All that beating up of the NL West really seems to have gone to the Angels’ heads. After slapping around their National League counterparts the last two weeks, the Angel front office must have thought they could do whatever they pleased to the NL West and decided to try and trade for Diamondback ace Dan Haren but were subsequently turned down.
Nice try, but thanks for coming out, Tony Reagins. It sure is nice to see you making an effort to improve the team, but paying through the nose for a top-end starting pitcher shouldn’t really be at the top of your priority list right now. Don’t get me wrong, Haren is an absolute stud and would be a welcome addition, but the Angels have plenty of bigger fish to fry before gutting the farm system to acquire a guy like Haren.
I know the Bullpen of Doom hasn’t cost the team a game in a few weeks until tonight (with several assists from their braindead baserunners). Perhaps now would be the opportune moment to plug that leak before the team starts really taking on water again? Maybe I am just being pessimistic, but with Arredondo ailing and Shields out for the season maybe, just maybe, finding some relief help might be a better use of Tony Reagins’s time. If they want to trade for the bullpen help first and then chase Haren, I am all for it, but it would be catastrophically stupid to blow their wad on Haren only to find the cupboard bare when they then go after bullpen help. The Angels farm system simply isn’t deep enough for the Angels to pull of this double dip of trading.
Perhaps the more important question is why exactly the Angels feel compelled to try and trade for Haren, especially at mid-season when premium arms are notoriously costly? There are only really two plausible explanations for their sudden show of interest and neither of them bode well for the Angels. The most obvious scenario is that the Angels just aren’t buying that Ervin Santana’s arm is feeling as “bueno” as he proclaims. He’s already made multiple trips to the disabled list and the “Tommy John” murmurs haven’t gone away. If his arm issues flare up again when he returns this weekend, he might not pitch again for a long time, making the need to acquire Haren (or someone like him) obvious.
The alternative to concern over Santana’s health is concern over John Lackey’s signability. Big John is in the final year of his contract and the Angels’ efforts to sign him to a contract extension in Spring Training did not go well. Picking up Haren would allow the Angels to let Lackey walk away with no real effect on the potency of the Angels starting rotation. Haren would make one hell of an insurance policy for losing Lackey, which would be a virtual certainty when you consider the economics of the Angels trying to pay them both.
Neither of those scenarios is going to make the Halo faithful happy, but there is a secret option C here for Reagins, though I am not sure he is quite clever enough to be employing such a tact. With the Colorado Rockies surging, Huston Street is essentially off the market (in fact, the Rockies are actually looking to acquire bullpen help themselves now) forcing the Angels to look elsewhere for a relief acquisition. That makes Arizona’s Chad Qualls one of the top relievers available on the trade market and thus an obvious trade target for the Angel front office. What better way to figure out which prospects might peak the D’Backs’ interest than by going fishing for someone you know they aren’t likely to trade. Ideally, Arizona would at least listen to what the Angels have to offer and give Reagins and company an idea of what the potential cost for Qualls would be but simultaneously preventing the Angles from tipping their hands to other teams on what they are willing to give up for a quality reliever. If this is the reality, it is a nice gambit by Reagins, but again, I’m not so sure that he has the chops to pull it off.
Whatever the true motivation behind pursuing Haren might be, it is obvious that this is a front office looking to make things happen. They just need to adjust their sights and start focusing their efforts on a different part of the pitching staff.