Just an observation: I miss Betts too, but I'm not at all sure our team's forward-looking prospects look much better today even if we had played things
perfectly with him. What if we had signed him before 2018 to an extension he'd have bitten on — say 14/$400, the rough equivalent of his Dodger deal. (Remember, we don't know the details, but inferences from things media have said make clear that he turned down $90m, $200m, and "north of $300m" extension proposals at various points...) I expect he'll be easily worth his Dodger deal — barring catastrophic injury (*knocks wood*), this dude is gonna age like a fine wine aged in barrels made of Ricky Henderson's bats.
Stipulated: Betts is a considerably better player than Verdugo. Even so, we would have been at most two wins better in 2020, and wasted a year of Betts' prime on a team without a pitching staff. (I'm assuming Price opts out in Boston, too; and, without Sale, we sign... IDK, another Perez type, but not enough to replace Price, Sale, Porcello, and Rodriguez.) We'd be looking at either severe payroll cuts or dire draft penalties for the remainder of Price's contract — even assuming we didn't extend Sale in this scenario — and the farm/young talent would be much thinner without Verdugo, Downs, and Wong.
Let's say we were two wins better in 2020. Our draft position would be moved back several slots — eyeballing it, to about ninth — and *then* ten more slots because we'd have been so far over the cap. So we'd have
still had a miserable season, we would have a considerably worse farm system, and our first 2021 pick (and corresponding draft bonus allotment) would come at... 19. Yikes.
Basically, we'd be in a situation similar to the Angels of the last half-decade. We'd have a superstar player, a few other good regulars, a millstone of an aging star on a huge contract (Pujols, Price), a shallow farm system (albeit with a handful of standout players like Jo Adell or Triston Casas), and a mediocre pitching staff. We would stay mired for years in the high-70s, low-80s win territory despite an all-world superstar whose prime years career we were slowly squandering.
The Angels were last good in 2014, when Mike Trout was 22. They *might be* good again this season, but the projection systems have them finishing in fourth,
again. Trout is 29.
Now Imagine if the Angels had dealt Trout, to, say:
- The Dodgers, after the 2016 season, for Seager, Bellinger, Verdugo, and one of the non-Urias pitchers.
- The Cubs, after the 2015 season, for Torres, Jimenez, Happ, and Cease.
- The Red Sox, after the 2015 season, for Moncada, Betts, Kopech, and Devers.
- The Padres or Yankees, for... you get the idea.
The Angels would have been
murdered in the press for any of those trades, which probably would have looked light as the return for the best player in the game on a reasonable extension. But you can imagine some scenarios where — assuming they picked the right prospects — the Angels have already put themselves much more firmly in contention, even playing in a division with very good Astros and A's teams. On Earth Two, people are excited about the Angels young and athletic two-way Bellinger/Verdugo/Adell outfield.