The civil suit trial of the late Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs has generated a lot of bad publicity and nasty noise, especially since things don’t seem to be going all that well for the Angels legally so far. Much of the daily chaos that characterizes the team’s internal workings has been exposed and then some, but there hasn’t been a lot written about how this will affect the Angels on the field. 

We’re here to help. It’s a little early to be drawing conclusions across the board, but here are three things that are likely to happen based on what we’ve seen to date. 

Lower payroll and cheaper staff. While the base amount the Skaggs family is seeking in damages has been established at just over $100 million, that number represents the tip of the financial iceberg. The final judgement could be for as much as a billion dollars or more, and $500 million feels like the floor amount given the damaging testimony to date. 

We’ve already seen the effects of this. Rather than pay off Albert Pujols’ personal services contract and give him an industry-standard, three-year deal at a market rate, owner Arte Moreno elected to hire a rookie manager, Kurt Suzuki, on a one-year deal with incentives. 

Suzuki may or may not turn out to be a good hire, but that’s a pretty strong signal that Moreno isn’t going to spend on players going forward given the size of the judgment he could be facing.

Young players who want out, fast. Most teams like to talk up the potential of their players, but not the Angels. The team’s latest legal strategy in the Skaggs trial has been to trash Skaggs’ performance as a pitcher and convince the jury that he simply wasn’t very good at his job, with  the end game of trying to lower the judgment amount. 

This may make some sense legally, but it’s a disastrous approach on the field. If you were a young player coming up through the Angels' system, would you want to stick around for multiple years of arbitration knowing this sort of thing could eventually happen to you? 

Free agent players who will go elsewhere. The same basic logic applies here. Moreno already has a reputation as an owner who doesn’t like to pay players, and most of the rumors that have the Angels targeting established players are basically wish lists on steroids. This will leave the team scraping the bottom of the free-agent barrel, which means fans will likely be facing more of the same level of performance on the field going forward.