In essence, Dipoto inherited a burning house when he signed on to be the Angels GM. The frame of the house was still intact but most of the interior had already perished in the flames. The Angels were a decent team, but little did most people know that because of faulty management, this organization was headed for certain collapse unless something was done. The Angels lost their Latin American presence due to scandal, had a plethora of tremendous "misses" despite multiple 1st round picks and had a team talented enough to compete, but never truly challenge for a crown. If Dipoto had done nothing, the Angels would have been a decent squad fore two more years until free agency took Aybar, Kendrick, Morales, Weaver etc. Payroll would've expanded but the team itself would've rot from the inside out.
So what did Dipoto do? He bought a few support beams to make this house structurally sound and began to work on rebuilding the interior. Those support beams are now Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, C.J. Wilson, and though virtue of luck, he inherited Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo. Admittedly, Wilson, Hamilton and to an extent, Pujols have struggled mightily in their attempt to provide stability to the Major League squad. Still, the logic behind the moves is the same.
However, you didn't think Dipoto would gut the interior of the house without the intention of rebuilding it did you?
The first thing Jerry needed to do was re-establish a Latin American presence. The Angels missed out on this gold mine of ball players for two or three years because of their lack of scouting, infrastructure and communication down there. I'm sure you've heard recently that the Angels hired a new scouting director for that area and have committed to building an entirely new, state of the art complex down there to house potential future major leaguers. In the mean time they've gone about aggressively promoting and signing Latin American prospects. Previously stagnated prospects have been sent stateside by the Dipoto regime to see their worth, thus system has been infused by the likes of Pedro Toribio, Daniel Hurtado and Gabriel Perez. Meanwhile, the Angels have inked highly regarded prospects (and promoted them) SS Jose Rondon and Arjenis Fernandez.
Next, the Angels have taken their first steps toward reloading their interior by adopting a different draft policy. Under scouting director Eddie Bane, the Angels tended to draft a lot of high risk, high reward high school prospects. This resulted in a couple of home runs like Mike Trout, Peter Bourjos and Mark Trumbo but also resulted in countless whiffs, the likes of which you've never heard of because they simply couldn't make the adjustments. The year before Dipoto was hired, the Angels promoted Ric Wilson to be the scouting director. Wilson was kept in place because he tended to favor many of the same prospects Dipoto did. This new drafting policy has taken root in the Angels system and in a few years, Dipoto fully intends to use them to stock the system. It seems likely that the approach of trading away prospects is finished. Still, the Angels system is currently stocked from Ric Wilson signees. C.J. Cron, Nick Maronde, Michael Roth, Austin Wood, R.J. Alvarez, Alex Yarbrough, Eric Stamets, Mark Sappington, Reid Scoggins and Mike Morin are a few of the mor prominent prospects Wilson has brought into the fold. The majority of these prospects are collegiate athletes that may lack the ceiling but possess more "finish" than their high school counterparts.
To sum it up, Dipoto's convinced Arte Moreno to spend big in free agency in the short term, yet was creative enough in his negotiating to keep the Angels payroll well under 150 million. This policy seems likely to fade over the next few seasons as contracts will inevitably become more expensive and the Angels will need to focus on keeping their younger players (Trout, Trumbo, Bourjos, Richards) away from free agency. This is done to keep the Angels competitive in the short term. The policy of trading away prospects for rentals also seems as though it's likely met it's conclusion. Now that Dipoto has the minor league personnel and prospects in place, I believe he intends to preserve the Angels system in much the same manner that former GM Bill Stoneman did. In essence, I'm saying that because Dipoto is trying to keep the major league squad competitive while building from scratch a minor league system, he's gone about RELOADING this organization, and not REBUILDING. The difference is subtle, yet considerable.
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