Pardon me for missing this earlier in the week, but here's an interesting trade rumor from the West Coast: the Los Angeles Angels may consider moving starter Hector Santiago.
The Angels and Santiago agreed to a $5 million salary for 2016 to avoid arbitration last week, which was early considering many of those settlements are occurring today. However, Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com says there might be a reason for that.
"I'm told part of the urgency was to facilitate a potential trade," he wrote on Twitter.
He then goes on to add that no trade is "imminent," but now it's at least somewhat clear potential trade suitors out there engaging with the Angels are interested in acquiring starting pitching.
Los Angeles has a void in left field. Rumors have linked them to various names such as Yoenis Cespedes, Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Gerardo Parra, Chris Davis, Dexter Fowler, all of the Rockies' outfielders, and others. Team owner Arte Moreno said the club would not be in play for one of the big bats as the payroll approaches the luxury tax threshold.
So what/who are they looking for?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Angels still looking for LF and believe they'll get one. But at this point, they either trade for one, or he makes less than $5M in 2016.</p>— Alden Gonzalez (@Alden_Gonzalez) <a href="https://twitter.com/Alden_Gonzalez/status/685606181579014144">January 8, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Gonzalez noted earlier in the week that potential trade candidates for the Angels include Charlie Blackmon, Corey Dickerson, Jay Bruce, Brett Gardner, Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford, Khris Davis, Domingo Santana, Jorge Soler, Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco. With their surplus of starters, they can probably land nearly all of those names.
However, general manager Billy Eppler, who previously served as assistant GM of the New York Yankees, could have specific interest in Gardner due to his ties with the team. Gardner has been mentioned in trade rumors as the Yankees look to upgrade and stabilize their starting rotation.
If Yankees GM Brian Cashman offers to eat some of Gardner's salary in a hypothetical deal, that could interest Eppler, especially if New York gets a controllable starter in return. Gardner, 32, is owed about $40 million through 2018 and Santiago will hit free agency after the 2017 season (he has one more round of arbitration).
The health of the Yankees starting rotation is largely in question and Cashman acquired Aroldis Chapman in December to take pressure off the ailing unit. With Chapman, Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances taking over the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, the starters won't be so heavily relied upon to pitch deep into games.
However, the cost of young, cost-effective starters is high, so perhaps Eppler is looking for a bigger return on the 28-year-old Santiago.
Keep an eye on the Angels as they could be poised to strike a deal soon.
