What are the 5 biggest priorities for the LA Angels in the off-season.

Finding the right leader

Brad Ausmus was not the right answer for the LA Angels as a manager.  He is a kind and decent man who is very intellectually gifted with an Ivy League education backing him up.  However, managerial wise his skills are not as strong as his intellectual prowess.

With that being said Ausmus was dismissed by the Angels after only one year as a manager.  Many people are equating the firing of Ausmus to the fact that Joe Maddon is now available, but I only think that played a small part in the Angels thinking.  I believed they realized that while Ausmus was a good person and had some good leadership skills, he was not the man for the job long-term.

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It is not Joe Maddon or bust though.  As much as I like many Angel fans would like to see Joe Maddon as the new Angels manager, there are other good choices that would be a major upgrade from Brad Ausmus.  Joe Girardi, Buck Showalter, and John Farrell could be targets for the Angels as they all have plenty of big league managing experience and have had a lot of success with teams that were trying to get over the hump.  This may be the biggest move the Angels make in the off-season is finding the right person to lead them.

Upgrading the starting rotation. 

It is no secret that the biggest issue with the Angels this season was its starting pitching.  The Angels had the second worst ERA in baseball by their starters at 5.64.  That being said there was a lot of injuries that caused the Angels to dig deeper into their farm system and bring up a few pitcher who were probably not ready for the majors.  With that being said,, the Angels only have three pitchers that can be counted on to be solid rotation pieces in 2020 Shohei Ohtani, Andrew Heaney, and Griffin Canning.

Patrick Sandoval and Jose Suarez had some good outings, but may still need some more time in Triple-A before being effective in the majors.  Felix Pena will be coming off a knee injury which you never know how that will pan out and Jaime Barria like Suarez and Sandoval was not consistent when called upon.  So the Angels at the very least need two good starters, with one of them being an ace.

The team has been linked to Gerrit Cole for the past couple of months and will most likely be the number one target in the off-season. It is by no means a done deal as Cole will be the one setting the market for free agent pitchers and will have at least 10 serious suitors for his talents.  Not to mention his agent is Scott Borass (not it’s not a typo it is an opinion) who will try to drive the price up as high as possible for his client’s services.

It is a known fact that Arte Moreno does not like dealing with Borass clients because he has done him wrong in the past.  (Mark Teixeira deal where he used Angels to drive up the price and then he signed with the Yankees).  With this being said it will be interesting to see if Borass and Moreno will play nice enough to get a deal done for Cole.

Cole is not the only fish in the sea with Madison Bumgarner and Jake Ordorizzi could be two solid options for the Angels to pursue and also they are both not Scott Borass clients like Cole. Stephen Strasburg is another option, but his injury risk and the fact that he is also a Borass client makes him not as likely to be a pitcher the Angels will pursue.

If the Angels do not address this situation properly, then it will not matter who the Angels hire as a manager they will struggle to succeed.

The Angels need a catching upgrade

The Angels had a very good catcher in 2018 in Martin Maldonado that was amazing defensively and could hit for some power offensively.  However, they traded him to Houston at the August trade deadline in 2018 and netted Patrick Sandoval which is not a bad trade-off, however the Angels have not been able to find an adequate replacement since.

Jonathan Lucroy was a decent catcher five years ago, but his offense has sagged and he was never a great defender and it showed this season as the Angel pitchers led the league in wild pitches (some which should have been passed balls) and teams ran on the Angels almost at will.  So he was dispatched in August as the team released him, but now that don’t have any close to being the starting catcher on their roster. Max Stassi, Anthony Bemboom, and Kevan Smith are back-ups and nothing more. Smith is the only one who has shown he can hit and Stassi is the only one who has shown enough defense to be used on a semi-regular basis, but his hitting is atrocious.

The issue is there is not much out there in the free agent market for catching with Wilson Ramos and Yasmani Grandal are probably the two top candidates that most teams will pursue. Both of them can hit and play decent defense, but I’m not sure how much the Angels would be willing to spend for either one and they are both in their early 30’s too so that could factor in as well.  Martin Maldonado is out there and I would be against bringing him back as he was such a plus two seasons ago.  We will just have to wait and see, but getting a strong defensive catcher will help the pitching staff immensely.

Left-Handed Reliever

The Angels have had some strong lefties out of the bullpen in the past. Jose Alvarez was very solid his last two years with the team before being traded for the utterly worthless Luis Garcia last winter.

The best lefty out of the pen in the past 10 years was Scott Downs. Downs was lights out against lefties and not bad against right-handed hitters.  With this being said the Angels could use a good lefty out of the pen and there a lot of options out there every year, it is just a fact of do they want to spend the money on anyone with so many other fish to fry.

If they have a proven track record and are not getting too old I’d say go for a good lefty specialist it could be an extra weapon that not all teams have.  We will have to see if Billy Eppler can find a good pitcher for this role.

Take care of the right field situation.

The Angels can go a lot of directions to solve this issue. The simplest one is to do the status quo approach and bring back Kole Calhoun. Calhoun is an elite defender in right field and he also has pretty good power (33 homers) while driving in 74 runs.  His .232 batting average was a lot less than desired, but an improvement on a .208 average in 2018.  The biggest negative was Calhoun’s 162 strikeouts which was two short of a career-high in 2015.

Door #2 is to bring back Brian Goodwin and let Calhoun walk-away. Goodwin had a solid year filling in for all three outfield spots with a .261 batting average 17 homers and 47 RBIs with seven stolen bases. He is a much cheaper option than Calhoun ( 3 to 4 million compared to 14 million dollars). This may be only a stop-gap until top-prospect Jo Adell is ready to come up and contribute.

The final option is to just roll with Adell for better or for worse.  This is very risky, but could yield a high-reward.  It would probably be better for Adell to prove himself in Triple-A first before bringing him up to the majors, probably half a season.

If the Angels can take care of all these issues in a satisfactory way, you could see the Angels celebrating on the field in October.