You can be the future GM of the Los Angeles Angels

You are a bright baseball mind, one of the untapped resources of creative, forward-thinking analysis in the sport. You’re young, unless you’re old, and you’re working under a respected general manager, unless you’ve been a respected general manager yourself in the past. Your resume is incredible.

You’re charismatic. Look at you. You radiate success. People want to be near you, unless they want to be you. You’re a rising star, a future Sporting News MLB Executive of the Year, and everyone knows it.

You have a job offer. It just came through. A perennially contending team has a surprise GM opening, and they want you to take it. This could be your big chance, hotshot. You could run a baseball team.

You could run the Los Angeles Angels.

It’s time to explore just how enticing this offer is. Take a look around the organization, see if it has the framework you’re looking for. See if this is the team for you. Start with ...

He wants to win. This isn’t a weird situation where the team is hoping for revenue-sharing payouts. This isn’t about making enough profit so that the dividend checks are large and the multi-headed ownership group is happy. Arte Moreno is the owner, and he’s going to be just as desperate as you are to win a World Series.

This is a good thing. Sometimes. Most of the time? It’s hard to say. But the desire and the wallet can get tangled up, and that can create a horrible monster.

The Albert Pujols deal isn’t something that a GM comes up with. It’s something an owner convinces him to work around. There isn’t a GM in baseball whose team-building dossier opens with “Step 1. Sign an over-30 star for $26 million a year.” The people who run baseball teams would like to think they’re more clever than that. Their baseball world view is more nuanced than a strategy that boils down to paying a premium to sign the premium players.

But if the owner asks if you want Albert Pujols, who was still one of the very best hitters in baseball, it’s not like you’re made of stone. You’ll explain the risks, but as long as he promises to keep the payroll flexible, it’s almost like a free Pujols for the roster you were already planning. Almost. You know, on second thought, you have to discourage the idea of signing an older player to a mega-contract. There are just too many ...

The owner then stops asking if you want Albert Pujols. It’s something that becomes inevitable.

Moreno instructed new GM Jerry Dipoto to inform Pujols’ agent, Dan Lozano, that the Angels were interested and then asked to speak with Pujols on the phone.

In the span of two phone conversations over 48 hours last week, without even meeting face to face, Pujols said Moreno made him feel wanted.

“He let me know he really wanted me,” Pujols said. “He called me his (business) partner.”

In that same article, Moreno described his GM as someone who “turns over rocks.” If you are the new GM, you will turn over rocks. And occasionally, you will be presented with the gift of a very, very expensive superstar who will affect your payroll and roster-building for years.

If that superstar is, say, a recovering addict when he’s signed, the owner will decide to eat scores of millions to get rid of him in the event of a quite possible relapse, even to a division rival. That might sound like a bizarre interpretation of sunk costs, but ... well, he’s the guy who writes the checks. He was OK with it.

Note that the payroll will still be ample, though. You’re a smart person. You should be able to work around the occasional superstar-related obstacles.

Well, OK, it’s like this: The manager runs the entire organization.

No, no, come back. I mean, you get to choose the players, you’re the GM, ha ha. For the most part. Except for the players the owner assigns to you.

And, no, seriously. The manager runs the team. Get players he likes. You know, ones he can work with and who play his style.

Mike Scioscia played catcher like this:

It’s also how he manages. When a problem runs up to him, ker-blammo, he levels it. When a new idea tries to get past him, he lowers his shoulder and yells, “Not so fast, new idea!” It’s refreshingly direct. For some.

From Jeff Passan:

During their struggles early last year, before the Los Angeles Angels turned into a 98-win juggernaut, the best player in the world wanted something to loosen up the team a bit. So Mike Trout hung one of those Nerf mini-basketball hoops in the Angels’ clubhouse. One day, according to league sources, the hoop came down. Trout hung it back up. Down it went again.

Scioscia isn’t really interested in “fun” or “other opinions.” If you have a great idea about defensive shifts or a lineup filled with switch-hitters who can spray the ball all over the field, that’s super. Write it down in a memorandum and leave it on his desk. He’ll get to it. Just don’t ask him about it again.

Almost every manager in baseball is using analytics from the front office to inform decisions on the field. So if you want to look at this being a cup-half-full situation, it sounds like you’ll have less busy work to do!

It’s not as pretty as it could be. Next year, the Angels will pay over $91 million to Albert Pujols, Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson, and, uh, Josh Hamilton. Maybe that money will buy a few wins over replacement. Maybe it’ll only buy a couple. Add in the millions going to Mike Trout, and the Angels will have the equivalent of a mid-market payroll assigned to five players, with 20 more to fill in around them.

It’ll be a fine dance to pull off, but it’s not hopeless. In 2017, they’ll owe Pujols and Hamilton unseemly amounts of cash, but Weaver and Wilson will be gone. The year after that, it’s just Pujols. The year after that, it’s just Pujols. The year after that, it’s just Pujols. The year after that, it’s just Pujols. Along the way, Mike Trout’s salary climbs above $30 million, but that’s a feature, not a bug.

As for the farm system, it was ranked 28th out of 30 teams entering the season by Baseball America, and it was in such a bad way that the Angels traded away their long-time second baseman for a prospect reinforcement. And maaaaaaybe because of payroll concerns, but don’t worry, you’ll never have to worry about payroll concerns. The system has a plethora of youngish arms of note, and most of them are at least holding their own this season.

It’s a work in progress. You’ll figure something out soon, but there isn’t a ton of immediate help to bridge the next couple years, when the team will be paying an awful lot of money for an awful little bit of production. Just so you know.

You will have Mike Trout on your baseball team. This is the greatest head start a GM can have. It’s one of the greatest head starts a GM has ever had. Here’s Mike Trout, now figure out the other 24 players on the roster. It’s like getting a guaranteed ace with every poker hand, an extra submarine in Battleship, or playing as Oddjob whenever you please.

You will have Mike Trout.

Mike Trout. Literally Mike Trout.

You are one of the most desirable GM prospects in the game. There will be just a few GM positions open over the next couple of years, and that’s if you’re lucky. There probably won’t be more than a dozen or two this decade, and guess what? You’re not the only GM prospect. There are other smart folks around, and their resumes are just as impressive.

Still, if this doesn’t work out, there are no guarantees you will get another shot. Josh Byrnes isn’t running a team now. J.P. Ricciardi isn’t running a team. No one is lining up to poach Ned Colletti. If all of the above factors mess with the team on the field -- your team, your vision -- this might be it.

Now you have a decision to make. Is this the shot you want to take? Is this going to be your best chance?

Sleep on the decision. But the fact that you have to sleep on it means it’s not as easy of a decision as it should be. Here is a prestigious, big-market franchise with a huge payroll and Mike Trout. It’s yours if you want it.

So, do you want the job?