Is Trevor Cahill a Big Loss?

This is analysis.

Now, I get that being an A’s fan losing a ‘name’ player, a former all star, stings a lot. But honestly I think there is a good chance that Parker’s season next year will be better than Cahill’s.

One has to see what worked or didn’t work.

but it excites me and it makes me happy. I understand completely the values traded and the values received were not ideal, but I can’t help it. Maybe I’m just a masochist.

I agree with your assessment. Let’s hope Parker is who so many thought he could be!

I think the time aspect is what is important. The A’s clearly value future wins more whereas the Dbacks value present wins greater so the value accounting so to speak would look completely different for AZ versus Oakland

I 100 percent believe a win today is more valuable than a win tomorrow. (Maybe not for the A’s this year, but in aggregate)

I would assume you would have to be discounted by risk of injury and declining performance. There’s a standard formula I use for discount companies for venture capital purposes.

Maybe you could apply it to baseball.

By saying this: (1-(1/((1+Injury Risk)*(1+Declining Performance))^N

So Cahill who’s young and not really been on the DL much can be discounted like this. So I’ll make performance risk 5 percent and injury risk 15 percent. You get something like this:

discounted war
2012 4 3.41
2013 4 2.91
2014 4 2.49
2015 4 2.12
2016 4 1.81
2017 4 1.54
2018 4 1.32
2019 4 1.12
2020 4 0.96
2021 4 0.82
2022 4 0.70
Discounted WAR 19.20

another fact, 99 through 2006 the A’s had the best regular season record in baseball aside from the Yankees. Would you rather be the Royals or Pirates?

I get that losing name players is painful but some of these responses are very irrational.

But given that he hasn’t been elected yet, I gave it a likely. Perhaps a few verys in front would’ve been better!

The A’s have to go the route of wide ranges and hope they can get better part of the range. I see it like this:

NYY/BOS/ANA/ETC-They can target FA with small ranges on the better side. ie. Players with 3.00-4.00 FIP.

Everyone else goes for FA with Cahill like certainty and try to get lucky with the wide ranges of players FIP. If you’re in the A’s position the only thing you can do is have more uncertainty and hope the uncertainty has upside. Otherwise just throw it away and try again.

We should probably get used to this unless we get a stadium.

First maybe they think the valuable bats are more likely to come via a Gio or Bailey Trade.

Second perhaps they like the way pitchers can return prospects via future trades better than position players.

it’s SO/9. Anyway your overall point that Cahill could still improve is valid.

On the flip side, we keep hearing about how big an injury risk Parker is and that’s because he’s been injured and Cahill hasn’t and we know that a good way to predict future health is generally to look at past health. However, Cahill also has a lot of mileage on him— he’s been a workhorse for 3 seasons — and he may be just as likely to get hurt in the near future as Parker, who has a “rebuilt engine” is.

TIm Hudson had phenomenal K/9 rates in the minors. What works in the minors is very different than way plays well in the pros.

Where Cahill’s very real value is, is his durability. He gives you 200 innings without worry, which is incredibly valuable.

As is every other pitcher in the league

And why didn’t he do this on the first pitch instead of getting behind in the count?

would go a long way. Oh, and sign Darvish please, kthxbai.

And have the flexibility to trade Gio and Bailey for truly kick-ass hitting talent to back a rotation of Darvish, Anderson, Parker, Gray, and McCarthy or Braden or Moscoso?

We are over $20M below last years payroll. Even if that is the plan, we probably won’t be allowed to take it THIS low due to the rev share we receive. If you have to spend the money, why not do it on someone who will earn a lot of it back in merchandising in Japan?

If my payroll assumption is correct and we don’t plan on competing and future international and draft budgets will be capped, then this is probably the best use of the team’s money.

With the new limits on draft spending and international signings there’s only so much the A’s can spend on bringing in prospects. If the payroll gets low enough then there is going to be surplus cash that can’t be spent on amateur talent. Might as well put it all into getting one superstar who could be a valuable asset for years to come rather than spend it on 3-4 mediocre role players to keep the revenue sharing police from looking at the payroll.

Acquiring a good 25 year old player is always a good idea

For the record, I think the notion of Darvish as an Athletic is nothing more than collective wishful thinking and it’s never going to happen.

But if it could happen, then I’m all for it, and it doesn’t go against the rebuilding plan at all. The logic behind rebuilding is we need good players in the future. Unfortunately, in order to get good players in the future we have to give up players who are good in the present. And so we do. And for the same reason we do not give up our few prospects in order to get good present players.

But that’s not the same as we’re actually trying to be bad in the present. It just means we’re willing to accept being bad in the present as a price for being good in the future.

Getting Darvish would make us better in the present, but it comes at no cost to the future at all. It does cost money, which Oakland arguably doesn’t have to spend and/or could spend more efficiently on someone less overpriced. But in no way does it set back the rebuild. So if Wolffisher/Beane miraculously comes up with the money to sign Darvish and have us be marginally less sucky during our sucky rebuild years … then hurray for that!

that could cause them to be good will involve risk. That risk could be Darvish’s unprovenness in the US, it could be players who are aging, coming off injury, or only proven at the A-ball level. Take your pick.

Oakland can’t afford to buy Sabathia and Teixeira, proven stars with no injury history who are in their primes. So it comes down to “what kind of risk do you want?” “Young, really talented but untested” (like Parker) and “great, but expensive and untested in the US” (like Darvish) seem like pretty good routes to me of all the real choices.

…but I came around on it because they should still have flexibility to keep or trade him for something good down the line. Maybe they’ll have built a team that’s good enough to keep him after a few years, or he might end up being one of the final pieces to trade for that new ballpark (presumably) team.

First of all, Daisuke Matsuzaka has provided 10.6 fWAR in the majors in his career, which isn’t spectacular, but is nothing to sneeze at.

Secondly, look at this:

Daisuke Matsuzaka:

career NPB stats:

K/9: 8.35
BB/9: 3.77
HR/9: 0.77
BABIP: .260

career ML stats:

K/9: 8.21
BB/9: 4.35
HR/9: 0.93
BABIP: .290

There is nothing surprising about the translation of his stats from Japan to the U.S.

Yu Darvish

career NPB stats:

K/9: 9.2
BB/9: 2.1
HR/9: 0.4
(I can’t find his BABIP, someone let me know if yu can!)

Matsuzaka career K/BB ratio in Japan: 2.21
Darvish career K/BB ratio in Japan: 4.3

Darvish is way better.

and IIRC Forst didn’t really deny anything about it when asked.

the 14th is the deadline or bid submissions.