Hearing #Angels owner Arte Moreno really waffling on whether to take payroll past $189-million luxury tax threshold.
— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) December 9, 2015
Day 3 of the Winter Meetings finds us Angels fans pining for a big signing, but is Arte Moreno even down to clown, bro? Our intrepid owner, he that is worth around $1.4-$1.8 BILLION is hearing back from his men on the streets(Billy Eppler and Mike Scioscia, who is also at the meetings currently) and they are probably telling him the same things he should have already known going into them: if you want to have a shot in 2016, you will have to spend money and go over the luxury tax threshold.
I mean, someone DID inform Arte of this prior to the start of the event on Monday, right? The man has pockets and pockets full of dough, yet doesn't want to use any of it to make some delicious, World Series-contending bread. We've seen the signing of fourth OFs like Rafael Ortega and today's newest acquisition, Craig Gentry...but that's it. They have a couple trade chips in C.J. Wilson and Hector Santiago, and that's it. It's free agent or bust in 2016, and Arte Moreno is acting like Chris Rock in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka...dude's pockets are SWOLE, but he is going to nickel and dime the MLB just to buy one single bbq rib. Out of all the free agent seasons to get cheap, he chooses one where there are actually numerous guys on the market that could immediately upgrade the Halos for years to come.
Why is Arte so gunshy?
The $40 million or so #Angels still owe Josh Hamilton gnawing at Arte Moreno, who would need to incur tax to sign big FA OF.
— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) December 9, 2015
Oh yeah, it's because he 100% hamstrung himself and the team in years prior, so now instead of letting a new GM make a smart baseball buy, he's going to cower back into his Arizona cubby hole and hope that Billy Eppler can cobble together 3-4 guys whose sum of all their parts can make a viable, usable MLB left fielder. Good luck with that noise, Mr. Moreno.
The Angels are about $16 million under that luxury tax threshold, and it's been known for quite some time what it was going to take to acquire one of the handful of good, young OF bats that are available, and we've been continuously reminded that the luxury tax situation is "fluid", meaning they didn't have a hard and fast rule about going over it or not; for the right player, they would. If the guys available aren't good enough in the Angels' eyes to make them stay true to the supposed fluidity of the threshold, then I'm not sure who is at this point.
Oh, Arte. You kill me, dude.