Yahoo's MLB analyst says the Angels will break the bank on the free agent market, go over the luxury tax threshold and likely sign pitcher Max Scherzer!
What use to called KFWB News Radio is now THE BEAST 980 Radio Station has a weekday afternoon sports talk show called THE DRIVE with hosts George Wrighster and Brett Winterble. Today they had as their guest Jeff Passan on. He is the national MLB analyst for Yahoo! Sports and he had some good scoop about the Angels as the offseason gets rolling
Listen at the audio in the linked article (LINK) - click ahead to the 4:30 mark to avoid blah blah blah about the Dodgers.
To sum up the questions about the Angels and Passan's commentary
•First he is asked if the quiet in the offseason is good? He replies that behind the scenes it is noisy – and with most of the clubs. The whole offseason this year is ahead of schedule with a lot of trade talks. Passan believes fans will see things will happen earlier then even the Winter meetings with the Angels and with every team.
•Then he is asked to analyze Arte Moreno as an owner, specifically if he is too meddlesome.
Passan digs in:
If I owned something that was worth more than a billion dollars, there is no such thing as being meddlesome. If you’re an owner of something, you have every right to be right in the middle of it. That being said, Arte Moreno is not a baseball man and Arte Moreno doesn’t know enough about baseball to be making baseball decisions.
He then goes on to point out that Arte has "Stepped in piles of you know what" signing overpriced players.
He observes that one thing that has saved the Angels from Arte's meddlesome spending is that Moreno refuses to do business with Scott Boras -implying that Moreno would have spent way more money over the past few offseasons on Boras clints if he felt he could deal with Boras in good faith.
(Passan did not go into the specifics of the feud but Arte publicly called out Boras as using the Angels to up the price on then-free agent Mark Teixeira after the 2008 season and the Angels have signed only one Boras client since - injured reliever Ryan Madson who never threw a pitch for the club)
•Then Passan delivers the bombshell, According to his sources, the Angels will try to sign a big name free agent pitcher, probably Max Scherzer, and will break through the luxury tax threshold, thus being subject to a tax on their payroll expenditures that will be redistributed to teams in smaller markets.
After all that, though, the subject quickly changes - they talk about A-Rod and the Yankees and then they talked about the Mets. What, no Red Sox talk in L.A., why hold back?
Anyway - wow.