Mike Trout: worth "Opening" the Checkbook for?

While I would love to see Trout, Stanton, maybe Puig etc. I think that will not happen. He may well be a New Yorker ultimately. The Sox have entered a new era where they have and will maintain financial flex. With a presently good and productive farm system, I suspect that they would rather bask in their present situation. It would be awfully nice to have Bradley in center at 500k than Trout at 30MM.

What concerns me is the ever growing disparity b/t the established star salaries and those prior to arb.. The guys like Roberts & Sizemore get squeezed too by the chase for the top talent....but teams have to economize somewhere.

Again, I'd like to have top established (and young!) players, but I don't want to see us break the bank for anyone.

Remember when we ran somebody off this board for suggesting Albert Pujols could be a Red Sox and now it looks like the Angels wish he was? Even the best of the best can hurt you.

By the way, somewhat related to Trout and the Angels, the Angels have an opt out of their stadium agreement after 2016 and apparently negotiations for concessions from the city of Anaheim are at a stalemate. The Angels have begun negotiations with the city of Tustin to potentially build a stadium where El Toro Marine Base used to be. (Maybe 8-10 miles between the two sites but both in Orange County not LA County).

ADD: That site would have to be the envy of baseball because it would be in a position to have off ramps from three major highways (5,405,55), is across the street from a train station and within a few miles of the county airport. It would make it much more convenient for millions of potential fans who now have to tread the worst traffic congestion in SoCal to get to a game.

Trout will be 25, 3-4 years from his peak, and he may have 5 seasons of 9+ WAR under his belt by then. The situations aren't comparable. In fact, there may never have been anything comparable in the history of the game.

He was just quoted as saying he'd like to steal more bases this year, more than last year's 33. He's perfectly capable of 50+. The guy is a freak.

I would have thought that Pujol's record of consistency should have made him about low as risk as possible for a free agent entering the 2012 season. Factoring in age, $30M seemed reasonable for 2012-17, but not to 2021. If Trout is not signed to an extension, wow! he could be worth $40M, with the only issue being duration.

Trout is definitely one player you have to be in on but if he continues his production and reaches free agency I believe we are going to see an unfathomable contract. At this point it appears the Yankees have decided exceeding the luxury tax is not an issue under the right circumstances. The Dodgers will be out from Ethier and could team Trout and Puig with an outrageous player personnel budget. With few top tier young players reaching free agency the bidding war would be outrageous. Easily twice the Tanaka market in my mind.

I mean think of it this way for the Angels. Trout becomes a free agent in the 2018 season. The Angels are paying Josh Hamilton $32 million in each of 2016 and 2017. If you are wiling to pay that sum for Hamilton you have to imagine Trouts agent will want to exceed those figures. Fortunately for LA Hamilton will be a free agent also which realistically allows the team to sign Trout and not have it increase the 2018 budget much from 2017 and likely saves money as Trout would no doubt be pulling down 15 to 18 million by 17 through arbitration. So replace 50 million in 17 from Hamilton and Trout with 35 to 40 million for Trout and a cost controlled player and you can envision LA getting through the first half of the contract financially as they currently stand.

Yet another reason LA needs to get a deal done by next year if they don't want him to reach free agency.  Each year his price escalates both based upon performance and the economics of the game.

Regarding the Angels situation, they have a decent park but this is about making an even bigger money grab. El Toro is a great location for sure and it could separate them even further from the Dodgers, with potentially a more lucrative park situation. The parking option and development opportunities around the El Toro location are worth a fortune and it is further south from LA, tapping into south Orange County and north San Diego county a little better. The Angels played that game once and made Gene Autry a billionaire mainly from the surrounding real estate value increase. And who wants to compete with the Dodgers strategically?

I'm sure they'd love to sign him to an extension, and I'm sure they know the costs involved in not doing so. The reserve clause doesn't exist anymore though - Trout has to be amenable to an extension. Who knows? Maybe he wants to make as much money as humanly possible. Maybe he wants to play close to home.

A few notes:
-Trout is four years away from free agency. This thread is ridiculously premature even by internet wishcasting standards. I clicked thinking we were going to discuss Heyward versus Stanton versus Price or something.

-There's a semi-rational reason the Angels haven't seriously talked extension with Trout yet. They think, perhaps correctly, that there's no way Trout gets any better than this-- he's literally played about as well as any player in baseball history the last two years. There's really nowhere to go but down, and any minor performance decline or injury means his price probably goes down. Of course, that's balanced by the fact that the closer he gets to free agency, the higher his asking price will be (because he'd bear less risk going year-to-year).

-If Trout reaches free agency still putting up video game numbers with elite defense and little injury history, he's going to shatter salary numbers like the first Alex Rodriguez deal did. Hell, he could ask for an ownership stake and a team would probably give it to him. But that's a long ways away.

-Earlier in the offseason, I toyed with the idea of whether it might be feasible to trade for Trout if you also took on Pujols' and Hamilton's contracts. After having thought about it some more, I think I was pretty off with that initial post-- the Angels aren't doing a package deal even with the other team eating two big contracts without getting significant prospects in return. But I think it might be possible to swing such a deal without giving up Bogaerts in return. Still, incredibly speculative, and further discussion should go in the above thread on the Trade Proposal subforum.

-Otherwise, the only way Trout gets traded is if he gets disgruntled and wants out, and even then, it'd require another cost-controlled proven superstar in return. Say, McCutchen/Cole from the Pirates or Goldschmidt/Bradley from the Diamondbacks or Darvish/Profar from the Rangers or Machado/Bundy/more from the Orioles.

Getting to the current stadium by train is pretty easy from DTLA (I've done it 5 or 6 times).  The real problem isn't the train station near the stadium, but that no one lives or works near an origination station.  being further South might help a little, especially if they could do a Patriots Place type thing with the area, and turn it into a full-time destination.  Also, Angels stadium is so borrrrrrring and cheesy.

This is sad from an environmental perspective though, as a lot of money and energy has gone into the current stadium and parking lot.  Maybe it could become a football field...