Yesterday, in a surprising yet also entirely unsurprising maneuver, the Angels came out of left field (baseball term) to sign free-agent Josh Hamilton to a five-year contract, worth $125 million. Other high-profile free agents have just recently signed — Ryan Dempster! Anibal Sanchez! — but Hamilton was the big fish, and he’s the guy most people are thinking about. He’s been one of the league’s biggest bats, and he signed with the Angels instead of re-signing with the rival Rangers, as was expected. No move sends actual shock waves, but if certain moves were to send shock waves, this would have been among them.

There are almost countless reasons to be worried about Hamilton’s short- and long-term future. There’s a reason why everybody else was unwilling to guarantee five years, and there’s a reason this decision was apparently made over Jerry Dipoto’s head. A lot of people are worried that Hamilton could have an addiction relapse. A lot of people are worried that Hamilton’s body could break down, as he’s shown signs of physical fragility. At least one person is probably worried that Hamilton could morph into a butterfly and then what would the Angels do with a $25-million butterfly? What worries me, though, and what we’ve talked about here already, is Hamilton’s contact rate. For Josh Hamilton, 2012 was the most recent season, and it was a puzzling season.

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In yesterday’s post about the fallout from the Josh Hamilton signing, I noted that the Angels could use Peter Bourjos as a pretty attractive trade chip, and predictably, a decent amount of people responded that Bourjos is nothing more than a fourth outfielder or defensive replacement because he can’t hit. This sentiment has been around for a while, since Bourjos came up and hit .204/.237/.381 as a rookie in 2010, and Bourjos didn’t exactly light the world on fire last year either.

However, I think it’s worth noting that there’s another center fielder in baseball with basically the exact same offensive skillset and overall performance as Bourjos, and he seems to be doing just fine down in San Diego.

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After losing out on Zack Greinke, the Angels decided to just take the money they had ticketed for a pitcher and sign Josh Hamilton instead. It’s certainly a bold move, and even with all of Hamilton’s red flags, he should probably project as something around a +4 win player for 2013, though of course the variance around that mark is probably larger than with most hitters. However, for the Angels to realize the full value of adding Hamilton to the roster, this can’t be their last move, because they already had an outfield full of useful players, and paying $125 million for the right to bench Mark Trumbo or Peter Boujos just doesn’t make any sense.

The Angels still have a gaping hole in their starting rotation. With Hamilton in the fold, they now have four outfielders who deserve to play regularly. A trade seems inevitable. Now, the Angels just have to decide which player to move.

Mike Trout’s obviously not going anywhere, and Vernon Wells wouldn’t even bring a batting tee in return, so it’s likely going to come down to one of three options – Bourjos, Trumbo, or Kendrys Morales. There are only two line-up spots for those three players, and all three are good enough to be big league starter. So, who goes and who stays?

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Let’s begin with the news: Josh Hamilton is a free agent no longer. As of Thursday, he’s agreed to a five-year contract with the Angels reportedly worth $125 million. That breaks down easily to come out to an average annual value of $25 million. As of Wednesday, the Rangers looked like the favorites to get Hamilton locked up, and it was said that Hamilton would give the Rangers a chance to match any offer before he committed himself to another organization. According to Jon Heyman, the Rangers were actually given no such chance, as they were simply told that Hamilton was leaving. Reports suggest the Rangers wouldn’t go higher than four years. The Angels gave five. Five is greater than four.

Now let’s follow with some recent history. The Angels weren’t even mentioned seriously as a Hamilton suitor until Thursday morning. It looked like it would be the Rangers, with the Mariners and the Phillies somewhere on the dark-horse periphery. In fact:

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Before the 2007 season, Major League Baseball Advanced Media partnered with StubHub as the official secondary ticket marketplace for Major League Baseball. All 30 MLB teams participated. Anyone could list MLB game tickets for sale on StubHub, at any price. StubHub charged buyers a handling fee and a delivery fee, often totaling more than $10, regardless of the selling price. The “delivery fee” was the key to the deal, as it allowed buyers to print the tickets at home. Gone were the days of sellers tossing tickets out a window to buyers at midnight. Sellers also paid a fee to StubHub, charged as a percentage of the sale price. StubHub shared about half its fees with MLBAM. In 2011, that amounted to more than $60 million. MBLAM then funneled a portion of those funds to the 30 teams.

Fans rejoiced. During the 2011 season, more than 8 million MLB tickets sold on StubHub, up from 6 million in 2010.

But many teams weren’t as thrilled. The Yankees, in particular, were a vocal critic of StubHub’s pricing policies. With no price floor, Yankees tickets were often available on StubHub for less than $5, a price significantly below the lowest ticket price available at the box office or on Yankees.com.  Critics countered that Yankees ticket prices were too high, creating a fertile market for very cheap tickets on the secondary market. But even teams with lower ticket prices lost sales to StubHub.

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The Angels at one point recently had a threadbare starting rotation, but it was considered pretty likely they’d be able to re-sign Zack Greinke. The Angels, since then, have all but dropped out on Zack Greinke, and added Tommy Hanson and Joe Blanton. Hanson cost the Angels Jordan Walden. Blanton cost the Angels two years and $15 million. The Angels aren’t necessarily done, but instead of having four starters they’re sitting on six, and it looks like the rotation isn’t going to add a high-profile arm. They might have to make do with what they have, and because they now have Joe Blanton, we should probably talk about him.

Last year, over 30 starts, Blanton posted a 4.71 ERA. That was his lowest ERA since 2009. He’s nearly 32 years old, he can’t stop coughing up dingers, and he missed a lot of 2011 with an elbow problem. There’s a reason Blanton wound up with the contract he did, and there’s a reason he didn’t seem to be highly sought after in the market. My role now is to try to sell you on him. There are elements of Joe Blanton’s game that should appeal to you quite a lot. You, being the avid reader of FanGraphs.

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The Brewers aren’t sure that they want to go to three years for Ryan Dempster, but they do need a pitcher now that Shaun Marcum is seeing other teams. There are good reasons to like him — a few changes he’s made in his approach have seem to stuck — and there is one main reason to worry about giving him too many years.

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There’s not a whole lot of question right now regarding just who is the top free-agent starting pitcher available. When in doubt, follow the Dodgers. It was thought that re-signing Zack Greinke would be the Angels’ main offseason priority. They’re still interested, but they might be priced out. The Dodgers are in there and flashing their wallets. The Rangers might be just as interested. The Nationals are involved to some kind of extent. Greinke is the available free-agent ace, and everybody else is, at best, second-tier.

For the teams looking for quality starting pitching that miss out on Greinke, there are alternatives, who could be signed or traded for. Ryan Dempster is a free agent, and a good deal older than Greinke. Kyle Lohse is a free agent and he’s going to cash in to some degree. Among trade candidates, R.A. Dickey could be tremendously valuable, James Shields could be similarly valuable, and Jeremy Hellickson might or might not be extremely valuable, depending on your interpretation of his statistics. But there’s another quality free agent, the same age as Greinke, who could be of nearly as much value for a considerably lesser cost.

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Some time ago, the Angels attempted to trade Dan Haren to the Cubs in exchange for Carlos Marmol. The Angels had concerns about Haren, and wanted to turn him into something useful. The Cubs had concerns about Marmol, and wanted to turn him into something useful. On paper, the deal looked lopsided in the Cubs’ favor, and so one had to consider that maybe the Angels knew something scary about Haren’s medicals. Sure enough, the deal fell through, and now Haren is a free agent looking for a short-term contract. No one’s going to be ballsy enough to give him a long-term contract.

Friday, the Angels completed sort of the opposite of that Haren/Marmol trade. Instead of the Angels dealing a troubled starter to get a troubled reliever, they’ve dealt the somewhat troubled Jordan Walden to the Braves in exchange for the troubled Tommy Hanson. Unlike with Haren, we don’t have to speculate that something might be up with Hanson, physically — we know that his shoulder has been groaning. The Angels, without question, know that they’re taking a chance, here. They determined, at the cost of Jordan Walden, the chance is worth taking.

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At the start of last offseason, Ryan Madson had big dreams. For a time, it appeared he was on the verge of signing a big four-year contract. He didn’t, ultimately having to settle for a one-year contract, and then he missed that one year in its entirety after sustaining a torn UCL. Tommy John surgery completely wiped out Madson’s 2012.

The Angels had big dreams, too. They signed Albert Pujols, they signed C.J. Wilson, they announced the terms of a massive new TV contract, and they set their sights on the World Series. The Angels didn’t even make the playoffs, even though the playoff pool had expanded by 25 percent. The Angels missed the playoffs in part because of their inconsistent bullpen.

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