Ohtani picks the Angels
Congratulations to the Angels and the good people of Anaheim, Shohei Ohtani has chosen you.
He perhaps has also chosen wisely.
Ohtani’s agency, CAA, released a statement Friday afternoon saying their client of international interest and acclaim had made his decision after meeting with seven finalists this week. The Angels had made trades to acquire $2.3 million in bonus pool money.
Statement from agent Nez Balelo on Ohtani's decision to join the #Angels pic.twitter.com/NIc3APCbtS
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 8, 2017
An American League destination always seemed to make the most sense due to the DH role for a player who desires to hit and pitch, who desires to be a historic and unique figure within the game. While there seem to be some indicators that Ohtani preferred a small, West Coast market, he chose the No. 2 team in the nation’s No. 2 market.
With Ohtani and Mike Trout now on the roster, the Angels are a must-see attraction in 2018 and beyond.
While the Angels should celebrate, this author argued a month ago that the Angels as a fit were what is best for Othani and for baseball. Ohtani can arguably make the most impact with the Angels.
Ohtani will make an impact wherever he lands, but it’s with the Angels where his impact could be maximized. It’s a place where Ohtani could single-handedly push a bubble team into the postseason field while also allowing us to see Trout in October. That’s quite a two-for-the-price-of-one deal — and to this author, it’s the most intriguing landing spot.
Ohtani could single-handed push the Angels, and Trout, into the postseason. That would be good for baseball. FanGraphs projected the Angels as an 84-78 team before Friday’s news. Now they have added one of the best players in the world and the only two-way player in the world.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how the Angels employ Ohtani, how many innings and plate appearances he can log. He will be arguably the most interesting professional athlete to debut in North America since LeBron James.
This is going to be fascinating and a lot of fun.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Looks like Fangraphs is finally going to have a reason to talk about the Angels.
Guess you’re not the one complaining that this site should be called “TroutGraphs”
it’s gonna be TroutaniGraphs now, am I right
Translates just fine to me.
So reading between the lines here, Otani must not have cared all that much about playing the field since the Angels OF is full and quite good. He is not supplanting Upton, Trout or Calhoun out there.
He wants to hit, but this seems to indicate has little desire to be a TRUE two way player.
Well he’ll be playing the field as a pitcher. Pretty sure he counts as a two-way player
Wouldn’t any team playing him in the field want him at 1B anyway, to lessen any wear on his arm?
So what do you consider the DH? A quarter time player? I imagine he’ll field while pitching.
Given the Angels’ below-replacement 1B and Pujols stuck at DH… He could see a few innings at 1st if he can prove he handles it well. And won’t risk his arm throwing there.
Yep. Cron isn’t going to stand in anyone’s way, and I suspect a cheap Ohtani will make putting Pujols on the bench more palatable if it comes to that.
If we assume Ohtani follows a Pitch/Rest/Bat/Bat/Rest/Pitch rotation, you could sit Cron and Pujols each one of those batting days. They would each still play 4 of 5 games and Ohtani gets his two days at DH of every five.
In Japan, he took two days of rest before each pitching day, and one after.
I’m thinking a six-man rotation might make sense here.
Do the Angels even have six starters?
Ohtani, Richards, Heaney, Skaggs, Shoemaker, Bridwell, Tropiano, Ramirez, Barria
I suspect that Cron will be the one sitting, but I actually think he’s got a chance to be okay. Pujols, on the other hand? He’s a mess now. But somehow I doubt they’ll sit him to play Cron.
I think Pujols gets a “natural” day off every few days to rest his aching feet for something.
Do we think the Angels will go without a DH when he pitches??
Wow, a lot of down votes for a relatively mundane/obvious observation. I didnt think anyone would care enough to vote either way lol.
The internet is weird.
Just like all the experts had predicted
How lucky can one franchise get? Jesus Christ.
Josh Hamilton, Pujols… Lucky?
They weren’t unlucky. They stupidly signing 2 aging free agent sluggers to massive contracts.
Well, it’s not really fair to say that was stupid but drafting Trout was just luck. It’s not like the Nationals with Strasburg and Harper where they just fell into getting the guy everyone knew was great. They knew something that more than half of baseball did not.
Bad signing and being unlucky are not mutually exclusive.
Even the worst Pujols skeptics would have expected way more than 7.6 war from 2012-2017.
Those were pretty clearly bad deals at the time. I’d call them bad decisions, not bad luck. Whereas they made no more of a decision to want Otani than the other teams – he just wound up wanting them.
They were certainly questionable at the time but no one would’ve predicted how far a cliff Pujols would fall off of, or that Hamilton would use all that money to almost immediately go on an epic coke fueled bender only to get off scot-free due to a technicality (he admitted drug use but never failed a drug test).
Even if people expect all those things to happen, most would’ve predicted a little production out of those two.
They managed to offload Vernon Wells even though it was obvious his contract was an albatross. I’d say that qualifies as luck.
And they got the best out of Figgins before he set out to destroy the Mariners.
Lot of ups and downs with LAA.
Oh man.
2009: Mariners had three of the first 33 picks in the draft, more than any other team. Trout gets taken two picks before their second pick. They ended up taking Ackley, Franklin, and Baron (none with the Mariners anymore). Ackley and Franklin ended up being Angels at one point too.
2010: After being worth 37.5 wins in his career with the Angels and putting up the best season he’s ever had (9th best in MLB that season), Figgins signs with the Mariners and is worth -1.1 WAR before being DFA’d.
2015: Mariners hire the Angels former GM Dipoto
2017: Despite being the late-game front runners (arguable I suppose but) and trading for tons of international money, they lose out on Ohtani to the GM’s former team.
2017: After the Mariners traded for a ton of international money, the Angels signed the best available talent that the Mariners could have alternatively spent that money on…then the Angels got arguably the next best guy too.
I’m so sorry Mariners fans.
They offloaded Wells, but they still had to pay the vast majority of his contract. The luxury tax hit for the Yankees was $0, and it would have been negative if that was possible.
And Wilson.
I’m really happy for Mike Trout because he deserves a decent running mate, but a little annoyed because the Angels don’t deserve Ohtani after all their lousy decisions. Their luck is pretty astounding.
People who consider the Angels a “big market” team don’t understand the intricacies of the SoCal market. If you listen to local sports talk radio you would never know the Angels exist in this market. Today will probably the day the Angels get the most coverage this whole year.
Market size has nothing to do with the teams ability to break through in the local market, just because people are present does not automatically mean your product will sell, you have to make connections.
The Angels didn’t have a full time Spanish broadcasting team until the late 90s. Seriously, in Southern California.
Ohtani can live the lovely Orange County lifestyle and not deal with the LA media. It’s a win for him.
The Forbes estimates from April of this year ( https://www.forbes.com/mlb-valuations/list/#header:revenue_sortreverse:true ) put the Angels at #6 in team revenue, behind only the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox, and Giants. Those revenue estimates are for 2016, a year that the Angels didn’t make the playoffs and therefore didn’t get any direct or indirect revenue pop from playoff games.
They Angels also been #7 in MLB in home attendance each of the past two seasons. Their home attendance has been at least 3 million every year since 2003 ( https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ANA/attend.shtml ).
The Angels don’t generate as much revenue as the Dodgers, but the Angels are still in the upper quartile of MLB teams in both revenue and attendance, however much the Dodgers have more coverage in the local market.
Although my beloved Cubs were a part of the final 7, I always knew they only had an outside chance of signing him. Still, I am disappointed he didn’t lower the list 1 at a time. This signing coming so soon, where is the drama? I need something to make up for the lack of baseball.
Tune in for the Stanton sweepstakes then…
I do not believe the Cubs will be meaningfully attempting to land Stanton. They still need to sign another starter, hopefully Cobb, and BP pitchers. Short of J. Hey being willing to waive his no trade and the Marlins taking over that contract, I don’t think it’s a viable option. Plus, I don’t think the Marlins would consider a contract swap anyway.
That being said, it be nice if Stanton could have 5 more offers from teams that would trade for him, and then eliminate teams one at a time. Handing out roses to those that advance. Air it on NBC once a week until the season starts. The Mashelor is what we’ll call the show.
No chance the cubs get him. Just answering about this part of his comment “This signing coming so soon, where is the drama? I need something to make up for the lack of baseball.”
As a testament to how little insight anyone really had about the process and Ohtani’s true motivations, just yesterday the Mariners were acquiring additional international dollars (and Dipoto had the benefit of meeting with Ohtani). Today Ohtani takes $1M less than the Rangers or Mariners could have offered.
Sullivan nodded to this in his writeup of the Gordon trade, but now it’s a real question: what do the Mariners do with all that money? I don’t know anything about how much you can move that year to year, but they’re left holding an awfully big bag right now.
Still some Braves retreads out there…
The Angels got all of those too!
?
Looks like 7 of the 12 ex-Braves prospects have signed so far – https://www.baseballamerica.com/international/former-braves-prospects-signing/#tzaKYTKiiiCjA7HE.97
Of the five left, two originally signed for $1 million+. Three of them signed for $300k as part of an illegal package deal, I think meaning that they weren’t originally considered to be worth signing for $300k each,
AFAIK, there is no way to move the money year-to-year. That money can only be spent spent during the current IFA signing period, which runs from July 2, 2017, until June 15, 2018.
I think, but I’m not sure, that all the top-tier amateur international free agents eligible to sign this period have already signed due to how the age eligibility rules work for amateur IFA’s. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong on that or maybe there are some under-25 Cubans who would be part of the IFA pool and could be convinced to sign? Don’t know though, because Cuba has been pretty well picked-over by MLB teams in recent years.
As a Cub fan, this to me is the best non-Cub outcome. I would like to see Ohtani-Trout together, and definitely glad it’s not the Dodgers..
I’m a Cub fan as well, and my reaction was the same. Relieved it’s not the Dodgers or Yankees, and happy for Trout and long-suffering Angels fans.
Congrats to Angels. I agree this is good for baseball, and that an AL team makes the most sense. As a Dodger fan, I would have preferred him to be with the other LA team, but very glad he’s not in SF. Eagerly awaiting the first Ohtani/Kershaw match-up.
The Angels may be on the bubble as far as a wildcard spot, but after finishing 21 games back in the division and without much of a farm system their ceiling seems limited.
The Angels’ ceiling is actually quite high. Their five best pitchers combined for what must have been about 50 innings last year. Subtract some of those injuries, add Ohtani along with a decent second baseman, and suddenly this team is looking really solid. On the upside, imagine if they get 150+ innings out of Richards, a full season from Trout, and Ohtani performs as advertised. It’s not all that unlikely an outcome really. Moreover, last year’s win-loss record is simply not an effective indicator of team quality. When we have legitimate 2018 projections then 2017 results are of relatively little use.
Good. Now Stanton can get traded somewhere and we can finally hear about… basically anything else.
Yeah. Enough of this talk about the reigning NL MVP being traded and a once in a lifetime free agent. Lets hear more about the tigers signing Mike Fiers.
I get what you’re saying but the last few weeks of just pure speculation and nothing really happening was frustrating. It’s exciting but you just want the damn thing to happen already.
More just topic exhaustion. I can only hear about the same two things a given number of times before I start to get bored.
Honestly I agree with this, but non-sarcastically. The hot stove is more fun when it’s about many teams rearranging their rosters and long-term strategies, rather than waiting on arbitrary decisions from a tiny handful of superstars.
Do you think this pushes the Angels to pursue Darvish?
Ohtani and Darvish would be interesting, to try to maximize Trout’s window while enhancing Ohtani’s development. His development would benefit from being with a fellow Japanese pitcher who has experience in the AL West, as a frontline star, adjusting to the US… All in the same language. And by the time the Darvish contract weighs the Angels down (if it does), Pujols will be off the books and trout would have left for FA.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. The commentators are seeming to say they’ll go for infielders but you could easily see another front-line starter making the biggest difference to the Angels’ chances now. I don’t know how the cultural stuff around Darvish affects the calculation (maybe Otani really wants to be the only Japanese star on the team) but just in on-field terms it seems like a very attractive idea.
I think they’ve probably got a sense of whether Ohtani would find that useful. I think that it would probably help, and it would definitely help the team…but 2B/3B seem to loom as bigger needs.
No team giving the rotting carcass of Albert Pujols 600+ PA can be classified as “must-see.”
Interesting to see what this does to other teams. Maybe the Rangers now go into a rebuild. Maybe the Mariners make another 15 trades that keep them mediocre.
Both of them are kind of in a lousy situation, since there is no easy way to go up without going all in on the rotation.
But the Mariners’ big contracts have no-trade clauses so they can’t really sell. And the Rangers’ most valuable assets will still be around in 3 years. So selling seems out.
If I were the Mariners, I’d try to sign Darvish and Cobb and pray that the rotation works out, because they really don’t have any way to tear down. If I were the Rangers, I’d probably try to tread water and hoard long-term assets to make a return in a couple of years. The Mariners seem more screwed than the Rangers long-term.
Wonder how Dipoto feels right now?
He will come back stronger and trade more than ever, and isn’t that what we want? Watching Dipoto is like how I manage my fantasy team.
With this episode now over, do Mariner fans replace Yankee fans (yeah I know they’re more of them) as the most obnoxious on FanGraphs?
Hey!
I was not aware there were even stereotypes to go along with the Mariners fanbase, other than we’re a sad bunch. It’s like complaining about Cleveland Browns fans…just, “huh?”
“Gee, it sure is cloudy here…”
so, on his hitting days, does pujols rest?
Pujols should rest everyday.
Ohtani might have negotiated that he gets to press the DFA button on Pujols
He does rest in every at bat that does not have someone in scoring position.
Unless there are runners in scoring position… Amirite?
I’ve heard the plan will be Pujols plays 1st base on days that Ohtani DHs.
I’m sure that will end well
It’s only fitting the team with the worst contract in baseball for multiple years now has probably the best contract in baseball for multiple years. As an Angels fan, all I can say is (praying emoji x 10).
The Angles have also had the best contract in baseball the past few years too.
The Angels laugh at the idea of middle ground.
True, but Trout’s contract has consistently been among the best in MLB.
“We’re well known for giving out stupid money” would be a selling point to someone who’ll make limited money, no matter where he goes, unless his team offers him a large contract buy out some years.
This will be fun once we see the Twin’s, Astros, Red Sox, and Yankees moves. I still put all those teams in before the Angels. Angels better get to spending since they have no farm system. Maybe they’ll draft a bunch of college age players to be up quick. Who knows but no one is beating the Astros for the AL west barring injuries or major regression.
So, where does he play? OF is full. Pujols is strictly a DH and how often do you sit him…..twice a week? Is that enough ABs to suit Ohtani? Cron is at 1B and seems like the logical one to “take one for the team”. As positions go this would save wear and tear on his arm.
You sit Pujols as often as you can to make room for Ohtani. Pujols was the worst player in baseball last year by 0.8 WAR. I’m pretty sure the Angels would wish he comes down with a mysterious back ailment in spring training and decides he can’t play anymore.
@ Matt, that only worked for Texas because they had insurance on Fielder. I doubt the Angels have a policy on Pujols. Let alone losing a roster spot for 3 seasons would really suck because he won’t retire and lose the money.
I think the insurance is pretty standard for teams to take out on contracts unless the player has a pre-existing condition.
well the insurance is only for the team ‘s revenue. The 18 million the Rangers would’ve paid him per year are still retained and count against the cap for Texas. FYI Fielder was released. So Pujols going down wouldn’t free up any cap unless he retired and walked away from his guaranteed money. Which most players won’t do with that large of a contract. I’d ride the 60 day DL and take up a 40 man spot for 27+ million a year.
Pujols is playing out that deal. a phantom injury placing him on the 60 day dl to open a roster spot or just outright releasing him are their only real options to minimize his impact. But he is getting paid and he will count against the team’s salary cap unless he retires or is traded.
Come see The World’s Most Exciting .500 Baseball Team!TM
Somebody needs to charge their phone
So, what does this mean for Albert Pujols?
INB4 ThomServo rolls in with some theory on how the MLB made Ohtani sign here
And before an A’s fan starts rolling in with all the reasons he should have signed with the A’s
The Phillies wouldn’t sign him because FELONY FRAUD
LOL
Been a long time since the Angels had a Cy Young level pitcher. Especially one you would pay to see hitting.
Travis I think you spelled Shohei wrong.
Maybe we could get an updated post on the best players still available via IBP dough?
The WC #2 favorite has to be the Angels now, right? Trout, Upton, Ohtani…
Stock up: Angels
Stock down: Mariners
I bet they got him because they could offer him DH spots.
They sure seem like a team that could challenge the Astros next year, although the Astros are still clearly the favorites [edit: in the AL West!]. But that doesn’t bode well for the Mariners win-now timeline.
Now if the Angels can only get someone who isn’t a black hole at 2nd and 3rd base, they’re a credible threat to win the division (although certainly not the favorites!).
And DFA Pujols, which will never happen.
I don’t think there’s any way that the Astros are “clearly the favorites” over the Indians.
The biggest difference between their playoff runs is that the Astros weren’t missing the 2nd best DH in baseball when they lost 3 of the first 5 games to the Yankees.
I’m gonna edit that. I wasn’t clear. I meant in the AL West.
Trade Pujols to the M’s. They need a 1b
Thoughts on if he will bat for himself on days he is pitching? We will see an AL team waive their DH once every five days then.
Real question. Is Scoscia imaginative/creative enough for Ohtani to be able to play as both a pitcher and a hitter?
That’s my concern. It took forever for him to embrace infield shifts.
This was my concern as well, but I can’t imagine Ohtani would sign somewhere without meeting the manager and coming to some sort of an understanding about his roll. That’s not a hard and firm commitment, but it should give him some assurance that he will at least get a chance
My managers and I always come to an understanding about my roll.
With regards to market size…Anaheim is not LA, and it’s not the LA market.
Anaheim has half the population of Seattle…and a good chunk of baseball fans in Orange County prefer the Dodgers.
Exactly, nobody in LA cares about the mediocre team in the suburbs, especially when the Dodgers are this good. The Angels are not a big market team, and I don’t get why people are saying otherwise. They are rarely on national TV and are obviously not one of the MLB’s strong brands like the Yankees or Giants.
Exactly, haha. If you call the Nets “the #2 team in the #1 market in the country,” you’re not lying, but you’re not conveying an accurate impression of their market status.
You guys are confusing “market” with “actual customers”
The market is everyone you can sell to. Basically, anyone who could watch your games on their local RSN if they signed up for it
I actually didn’t realize Anaheim was that big. The stadium itself borders the city of Orange, and is about a block away from the city of Santa Ana (the largest city in OC). Orange county is essentially the suburbs of Los Angeles, but it is big in it’s own right and the team is very much the top dog in the county.
The real benefit the Angels have is that they share the same media market as the Dodgers which has allowed them to have one of the biggest TV deals in the sport.
After all of this, it turns out that Ohtani will be making his debut at the Oakland Colosseum after all. So cheer up, A’s fans!
Chose millions over thousands…it was about the money, it always is.