card number one.

The Mets may have pushed the plunger on a 2023 that was getting away from them through too much fault of their own, but all is not necessarily lost. There’s 2024 toward which to gaze.

There’s also a very outside chance that losing their best reliever and one of their better starters sticks the ginger into their tails. They’re “only” seven back in the National League wild card race. But a Met fan since the day they were born says, “Anything can happen (and often enough does).” Today’s patience-of-a-Nile-crocodile Met fan says, “This year’s been next year since the end of spring training.”

Playing the trade deadline period for prime prospects is a win-win, too. Either they become better than useful Mets soon enough, or they provide fodder for a bigger/better deal or three down the road.

Even if all they’ve sacrificed yet is Max the Knife and their best relief pitcher, the Mets are still in position to bring a certain front line starting pitcher into the ranks for a longer period and potentially better results. The unicorn who now wears Angels silks, threatens Aaron Judge’s AL single-season home run record while he’s at it, and becomes a free agent after this season.

On this much the lifelong Met fan and the contemporary Met fan can agree: The Mets are many things. Dull isn’t one of them.

The Athletics have it—and how, potentially

Posted on by
Reply

This is not the Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros in a handshake line after a game. This is the social distance-defying debate triggered when Astros coach Alex Cintron insulted A’s outfielder Ramon Laureano after Laureano took his third plunk in the same series including two this day in August.

Ladies and gentlemen, your American League West champion Oakland Athletics. The first team in this pandemic-truncated, pandemic-weirded season to clinch their division. Hands up to everybody who thought the National League West-owning Los Angeles Dodgers would be 2020’s first division clincher.

Now, hands up to everyone who thought the A’s division clinch would happen on a day off for them while the Houston Astros spent the same day losing to the Seattle Mariners, 6-1. To those who did, hands up to every A’s fan whispering to themselves or to each other, with the appropriate social distancing, that karma’s indeed a bitch.

The last time the A’s ruled the AL West was 2013. Since then, they’ve had three second-place finishes including last year and three fifth-place finishes. Detractors over those seasons, including the young man/Los Angeles Angels fan in southern California who grants me the honour of him calling me Dad, referred to them gleefully enough as the Chokeland Athletics.

That was then, this is now, and this is also two weekends after their arguable best player, third baseman Matt Chapman, went down for the rest of the season facing hip surgery. Chapman hadn’t been quite the overall hitter this year that he was in 2018-19, but his third base play remained top of the line. Late season free agent pickup Jake Lamb has proven a pleasant surprise in just six games (1.144 OPS over them) prior to this week.

That’s good, because the A’s will need all the pleasant surprises they can get. As if going 19-8 in August and 11-8 this month, following a 3-4 July, aren’t pleasant enough. They may still have a pleasant surprise coming in round one of the intolerably tolerable weirdness of the postseason to come.

This will also be the first time since 2015 that the Astros finish any season without the AL West crown on their heads. The Astros could still claim the final of six American League wild cards. Guess who’d tangle with them in the opening round if they do?

Hint: It’s the team whose pitching staff includes the former Astro who finally blew the Astrogate whistle last November, after he and plenty of others in the know couldn’t find sportswriters who could convince their editors to expose it without someone in the know going on record.

The entire Show gunned for the Astros this season once the Astros’ illegal, off-field-based electronic sign-stealing scandal’s depth plus the organisation’s seeming shortage of remorse became manifest in full. Nothing would have pleased the Show more than seeing the Astros humbled. Nothing would have pleased Astro fans—already coming to heartsick terms with their team’s subterfuges—less.

The A’s certainly did their part, taking the truncated season’s series against them 7-3, including a five-game set earlier this month in which they beat the Astros four out of five with two of the four decided by a single run and a third by two. The most satisfying of the five had to be when A’s center fielder Ramon Laureano singled trade deadline pickup Tommy La Stella home off Ryan Pressly in the bottom of the ninth, the day after the two teams split a doubleheader.

Earlier this season, the Astros spent a weekend drilling Laureano thrice, including twice in the final game of the set, the last of which provoked Laureano into a social distance-defying dugout confrontation when—after Laureano merely pantomimed a slider grip at Astros reliever Humberto Castellanos—Astro coach Alex Cintron threw him an insult that Latino men (Cintron himself is Latino) often answer with justifiable homicide at minimum.

In maybe the only instance in which commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to be whacked with the smart stick all year long, Cintron earned a twenty-game suspension to Laureano’s six. Cintron was offered no right of appeal; Laureano was. Appropriately.

At that point of the season the A’s had been hit by fourteen pitches. That weekend, Laureano wasn’t the only A to take three for the team; left fielder Robbie Grossman also took three drills from Houston pitching. The flip side: as of Monday, the Astros have taken twenty drills, led by utility infielder Abraham Toro’s six.

When the Astros tried mealymouthing their way through that February spring presser, during which the world hoped they’d own their 2017-18 espionage, practically seven eighths of players not wearing Astro uniforms swore their ranks would administer the justice Manfred didn’t.

Toro leading the Astros with six plunks isn’t right. He wasn’t even an Astro until down the stretch last year. Hitting him six times in the interest of Astro justice is rather like suing a new surgical intern for malpractise because of what his or her attending surgeon did two years earlier.

When Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly decided to send his own messages, at least he targeted two Astros (Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa) who’d been there and, unfortunately, done at least some of that. In a way, the Astros merely showing up to play— knowing they were the single most hated team in baseball, knowing they could have targets on their backs at any given time—showed character enough.

There were those, including Kelly, who pondered whether Manfred’s immunity in return for Astro players spilling their Astrogate secrets made them the snitches too many accused Fiers of being. When Astros pitcher Lance McCullers, Jr. lamented that nothing would be enough to satisfy Astrogate’s critics, he harrumphed concurrently, “By the way, there was only one snitch. And that’s the person who spoke to The Athletic.”

The pandemic also kept real fans out of the stands on the regular season, handing the Astros a big enough break. They didn’t have to try playing through live catcalls and boos and nasty banners in the stands. Road ballpark DJs were probably under orders not to even think about playing canned booing or nastygrams, never mind trash-can banging noises, whenever the Astros batted.

About the worst the Astros might have dealt with this season was the occasional cutout in the stands referencing their 2017-18 cheating. From what I’ve seen, trash can references were the most popular. When the Astros traveled to Los Angeles for a set with the Dodgers, fans outside Dodger Stadium’s entrance road let the Astros aboard their team bus have it. Trash can bangers abounded there. (One sign: “You’re lucky there’s a pandemic!”)

Even the independent league St. Paul Saints joined in the fun. They prepared an Astro the Grouch souvenir—showing a variation on the Sesame Street character in a trash can, with two baseball antennae on the lid, and a push-botton voice box calling the pitch or banging a can—as a late July giveaway and also for general sale. The demand overwhelmed their supplier.

The Saints issued an e-mail earlier this month saying Astro the Grouch would be on his way to his buyers at last, starting this week. (I’ll let you know when mine arrives.)

The A’s have resisted joining in the Astro trolling fun this year. Mostly. About the only team-delivered troll was a late July game in which the A’s didn’t play the Astros but did put a cutout in the stands of the Astros’ team mascot, Orbit . . .in a trash can. In early August, though, some A’s fans hired an airplane to fly around above the Oakland Coliseum towing a banner saying “Houston Asterisks.”

Of those who haven’t resisted Astrotrolls, maybe none was more relentless than Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer. He’s waged troll war against the Astros all year. His latest salvo: wearing cleats festooned with trash can images when he started against the postseason-bound Chicago White Sox this past Saturday. God only knows what Bauer has planned if some now-undetectable alchemy has his Reds meeting the Astros in the World Series. Big “if.”

Fiers proved himself made of tougher stuff than suspected after he spent a winter surviving everything from mere opprobrium to death threats. The A’s have proven themselves made of tougher stuff than suspected when coronaball finally got underway. Purely by dint of his rotational schedule, Fiers hasn’t faced the Astros on the mound this year just yet.

That could change if the Astros hold on to make the postseason and draw the A’s in round one. Add the likelihood of most of baseball world rooting for these much-burdened A’s to (sorry, can’t resist) can the Astros early, and that could make that round-one set must-listen radio or must-see TV.

Cahill another low-risk Angel arm

Posted on by
Reply

2018-12-20 TrevorCahillSigning Matt Harvey even to what may prove a single-season rental befuddled no few who watch the Angels closely. Signing Trevor Cahill to what may prove a single-season rental seems to do likewise until you look a little closer. Angel fans hope the pitching-needy team knows what they’re doing and won’t have yet another reasonably-laid plan explode in their faces. Especially when they could have had a couple of

Cahill isn’t trying to overcome even half the baggage Harvey had to start overcoming in Cincinnati last year. Signing Cahill for a year and $9 million with about $1.5 million possible in incentives looks at least as reasonable and with just as small a risk. And, as with Harvey, the Angels couldn’t have been unmotivated by the thought that division-rival Oakland had eyes upon Cahill, this time in terms of bringing him back again.

The Athletics bought low on the veteran righthander for 2018 and he proved valuable enough for their slightly surprising run to the wild card game. The only reason he made only twenty starts worth 110 innings was an Achilles tendon strain that knocked him onto the disabled list in mid-June and kept him there until almost mid-July.

He posted the best fielding-independent pitching rate (ERA minus defense factors) of his career with a better than respectable 3.54, and the best strikeout-to-walk rate (2.44) of his career. And he continued the overall bounceback from a 2016 spell of relief pitching by getting ground balls at a rate almost equal to his career 55 percent.

All that while making seventeen quality starts (three earned runs or fewer) out of his twenty. He came away from the season with a 7-4 won-lost record and eight no-decisions out of the quality starts. Three of those turned into A’s losses; if they could have hung up the key lead runs while he was in the game Cahill’s won-lost record might have ended up at 12-4.

In other words, Cahill at last re-emerged as the decent pitcher who launched his Show career with the A’s in 2009 and whose signature tendency seems to have been working with his defenses to get results and keep them in games. If the A’s might have won the three no-decision losses instead, Cahill might have been 15-4 in 2018; add to that two losses in which he pitched well enough to win and he might have been 17-2.

If the Angels have Harvey as a number-three starter, they likely have Cahill as the fourth man. Both pitchers finished 2018 having shown they can get ground balls and miss bats at reasonable rates. Getting grounders and missing bats are things the Angels love unconditionally.

With Garrett Richards and Shohei Ohtani (as a pitcher) down for the 2019 count thanks to Tommy John surgery they may yet lack a legitimate ace, but there have been teams who’ve gone to the wars and endured in the pennant races with four or five solid pitchers despite no ace. It’s difficult but not impossible.

Still, the Angels could have made more impressive-looking moves. Charlie Morton could have been had for comparable money to Harvey; the now-former Astro signed for two years and $30 million with the Tampa Bay Rays. They went in on Nathan Eovaldi but they, too, couldn’t convince him to say goodbye to the world champion Boston Red Sox. Nor could they convince Patrick Corbin to stay southwest; Corbin went to the Washington Nationals for six years and $140 million, or about $12 million a season more than the Angels will pay Harvey just in 2019.

I get the Angels might have been wary about a six-year commitment to Corbin considering their recent history with multiple-year deals going past two or even three. That’s allowing that those deals’ implosions haven’t really been anyone’s fault. I say again:  nobody including Albert Pujols asked his heels and knees to betray him, and nobody including Josh Hamilton asked a) him to incur a substance-abuse relapse that Super Bowl Sunday or b) the Angels’ brass to make such a disgraceful hash out of trying to humiliate Hamilton for it.

The deal for which you can really crucify the Angels in the past decade was Vernon Wells—and it wasn’t even a free agency signing. But it was done purely out of rage; or, purely out of owner Arte Moreno channeling his inner 1980s version of George Steinbrenner, after then-GM Tony Reagins couldn’t convince then-free agent Adrian Beltre to sign up after the 2010 season.

Moreno hit the ceiling hard enough to go through it and almost to the moon. When he came down, he gave Reagins one day to deal for Wells or else. Knowing now-retired manager Mike Scioscia preferred defense-uber-alles catchers, for all the good that did him anyway, Reagins sent big-hitting Mike Napoli to the Toronto Blue Jays, who needed catching help and a big bat, for Wells. Whoops.

Beltre, of course, went on with his just-ended, Hall of Fame-in-waiting career. Napoli went on to contribute mightily to World Series teams in Texas and Cleveland and won a ring while he was at it with the 2013 Boston Red Sox. Wells was a Gary Matthews, Jr.-level bust in Anaheim, so much so that the Angels choked on a lot of money on Wells’s inexplicably backloaded contract to move him to the New York Yankees, where his once-promising career ended in something close enough to a whimper.

The Angels now have a much-improved farm system; last spring it was rated the second-best in the American League West behind the Astros. Want to know how long it took for the Angels to recover the farm? How does eight years strike you?

At the same time Moreno went ballistic over losing out on Beltre and demanded the deal for Wells, the Angels made a sacrificial lamb of their scouting director Eddie Bane. Bane was made to pay for a series of bad drafts and worse free agency signings even though Bane was the lead instigator in the Angels’ landing a kid named Mike Trout.

Bane’s execution followed the Angels gutting most of their international scouting operation, and executing its director Clay Daniels, over bonus skimming shenanigans by underlings who kept Daniels in the dark about their doings. The Angels cashiered the man whose smarts brought them the likes of Francisco Rodriguez (one of the late secret weapons in the Angels’ 2002 world championship run), Ervin Santana, Kendrys Morales, and Erick Aybar in the first place.

It’s forgotten sometimes, too, that the Angels let Corbin escape in the first place. That happened when Reagins (under Moreno’s orders, perhaps?) made the 2010 non-waiver trade deadline deal that practically drained the best of the Angel farm (including then-promising Tyler Skaggs, too) in order to get Dan Haren, who may have led the American League in strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first full Angel season but who gave them 1.7 total wins above replacement-level for his two-and-a-half years with them.

They got Skaggs back in a convoluted three-team deal and Skaggs’s second Angels life has been riddled with injuries, too.

Maybe compared to all that, signing Harvey and Cahill even on a seasonal rental might actually wreak less havoc than the Angels have brought upon themselves in the past decade. Maybe. Might.