I find the following to provide a manageable starting point for me to drill down:
Period Metrics & Ratings
• Sharpe Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
• Sortino Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
MFO Designations
• Family Rating: Top , Upper , Middle
Purchase Info
• Expense Ratio (ER) Rating In Category: 3 - 1 Average or Less
• Front Load: None
Portfolio Info
• Turnover, Annual: 75% or Less
I'm curious where others start from.

Look at https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds
This is an unbelievably bad record - look at the 5 year return column.
The only funds which made a reasonable amount of money are the long bond funds --- even Rob Arnott's RAFI (Research Associates Fundamental Index = equal weighted index) have done poorly.

@LewisBraham, what a difference a couple of months makes. Last time I looked MACGX was a 2 star fund by M* and now is 5 stars. Of course, FMIJX used to be 5 stars and now at 2 stars. MACGX is up 40% for the last month, but I will pass on investing as I already am in MSEGX which is a LCG fund run by the same Counterpoint Global team of Dennis Lynch & company and up 18% YTD. But thanks for alerting us of their recent performance.

@jojo26 There are 2000 stocks in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps and 1391 stocks in the Russell 2000 Value Index. JSCVX holds 79 stocks. If you think that's a "closet indexer," you're delusional. Also, it's expense ratio is 0.92%, not "1%+." A manager can still be very active in the small-cap space with 100, 200, 300 stocks, even more. JSCVX's active share metric is 92.4--good enough in my book: https://cdn.janushenderson.com/webdocs/Active+Share+Report_Mutual+Funds_March+2020_exp_07-15-20.pdf

I would rather not have to set up another account, especially a retirement account to buy Marcus CDs. While FDIC guarantees work ( I lost two CDS during the 1980s housing crisis) it does take some time to get your money back so there is some opportunity cost.
1.5% after taxes will not beat inflation, unless you think there is a massive deflation coming. There are a number of 1 year A+ bonds paying up to 2.5% from companies that are highly unlikely to go bankrupt in the next year ie, Kimberly Clark, Home Depot, Wells Fargo. If a good analyst knows what they are doing I think they can avoid bankrupcies and make more than that with longer duration bonds.

Certainly moving money around in IRAs is more difficult. In a post I made on another board I acknowledged that. Here, it just didn't occur to me that the question concerned IRAs. You're right that they're more problematic.
I used to work with someone who had taken delight in putting money into the most shaky Texan S&Ls in the early 80s. He said that he had gotten his money back a few days after each institution failed. Apparently your mileage did vary :-)
I am curious about the bonds you're looking at. I did a search on Fidelity's site, expanding the parameters to look for corporate bonds with maturities through Nov. 2029, and S&P or Moody's rating of at least BBB+/Baa1 respectively. Fidelity showed an inventory of 1139 bonds. When sorted by YTW (highest to lowest), the highest yielding WF bonds I found were:
94974BGL8, 2.922%, BBB+/A3, 7/22/27
94974BFY1, 2.558%, BBB+/A3, 6/3/26
95000U2D4, 2.497%, A-/A2, 1/24/29 (call 10/23/28)
95001D6P0, 2.314%, A-/A2, 4/17/28 (call 4/17/22)
949746SH5, 2.181%, A-/A2, 10/23/26
949746RW3, 2.108%, A-/A2, 4/22/26 (and callable)
94974BFN5, 1.975%, BBB+/A3, 8/15/23
94974BGP9, 1.940%, A-/A2, 9/29/25
No other Wells Fargo bonds yielding at least 1.92%. The bond I bolded comes closest to what you were describing - it should be called in two years (not quite a one year bond) and it is rated just a couple of notches below your A+ or better requirement.
Corporates rated A+ or better that I can find with YTW over 2.5% that may be redeemed sometime in 2021 are premium bonds callable next year. One expects premium bonds to be called, so I would count these as 1-1.5 year bonds; at least until problems prevent them from being called. So some possibilities do exist, albeit with liquidity risk (they may not be called, and there are added trading costs to sell rather than wait for redemption).
They're largely from health companies and banks - BP Capital, Credit Suisse, Barclays, UnitedHealth, Merck, etc. But no Wells Fargo, no Home Depot, no Kimberly Clark. The Schwab screener lets you look for issuers, and the only bonds it shows for these three companies are generally rated A-/A2 for Wells Fargo, or A/A2 for the others.

@Jojo26 There's a difference between a 5 stock portfolio's idioyncratic stock risk and a 50 stock portfolio's idiosyncratic risk. If having idiosyncratic risk was uniformly a good thing for active management, you wouldn't want a portfolio at all and would just buy one stock. The smaller or weaker the companies are, the less idiosyncratic risk you want. Small companies typically have only have one or two lines of business, fewer customers and weaker balance sheets. They are more prone to blow ups and being driven out of business entirely. It's absurd to say that the two choices are maximum idiosyncratic risk or index funds. There's a middle ground. LLSCX has just 20 stocks and 11% in one stock--that is a lot of idiosyncratic risk.

You keep paying your 1%+ for your closet indexers. I'll spend my risk budget in managers I believe can add value (and they do that by taking considerable idiosyncratic risk).

@Jojo26 There's a difference between a 5 stock portfolio's idioyncratic stock risk and a 50 stock portfolio's idiosyncratic risk. If having idiosyncratic risk was uniformly a good thing for active management, you wouldn't want a portfolio at all and would just buy one stock. The smaller or weaker the companies are, the less idiosyncratic risk you want. Small companies typically have only have one or two lines of business, fewer customers and weaker balance sheets. They are more prone to blow ups and being driven out of business entirely. It's absurd to say that the two choices are maximum idiosyncratic risk or index funds. There's a middle ground. LLSCX has just 20 stocks and 11% in one stock--that is a lot of idiosyncratic risk.

@Bitzer SCPZX is one of the funds that did well this year esp in March, but M* is leery
"But such wins depend on precise timing, and mistakes can sting. The strategy slashed its 40% agency mortgage-backed securities stake to 4% in late 2008 and doubled down on commercial mortgage-backed securities (to 34%), for example, missing a rally in the former and getting hammered by the latter."
@msf I would rather not have to set up another account, especially a retirement account to buy Marcus CDs. While FDIC guarantees work ( I lost two CDS during the 1980s housing crisis) it does take some time to get your money back so there is some opportunity cost.
1.5% after taxes will not beat inflation, unless you think there is a massive deflation coming. There are a number of 1 year A+ bonds paying up to 2.5% from companies that are highly unlikely to go bankrupt in the next year ie, Kimberly Clark, Home Depot, Wells Fargo. If a good analyst knows what they are doing I think they can avoid bankrupcies and make more than that with longer duration bonds.
Unfortunately even the most conservation fund seems temped with asset backed securities and even emerging markets
I can't argue with cash, other than it pays very little and I want some diversification but also want to avoid the potential for capital loss.
Correlation are helpful in the big picture, but they are really backward looking as we don't know what is coming. While some individual companies will go under, the Feds entire reason to buy stuff is to keep the system from going under.

Another perspective ... With S&P projecting S&P 500 TTM earnings to be in the $115.00 range for the next six months or so and based on current valuation for the Index at a 2850 valuation produces an earnings yield of about 4%. From this perspective, and from my view, stocks are expensive and too expensive for me to buy more of them at his level. If you were a shrewd investor to have bought at their 52 week low of 2237 then this computes to an earnings yield of 5%. With this, I'm not a buyer of equities, at present, even if I was short of equites within my asset allocation model. And, if you had bought at the top (3386) with the current TTM earning porjections being %115.00 then the earnings yield computes to about 3.4% For me, I'm now looking at hybrid funds that have at least a 3.4% yield.

All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site, including MultiSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, and Fund Family Scorecard. The site now includes several analysis tools, including Correlation, Rolling Averages, Trend, Ferguson Metrics, Calendar Year and Period Performance.
Considering world economies appeared to be ending in March, through April, markets don't look so bad ... S&P 500 off just 9.3%. Russell 3000 -10.4%. MSCI World ex USA -19.9%. NASDAQ near even. AGG +4.9%. TLT +23.8%
Can read a bit more here.

Valuation--who cares about that in 2020? Morgan Stanley Discovery A MACGX is up 20% this year and its portfolio has an average p-e of 85. https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/macgx/portfolio Morningstar just upgraded the fund's analyst rating. These managers are geniuses! I'm fairly certain MFOers will be talking about how good the fund is soon and want to buy it.

Yesterday's new "Major Trend Analysis" from the Leuthold Group was accompanied by good news and bad news.
Good news: while bull rallies occur in bear markets, it's almost unheard of for a bull rally to exceed 30% gains and then pull back into a bear. Typical "trap rallies" are in the 20% range. The only (admittedly uncomfortable) other occurrence of 30% rallies that collapsed were during the 85% skyrocket early in the Great Depression.
Bad news: "The blue chips’ bounce has driven their valuations back to levels that exceed all but the March 2000 and February 2020 market tops. If our S&P 500 metrics were to eventually retreat to 'only' the new-era valuation low that accompanied the mild recession of 2001, losses from here would be on the order of 30-35%."
Today's Shiller 10-year CAPE is 26.88, with "normal" being about 16; a sort of mid-point between the average and median values. The 10-year CAPE hit 27 in early 1929, then not again until mid-1996. It stayed at or above 27 for about a decade, declined to the low 20s after the GFC then worked steadily back up. The recent unpleasantness whacked about six points off the average.
David

But, the govt. does not give something to you for nothing. My RMD factor will be higher on my 2021 distribution than my 2020 because as you age the factor increases.

Hope springs eternal. Last fall, the IRS proposed new life expectancy figures that make the 2021 divisor even larger (smaller RMD) than the 2020 divisor is currently. Not only something for nothing, but something more than what you asked for.
The comment period closed January 7th. I don't know what the status is, though Kitces wrote that "it’s likely the changes to the tables will be finalized sometime in 2020 in the same or substantially similar form."
Here's the table of life expectancies, both current and proposed:
https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Current-Vs-New-Uniform-Lifetime-Table-RMD-Percentage-Of-Acct-Balance.pdf
Proposed Regulation: Updated Life Expectancy and Distribution Period Tables Used for Purposes of Determining Minimum Required Distributions
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=IRS-2019-0050-0001
Comments (55): https://www.regulations.gov/docketBrowser?rpp=25&so=DESC&sb=commentDueDate&po=0&D=IRS-2019-0050

That certainly sums it up. The "quarter of a century" reflects something that my wife and I just discussed at dinner a few minutes ago: the younger people in this country- say, 15 to 35- likely believe that this is the way that their country has always been... they have no clue that most of this has occurred pretty much since 1970 or so.

Given the overwhelming psychological component of market "valuation" I really don't believe that it is in any way possible to predict, with expectation of any reasonable accuracy, how a market may be "valued" in the face of unknowns which may have major financial impact.
There is likely some predictive ability when a market is cruising along a long-lasting slope, either up or down, as it gradually adjusts to the general financial environment, and some technical indicators may be helpful in such an environment.
In the present environment we have the known unknowns of a major worldwide pandemic with an undetermined end point, an election with the potential to replace a disruptive and dangerously unstable president, a worldwide oil market in freefall, and steadily increasing animosity between the United States and China... actually, increasing animosity between the United States and almost every other major nation.
Then, of course, there are always the real unknowns: for instance, a vice-president who has just announced that the White House, as the death toll passes 70,000, is looking to wind down the pandemic taskforce.
It may be arguable to classify the White House as an unknown: it should be generally expected that they will pursue the most self-serving, ignorant or stupid option available in any situation requiring experience, intelligence or leadership.
The odds of accurate market prediction for the foreseeable future are significantly worse than those of your typical slot machine. Good luck on that.

I think it is difficult to be invested in a bond fund that is supposed to be "ballast" to your equities and then see it drop 13%
A "Core " Bond fund IMHO should diversify and provide some income but not reach for yield, etc. With treasury yields so low, I think you have to look at corporate bonds. Mortgages bother me as I think there will be significantly more foreclosures, although this may take several months. ...
Staying in cash limits you return to 1% or less.
I am open to suggestions.

For quite some time I've been questioning the virtue of bonds, whether for ballast or for total return. ISTM cash is more valuable than you're giving it credit for, and bonds less so.
First, cash. Personally, for cash I focus on preservation and liquidity (withdrawals, not additions). Marcus Bank is currently offering 1.55% for 7 month no penalty CDs, 1.45% for 11 month ones. These meet my definition of cash and are 50% above "1% or less". The nice thing about these CDs is that the rates won't go down at least for several months. After that, one can reexamine the situation.
Next, ballast. In a literal sense, dead weight, something to keep a ship from listing. Cash does that, as does anything that reduces beta (relative volatility).
Negative correlation seems to be another reason given for investing in bonds. Two issues here: (1) what does negative correlation really mean (and what does it do for you), and (2) what types of bonds negatively correlate with, say, the S&P 500?
Here's a nice (3 page) piece by PIMCO Does the Stock‑Bond Correlation Really Matter?
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/insights/viewpoints/does-the-stock-bond-correlation-really-matter
Its thesis is that correlation isn't what you think it is. Negative correlation happens when bonds' deviation from their normal return zigs while stocks' deviation from their normal return zags. Both stocks and bonds can drop even with negative correlation, and stocks and bonds can move in opposite directions (one gaining, one losing) even when they're positively correlated.

Bonds have historically hedged equity risk in recessions because returns have been positive, not necessarily because correlations have been negative. So, does the correlation matter? In our view, not really.

Cash is guaranteed to have positive returns. Bonds, not so much. These days, what one is getting from bonds isn't high enough to serve as a good hedge, just as ballast.
Even if we stipulate that negative correlation is somewhat beneficial, what types of bonds are negatively correlated with stocks? If the correlation is near zero, then the bonds are just as likely to harm portfolio returns as to help. That is, bonds are just as likely to underperform at the same time stocks are underperforming as they are likely to outperform.
Schwab has a table of correlations over the period 2004-2015. It's Exhibit 7 in this whitepaper. The correlation (ranges) it gives for different bond types relative to the S&P 500 are:
Treasuries: negative
Core, securitized, and inflation-protected: 0.0 - 0.3 (i.e. insignificant)
IG Corporate: 0.3-0.7
HY Corporate: 0.7 - 0.9 (little better than holding stocks)
If you're going to reach for yield with corporates, you're taking on equity risk, especially with junk bonds. As one can see from the difference between HY, IG, and Core, both credit quality and corp vs. gov. affect how good the bonds are in not doing harm. Aside from Treasuries, the best you can say is that with luck (50/50) the bonds won't underperform at the same time stocks are underperforming. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
The ETF suggestions (which are fairly representative of lower credit risk bonds) serve to illustrate why cash (around 1.5%) may do at least as good a job as bonds. Unless one really does take on more credit risk (and hence greater correlation with stocks).
SEC yields: EDV 1.28%, BND 1.62%, SHY 0.09% (each from its sponsor's web page)

The May 1 prospectus reflects the total assets that you calculated. I was not able to find anything on T Rowe's website concerning the reopening Mid-Cap Value fund reopening, but it may be posted there tomorrow or the next day.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1012678/000174177320000690/c485bpos.htm
I wonder whether the Mid-Cap Growth fund will re-open next?

M* analysis dated March 30, 2020: "Despite its burgeoning asset base of over $19 billion as of December 2019, the portfolio’s characteristics have not strayed. The fund closed to new investors at $9 billion in assets in May 2010, so it’s unlikely to reopen anytime soon."
I count $13B from four share classes as of Dec 2019 from the Annual Report ($9B in TRMCX, $3B in TRMIX, and a couple of classes with small amounts). So I'm not sure how accurate the $19B figure is. According to M*, the fund is now back down to $9.8B.
So it's curious that M* wrote just one month ago that the fund was unlikely to open soon.

This Sam Zell:
https://latimes.com/projects/la-me-mexico-housing-chapter-2/
https://medium.com/@voteyeson10/billionaire-sam-zell-lays-out-3-7-million-to-oppose-proposition-10-6a8a2798986c
https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/07/news/companies/sam-zell-women/index.html
https://nbcchicago.com/news/local/sam-zell-artful-dodger/2089851/
https://businessinsider.com/worst-bosses-of-all-time-2011-4
I'll pass.

Listen to your elders. Especially, those who have been there and done that; and are clear thinkers.
Interview
Take care,
Catch