What would it take to make the 2017 season a success?

[Inside Pitch]

13 hours ago, CALZONE said:

We really need to stop worrying about the "Trout Window" and just keep building through smart drafts and solid trades. If Trout is ever traded it will be at his request so don't get too attached. We can win without Trout, it's been done before. 

Memories.....  

[Hubs]

Trout may not want to play on the East Coast. He left home at 17 and played in Arizona, Cedar Rapids, Arkansas, Salt Lake, and then in California. He's going to have been out of the East Coast for at least 7 months a year for 10-12 years when he is a free agent. He may not want to go back to the East Coast.

 

[Docwaukee]

10 minutes ago, CALZONE said:

Ok you've made your point. I will say this....the longer they wait, the closer Trout gets to the open market. He won't pass up that opportunity. He has a No Trade contract so we could end up with just a draft pick when it's all said and done. My point is to make Mike Trout an Angel for life now and not wait until Trout gets closer to other options. You guys are comfortable with the wait and gamble side. 

 

there is no reason for trout to consider a long term deal right now unless they threw 500mil at him.   There is no reason for the team to do that.  You are being adversarial for it's own sake which is something I know you enjoy.  But your argument is grounded in just wanting to be contrarian and not actually wanting to make much sense.  

what you are saying makes no sense for many reasons.  One of which is for the long term health of the club.  Something that you are avidly promoting.  But what if they sign him to a 10yr/400mil extension right now and the moves they are making don't work out as we hope ie, our injured pitchers don't recover as anticipated.  Our farm system continues to flounder.  We sign a couple more bad free agents.  Simmons and Calhoun lose their mojo.  

Now you're locked into trout for 10-12 more years at an astronomical salary that only a couple of teams could afford.  That's a much bigger gamble than waiting to see what the team is even going to be in 2 years.  

 

 

 

[Ohtaniland]

3 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

And then....

See you in 15 minutes when the narrative changes again.

My first point was the silly window. What if we are worse in 2019 or 2020? Pujols will be 39 and we have no idea about Skaggs, Richards, Heaney or Trops long term careers will look like if any. Let's not forget that the competition is getting better. 

You could most likely have a better shot at signing him to a lifetime contract today and put all this "window" crap to rest or gamble on losing him later. 

[Docwaukee]

4 minutes ago, CALZONE said:

My first point was the silly window. What if we are worse in 2019 or 2020? Pujols will be 39 and we have no idea about Skaggs, Richards, Heaney or Trops long term careers will look like if any. Let's not forget that the competition is getting better. 

You could most likely have a better shot at signing him to a lifetime contract today and put all this "window" crap to rest or gamble on losing him later. 

you just contradicted yourself in two paragraphs.  

[Inside Pitch]

 

[Stradling]

I miss the cooperativeness of lifetime. 

[ettin]

The Angels simply need, after this season, to offer Mike Trout a 15 year, $500M extension contract. If he doesn't accept that then he likely doesn't want to be here after his current deal expires and the front office can continue to play for the here and now through the end of his controllable years.

This isn't rocket science. If we get to the beginning of the 2019 season and Mike hasn't been extended we all need to embrace our inner safe space and come to terms with the idea of a Trout-less Angels team.

$500M is the key guys. If Arte mans up and makes that offer I have a hard time seeing Trout rejecting it unless he is absolutely dying to play in Philadelphia or New York. Make Trout the first $500M player in history. You make it a 15 year (or 14 or 13, whatever) deal to help keep the AAV as low as possible which will actually be beneficial to the Angels front office because it will make building a competitive team around Mike much more plausible (we are talking about $33M-$37M AAV).

Actually if they wait until after this year they can reconstruct his current contract and offer him $525M over 16 years which would be a record-breaking $35M in Average Annual Value. This will effectively raise Trout's current $24M in AAV by $11M per season which is a manageable number and still one that gives value to the team at least in the short term because Mike plays like a $45M-$50M AAV player right now.

[ettin]

35 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

 

there is no reason for trout to consider a long term deal right now unless they threw 500mil at him.   There is no reason for the team to do that.  You are being adversarial for it's own sake which is something I know you enjoy.  But your argument is grounded in just wanting to be contrarian and not actually wanting to make much sense.  

what you are saying makes no sense for many reasons.  One of which is for the long term health of the club.  Something that you are avidly promoting.  But what if they sign him to a 10yr/400mil extension right now and the moves they are making don't work out as we hope ie, our injured pitchers don't recover as anticipated.  Our farm system continues to flounder.  We sign a couple more bad free agents.  Simmons and Calhoun lose their mojo.  

Now you're locked into trout for 10-12 more years at an astronomical salary that only a couple of teams could afford.  That's a much bigger gamble than waiting to see what the team is even going to be in 2 years.  

 

 

 

Honestly Doc I disagree with this statement. If you can't afford to offer that contract in the first place you don't make it and if you can afford it you are factoring in the concept of inherent risk that the rest of the teams players and prospects may or may not perform.

The Angels are a team that can afford to make this commitment in my opinion. If you're worried about signing him and things go bad in a big way, they can more than likely trade him despite the obvious no-trade clause that he will be given. It is not dissimilar to the Alex Rodriguez signing by Texas back in the day.

I have to say that the Angels should, after this season and Hamilton's money is off the books, extend Richards, if they feel he is back to normal and can reach a mutually beneficial agreement (clause regarding his UCL perhaps similar to Lackey's last contract re: his elbow), and then extend Trout at an appropriately record breaking amount of $500M over the remainder of his career (throw in mutual options at the end if needed).

The 2018 season is only one year away from 2019 where Trout will be so close to free agency after 2020 that he could simply wait and get paid in free agency. The 2017-2018 offseason is personally where I think the Angels need to strike on this. They could wait until the 2018-2019 offseason but I think you are risking paying him more then because Harper, Machado, and Kershaw are going to set records themselves at that time which will raise the ceiling on what we will have to pay Trout.

[Blarg]

When trout signed his extension there was word he would have gladly accepted a 10-13 year extension. The club decided to make it 7 and it made perfect sense when you look at the AAV aspect of contracts these days counting towards the salary cap. By adding the 3-6 additional years the AAV goes up considerably at the time they had already sunk too much money into the roster.

By the time his current contract comes up for another extension the salary cap will have expanded and there will be fewer big ticket players on the roster while having a farm system to work with to pump cheap talent into the roster. Trout then becomes the primary payroll expenditure and is still affordable with a $40 million per year or more AAV.

That is what I perceive was the 5 year plan when Eppler took over. Rebuild the farm, supplement the roster with value short term contracts and then two years from now start the process to make Trout an Angels player for life.

So I have little concern about the franchise future, just going to have to wait it out like I did for the decades between successful runs. 

[Docwaukee]

I want to keep Trout as much as anyone.  But we need to have a better idea of where this team is going first.  

I like our core of players but we have 6 key starting pitchers right now.  One avoided TJ with an experimental procedure.  Two just got TJ surg.  One had TJ surg and it took him almost two years to come back, and one guy had brain surgery after getting struck by a line drive and the last guy is a soon to be 27yo rookie who hasn't been able to stay healthy or find a way to be consistent with his outstanding stuff.  We've got very little if anything in the upper minors to help the starting staff.   We need 4 of those 6 to perform or we'll be using dip spit, duct tape and wd40 to piece together a rotation in the coming years.  It would be nice to get little lucky and get a #3 starter type out of Eppler's bowl of bar peanuts.  

I honestly believe that Trout will stay if the team is good.  I actually see the AL west competition getting worse or the next three years.  Jerry shred the m's already weak farm system with a thousand razor cuts.  The Rangers have already put themselves in an awkward position and I think they're going to crap the bed this year.  The A's have a good farm system but their major league team is terrible.  Houston has some really nice young players and their farm system is still solid (albeit unspectacular) and I still think they are in a bad way on the SP front although Paulino and Martes could go a long way to help with that.  So they are my only real concern in terms of competition.  

I have no doubt the Angels can afford to sign Trout for a long extension if they want.  If you are going to pay him FA market value then why not just wait.  If you can get a discount, do it now.  But at FA market levels you are limiting your flexibility of what you can do with him if the rest of the team happens to suck two years from now.  Only 2 or 3 teams would be willing to take on a contract of that magnitude and then you are beholden to accepting what they have in your farm.  Plus, you are building in a discount because of all that money owed.  You still need the flexibility to trade him and get max value in return should things get away from you.  

I would certainly defer to Eppler's experience on this btw.  The guy was in the cat bird's seat for the biggest revenue franchise in baseball for many years.  You also have to consider the fact that Trout probably doesn't want an extension right now.  After seeing what happened to the team in 2016, I can't imagine he'd even consider it unless you gave him full market value.  

Players sign extension in their final year all the time.  When the time is right, Arte will step up if there is mutual interest.  That is actually one thing I am not concerned about.  When Arte commits to wanting a player, he goes in guns blazing.  

My ideal scenario is to have Eppler fill a couple of gaps in the 2018/19 off season and then sign Trout to his extension.  

 

[ettin]

56 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

I want to keep Trout as much as anyone.  But we need to have a better idea of where this team is going first.  

Although I agree that our 2017 team is questionable and we have had many discussions about that Eppler has made it clear that we are going to try and compete and I think it is pretty clear that the Angels intend to compete in every year moving forward so the team knows where it wants to go and how they want to get there under Billy's strategy. It seems well defined to them but maybe not as necessarily well defined to us.

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I like our core of players but we have 6 key starting pitchers right now.  One avoided TJ with an experimental procedure.  Two just got TJ surg.  One had TJ surg and it took him almost two years to come back, and one guy had brain surgery after getting struck by a line drive and the last guy is a soon to be 27yo rookie who hasn't been able to stay healthy or find a way to be consistent with his outstanding stuff.  We've got very little if anything in the upper minors to help the starting staff.   We need 4 of those 6 to perform or we'll be using dip spit, duct tape and wd40 to piece together a rotation in the coming years.  It would be nice to get little lucky and get a #3 starter type out of Eppler's bowl of bar peanuts.  

I don't disagree that there is an inherent amount of deep risk in our season this year. The amount of variability in performance from the rotation, bullpen, and to a lesser extent the offense is certainly a wide margin. Again though we are in the Trout window of contention so you roll the dice and hope we fall on the right side of the distribution curve so yes they are concerns but if they happen they happen, if they don't then we may be looking at possible playoff contention or a sell-off of extraneous pieces at the deadline. Agreed though that the odds of performing and winning are not nearly as favorable as we'd like them to be in 2017 but I don't think they are nearly as potentially dreary as your paragraph above either. The improvement of team defense actually raises the floor of all of this contention talk because exceptional defense will help lower the load on the pitching staff because more hits are hopefully converted to outs and less runners get on base or don't ever make it on base.

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I honestly believe that Trout will stay if the team is good.  I actually see the AL west competition getting worse or the next three years.  Jerry shred the m's already weak farm system with a thousand razor cuts.  The Rangers have already put themselves in an awkward position and I think they're going to crap the bed this year.  The A's have a good farm system but their major league team is terrible.  Houston has some really nice young players and their farm system is still solid (albeit unspectacular) and I still think they are in a bad way on the SP front although Paulino and Martes could go a long way to help with that.  So they are my only real concern in terms of competition.  

Agreed that we could be entering an era here were our fellow AL West competitors may not be quite as strong as they first appeared. I agree that Houston is the primary threat followed by the Rangers and Mariners with the A's coming into focus 2-3 years from now.

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I have no doubt the Angels can afford to sign Trout for a long extension if they want.  If you are going to pay him FA market value then why not just wait.  If you can get a discount, do it now.  But at FA market levels you are limiting your flexibility of what you can do with him if the rest of the team happens to suck two years from now.  Only 2 or 3 teams would be willing to take on a contract of that magnitude and then you are beholden to accepting what they have in your farm.  Plus, you are building in a discount because of all that money owed.  You still need the flexibility to trade him and get max value in return should things get away from you.  

The thing about it is that if you pay Trout his full free agent market value that is actually more than $500M. The half-billion number is a psychological barrier more so than a real free agent valuation target. I tried doing a simple WAR-based valuation with a 10% FA base increase year to year (starting at $8.5M for free agent value in 2017) and in the next 10 years it exceeds $1 Billion! It is crude but it is in the rough ballpark. My point is that if we wait for free agency no one knows what the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Nationals, etc. will expend to acquire him, particularly after your nice work in discussing revenue around the league. We need to shatter the psychological barrier next offseason in order to prevent him from ever getting close enough to free agency where his agent says to Mike "Hey if you wait another year or two you can get $600M" and his agent in my opinion would not be wrong. Here is the cut and paste from my valuation excel file I keep. Top line is year, second line is free agent WAR dollars per year with a 10% increase each season and the bottom line is a WAR projection for each year. Even if you valuate Trout at say 8.5 WAR and then start declining him at age 30 by the standard 0.5 WAR per year you are still at $1B or so.

2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	2027
8,531,710	9,384,881	10,323,369	11,355,706	12,491,277	13,740,404	15,114,445	16,625,889	18,288,478	20,117,326	22,129,058	Total WAR Value
9.10	9.10	9.10	9.10	9.10	8.60	8.10	7.60	7.10	6.50		$  1,101,553,227.98

That is why the Angels need to shatter the psychological $500M barrier soon in my opinion. Perhaps they have already discussed this with Mike and have a potential strategy set up for this but from the outside looking in I'd say you cannot wait on this too long or it could easily get away from you.

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I would certainly defer to Eppler's experience on this btw.  The guy was in the cat bird's seat for the biggest revenue franchise in baseball for many years.  You also have to consider the fact that Trout probably doesn't want an extension right now.  After seeing what happened to the team in 2016, I can't imagine he'd even consider it unless you gave him full market value.  

Agree that Eppler probably has a good handle on this situation and understands the intricacies better than I ever will. You are also correct that maybe Trout wouldn't sign an extension at this moment in time and I think the Angels certainly have communicated that they need Hamilton's contract off of the books before committing anything which makes total sense in regards to the CBT threshold. Also he may not like the situation the Angels are currently in and that is understandable too. I think Richards getting possibly extended assuming he does well could be a positive for us in extending Trout due to their close friendship. It could have nothing to do with it as well but I think it would help. All this talk though happens next offseason not now and I think there will be better definition next year for Mike to consider if that is what is important to him.

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Players sign extension in their final year all the time.  When the time is right, Arte will step up if there is mutual interest.  That is actually one thing I am not concerned about.  When Arte commits to wanting a player, he goes in guns blazing.  

My ideal scenario is to have Eppler fill a couple of gaps in the 2018/19 off season and then sign Trout to his extension.  

 

Although I agree that players do sign extensions in their final year, the really big names like Trout more often don't I think. I don't have any empirical data to support this argument as I haven't researched it and I am at work right now but I'd be intellectually curious as to the percentages if it exists. My ideal would be in the 2017/2018 offseason and immediately make Mike the wealthiest player in MLB history without a chance of the record being broken for the next few years. Harper, Machado and Kershaw could all approach $500M (particularly Machado and Harper in my mind on a very long term deal).

[Oz27]

I consider another pre-free agency Trout extension extremely unlikely. Why would you sign another one in his position? You're the best player of your generation, don't you want to test the market at least once? Having said that, it's at least possible in the final couple of years of his deal. At the moment, it isn't. Firstly, if you're his agent you're begging him to wait until after the mega free agent class of the 2018-19 offseason, because the bar is going to be raised by the mega deals Harper and Kershaw (and even Donaldson) will sign. Secondly, how do you come up with a reasonable number now? To sign Trout to an extension now, you'd need to add what he would get in free agency (or at least close to it) to our existing commitment. Trout's agent is probably telling him - or at least thinking - that 13 years, $500 million is possible as a free agent. It might well be, too. At the very least, 10/$400 is realistic. So let's split the middle and say 12 years, $420 million is his market value and we sign him to that extension, on top of what we've already committed to, then we would have him signed for effectively 16 years and $542 million. Yes, that sounds absurd. It sounds like a video game number. It's also entirely possible that my number is too low (or the years might be too high for that dollar figure). But to make it worth it for Trout to sign an extension now, it would have to be something like that. From both perspectives it is so impractical now and any extension is at least a couple of years away.

[ettin]

1 minute ago, Oz27 said:

I consider another pre-free agency Trout extension extremely unlikely. Why would you sign another one in his position? You're the best player of your generation, don't you want to test the market at least once? Having said that, it's at least possible in the final couple of years of his deal. At the moment, it isn't. Firstly, if you're his agent you're begging him to wait until after the mega free agent class of the 2018-19 offseason, because the bar is going to be raised by the mega deals Harper and Kershaw (and even Donaldson) will sign. Secondly, how do you come up with a reasonable number now? To sign Trout to an extension now, you'd need to add what he would get in free agency (or at least close to it) to our existing commitment. Trout's agent is probably telling him - or at least thinking - that 13 years, $500 million is possible as a free agent. It might well be, too. At the very least, 10/$400 is realistic. So let's split the middle and say 12 years, $420 million is his market value and we sign him to that extension, on top of what we've already committed to, then  we've committed 16 years and $542 million to one player. Yes, that sounds absurd. It sounds like a video game number. But to make it worth it for Trout to sign an extension now, it would have to be something like that. From both perspectives it is so impractical now and any extension is at least a couple of years away.

Sorry I'm just not understanding this line of thought that the closer he gets to free agency the more likely an extension can occur. If I were Trout and only 1-2 years from free agency I'd probably start leaning, like a lot of players do, towards testing the waters and choosing where I'd like to end up.

Better to pay him now rather than in that chaotic free agent market environment. You will save money long term by sealing the deal sooner even if it is at $500M (or more).

In regards to his first extension I think Dipoto and Moreno were nervous about handing out so much money to a relatively untested (meaning not a lot of MLB experience) young man no matter how highly they thought of him. Was it a one or two year blip of greatness or was it a long term thing? They didn't know and the best thing to do was sign him shorter term rather than pull a Pujols again. That is why they can and should revisit a 2nd extension since they clearly tried to risk manage the first extension and now they realize what they have.

No matter if you pay him now or later you WILL have to pay him at the going market free agent rate, he is the best player of this generation and like all top tier talent he is worth X amount of dollars. It is my opinion that the closer you get to free agency the more you will have to pay. Also in my opinion that $500M mark will be the psychological barrier the Angels have to break whether it is now or later with the only difference being that you might pay even more that $500M the longer you wait. Once that 2018/2019 free agent class hits the market the prices on top tier players will skyrocket over $400M for Harper, Machado, Kershaw, etc. You have to spend money to make money from my vantage point.

And as we've all discussed ad nauseum this may be a moot point if Trout wants to be a Phillie or Yankee in the long run. Personally I think Mike idolized Jeter enough that he would follow Derek's advice about how he enjoyed staying with one team his whole career. Could be totally wrong about this but Mike's apparent demeanor and conduct strikes me as a loyal type of guy if the Angels play ball.

[Docwaukee]

Trout has the best chance of anyone to actually be worth the 400+mil he's gonna be paid.  Not as worried about that as I am in limiting your options for this franchises future.  It doesn't matter what he's worth relative to his contract if you don't support him with other players.  

The team has a lot of question marks right now.  I am optimistic that a lot of them will work out fine, but what if it doesn't.  Then you have committed 400mil to one guy and you're otherwise a bad team.  It's the ranger redux with Arod.  He had no supporting cast and since he was owed so much money, there was only one team willing to take it on.  They got Alfonso Soriano and Joaquin Arias.  So basically, they got 3 years of control of a nice position player and that's it.  

If the team is solid to good two years from now, and you go to Trout who declines to consider an extension, then you Trade him for the most lucrative package of controlled minor leaguers and prospects this game has ever seen.  You aren't getting that if you owe him 470 million dollars.  If the team sucks a couple years from now, there is no reason to lay out for him unless you've miraculously regenerated your farm system in that short period.  So you trade him.  

You have to maintain that value.  It's another reason why you don't commit 400+ mil to him at the age of 22.  Joey Votto isn't Mike Trout but also didn't get paid Trout money, but he is a very nice player still putting up very good numbers and his contract is unmovable and the Reds are rebuilding.  He has very little value to that team right now as a 5 WAR player.  Miguel Cabrera signed his extension entering his age 31 season which is a bit apples and oranges but it takes him through age 40.  An 8yr extension.  If Trout's extension were 12 years, it would take him through age 40.  

You have to get a much better idea of where your team is going to be in 2020-2023 before you commit that kind of money because by doing so, you are making Trout a career Angel from that point whether you need him to be or not.  

His trade value, if things don't work out, is almost as important as keeping him.  

Here's the other thing.  If Arte comes to Mike before the 2019 season and says here's 400mil for the next 12 years, is he really going to turn that down for the chance to get $450mil from the yanks or phils or dogs?  Even $500?  If we low balled him with a less than record contract then fine, we have pushed him out.  But with two years to go on his current deal, he's not going to turn down 400mil for the chance of making 500mil.  And if he does turn it down, it's because he doesn't want to stay and we had no shot anyway.  

 The Cards saw Pujols decline coming and we didn't care.  They low balled him and it pissed him off.  Arte isn't going to do that with Trout.  He's going to give him every opportunity to stay if it makes sense for him to stay.  Right now, it doesn't make sense for either side.  

[Oz27]

40 minutes ago, ettin said:

Sorry I'm just not understanding this line of thought that the closer he gets to free agency the more likely an extension can occur. If I were Trout and only 1-2 years from free agency I'd probably start leaning, like a lot of players do, towards testing the waters and choosing where I'd like to end up.

Better to pay him now rather than in that chaotic free agent market environment. You will save money long term by sealing the deal sooner even if it is at $500M (or more).

I disagree with this line of thinking. The reason I think an extension is far more likely to happen in the final year or two of the deal is arriving at a mutually reasonable number now is practically impossible because the market hasn't set. If they started negotiations now, they're probably starting at figures more than $100 million away from each other and that would be pretty damn hard to reconcile. If I were Trout, I wouldn't entertain the discussion seriously until Harper and Kershaw sign because they're going to set a big-time precedent. An extension now is just totally unrealistic.

[ettin]

3 minutes ago, Oz27 said:

I disagree with this line of thinking. The reason I think an extension is far more likely to happen in the final year or two of the deal is arriving at a mutually reasonable number now is practically impossible because the market hasn't set. If they started negotiations now, they're probably starting at figures more than $100 million away from each other and that would be pretty damn hard to reconcile. If I were Trout, I wouldn't entertain the discussion seriously until Harper and Kershaw sign because they're going to set a big-time precedent. An extension now is just totally unrealistic.

And if the Angels wait that long I think it is a lot less likely that we will be able to extend him because he will be too close to free agency.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. That $500M number is the key as far as I'm concerned. You have to make it so lucrative and interesting that he will realize that he will be the highest paid baseball player for years to come and deservedly so.

What happens if Harper gets offered a 15 year/$500M deal by the Yankees? It then forces the Angels to go well and above because Trout is clearly a better player than Harper. $600M? $700M? Basic WAR valuation systems would put Trout's value higher than those by a lot.

The Angels need to take care of this sooner rather than later as far as I'm concerned. The way you make Trout stay is by paying Mike Trout and showing him that his contract will not prevent the team from competing which I think you can easily show.

[Troll Daddy]

Trout is easily worth the biggest contract in baseball. Unfortunately, you don't need him to win a championship but his marketability is why your paying him bazooka dollars. 

Still a gamble no matter how you slice it. 

[Stradling]

26 minutes ago, Troll Daddy said:

Trout is easily worth the biggest contract in baseball. Unfortunately, you don't need him to win a championship but his marketability is why your paying him bazooka dollars. 

Still a gamble no matter how you slice it. 

You aren't paying him bazooka dollars because of marketability.  You pay him because he's a generational talent and he is safe.  What I mean by safe is he won't do anything to embarrass the team or himself. 

[Troll Daddy]

38 minutes ago, Stradling said:

You aren't paying him bazooka dollars because of marketability.  You pay him because he's a generational talent and he is safe.  What I mean by safe is he won't do anything to embarrass the team or himself. 

He's defineately a good bet now ... although, he's not a video game. His marketability is a plus factor. 

 

[Ohtaniland]

18 minutes ago, Troll Daddy said:

He's defineately a good bet now ... although, he's not a video game. His marketability is a plus factor. 

 

What type of marketing would he get in NY?

[Troll Daddy]

3 minutes ago, CALZONE said:

What type of marketing would he get in NY?

His own candy and ice cream bar!

[ettin]

11 minutes ago, Troll Daddy said:

His own candy and ice cream bar!

Trout's Treats n' Eats? Trout's Sweet Treat Eats?

[Docwaukee]

the Trout Bar.  mmmm.  sounds delicious.  

[Angel Oracle]

A lot of good points made here.

Probably the best strategy is to wait 2 years.

Yes, Machado and Harper are FAs then and will impact what the highest salaries will be.   But Trout would likely take a certain contract to stay beyond 2020, regardless of whether it's a year from now or two years from now.

At least by waiting two years, the Halos will have a better idea of where they stand long term by then.