Angels owner: 'One hundred percent we are not trading Mike Trout'
Angels owner Arte Moreno told reporters, "One hundred percent we are not trading Mike Trout," on Friday as the team opened spring training.
By
Mike Axisa
•
2 min read
The Angels opened spring training with pitchers and catchers on Thursday, and in a few days the position players will join them at Tempe Diablo Stadium in Arizona. The team may be without Albert Pujols for the start of the season, but they will have Mike Trout, the best player in the world.
Under new GM Billy Eppler, the Angels had a fairly active offseason, though not one that has them looking like clear-cut contenders. They acquired Andrelton Simmons and Yunel Escobar, and that's about it. The rest of the team's dealings were minor moves. Eppler doesn't have a ton of resources to work with, meaning money and prospects.
Our SportsLine projections peg the Angels for an 83-79 record in 2016, which would place them second in the AL West behind the Astros and tied for a Wild Card spot. Other projection systems like FanGraphs and PECOTA also have the Halos on the postseason bubble. That sounds about right to me.
Because the Angels are not clear-cut contenders and because they have the worst farm system in baseball (by no small margin), there has been discussion of late that trading Trout might be the best thing for the franchise long-term. Keep in mind this is coming from fans and the media, not the Halos themselves.
The idea behind trading Trout -- the best player in the world, one who is still only 24 and signed to a below-market contract through 2020 -- would be restocking the farm system and adding impact players to the MLB roster. A Herschel Walker trade, basically. A franchise-altering blockbuster.
Angels owner Arte Moreno is having none of that though. He shot down all the talk about possibly trading Trout while speaking to reporters Friday. Here's what Moreno said about a potential Trout deal, via Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register:
"One hundred percent we are not trading Mike Trout," Moreno said. "We're not trading Mike Trout. It's not even in the thought process. Yes, we want to win. But we're not going to give up any part of what we're going to do in the future by making economic mistakes right now."
Looking around the league, I'm not even sure there's a club that could put together a realistic package for Trout. This is not a deal that would be built on prospects; the Angels would need to get MLB players in return. And then prospects on top of that.
Think about it. The Red Sox could offer a package of, say, Mookie Betts, Eduardo Rodriguez, Blake Swihart, and Yoan Moncada, and that still might not be enough for Trout. As impressive as that foursome is, there's only one clearly above-average MLB player in that group (Betts). Heck, I'm not even sure if a package of Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, and Lucas Giolito gets it done. Harper is three years from free agency (Trout is five), Rendon's been hurt, and Giolito is still just a prospect. A great prospect, but a prospect nonetheless.
The Angels can't trade Trout and say to themselves "this will be a good trade if these two prospects work out in a year or two." Nope. It has to be a no-doubt slam dunk of a trade. Trout is way too good and way too young to trade away only to hope you come out ahead. The Halos would need a package of multiple impact big leaguers. It has to be something they can't refuse, not just something that catches their attention or something WAR says is fair.
