Arizona Diamondbacks Acquire Trevor Cahill
The Arizona Diamondbacks bolstered their starting rotation Friday when they acquired Trevor Cahill in a five-player deal that will send the team’s top pitching prospect, Jarrod Parker, to the Oakland Athletics.
Cahill will join Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson and Josh Collmenter in a young Arizona rotation looking to repeat its 2011 playoff run. The 23-year-old is cost-controlled through 2017 and would earn $55.2 million, if Arizona picks up their club options. Since he’s already been through three big-league seasons, Cahill’s deal will buy out all of his arbitration years and a couple of free agent years if the Diamondbacks decide to exercise the options.
In addition to Cahill, Arizona received reliever Craig Breslow and sent Collin Cowgill and Ryan Cook to Oakland, along with Parker.
Cahill is perhaps best-remembered for his 2010 season in which he posted a sub-3.00 ERA while winning 18 games for Oakland. His pitch arsenal is most known for its sinker, but despite Cahill’s ground balls and the Athletics’ spacious digs, he’s never posted a sub-4.00 FIP in 583 big-league innings.
Still, that sinker will be great fit for Arizona’s launching pad — and there’s always the hope that he’ll become the next reincarnation of former Cy Young Award winner Brandon Webb. Cahill’s sinker doesn’t have quite the same movement as Webb’s did, but his offspeed stuff is ahead of the game at this point. Cahill’s changeup and curveball both resulted in a whiff rate above league-average last season, which allowed the righty to fare well against left-handed batters. In an interview with our own David Laurila, A’s manager Bob Melvin mentioned that “even if [Cahill] gets behind in the count, he has secondary pitches that he can get over.”
Breslow is a very minor piece in this trade. The southpaw has posted a career xFIP of 4.00 against left-handed hitters, and he has had problems with his control at times. While he’s had some limited success against right-handed hitters, he shouldn’t be trusted against righties because of his traditionally high home-run rates against them.
With Cahill and Breslow, the Diamondbacks are making a play for next year without giving up much in terms of long-term value. Cahill is still young and has some learning to do, while Breslow will give Arizona another arm out of the bullpen. With the Giants and Rockies staying generally stagnant during the offseason so far, the Diamondbacks are showing they will do everything they can to maintain their hold on the NL West. It’s hard to dislike this deal for Arizona, despite them having to give up Parker in the process.
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Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
As a Giants fan, all I can say is thank you A’s.
Sarcasm?
Thats it?
” With the Giants and Rockies staying generally stagnant during the offseason to date, the Diamondbacks are showing they will do everything they can to maintain their hold on the NL West. ”
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actually the Giants have greatly improved their OF, and will have an Allstar caliber catcher in the heart of their lineup rather than a black hole aka Eli Limpstick Whiteside.
And even if they dont do anything at SS and let Pablo patrol the entire left side, I’d say thats a pretty significant improvement over last year.
Buster Posey was already on the team…and Angel Pagan and Melky Cabrera are not difference makers. Hence “*generally*” stagnant.
Ya, and the point is that the author made it seem like the Giants wont be any better next year because they didnt make any big moves, but in reality Posey, their best hitter, was only with the team for a month.
And those 2 OF are a huge improvement over Burrell/Torres/Rowand whose AB’s they will replace.
just to provide some 2010 war numbers:
burrell – .5
rowand – .7
torres – 2.1
whiteside /stewart/sanchez – 1
posey – 1.6
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total – 5.9 WAR
so the trio of posey/melky/pagan need only combine for 6 WAR to show improvement.
i think 10 WAR is pretty reasonable.
I agree that the Giants have a chance to be better next year, no doubt about that. There were still generally stagnant however.
Somewhere in the Giants OF equation, you have to factor in the loss of Beltran, even though he only played in SF for a few months. He did produce 7 HR’s and a .390 wOBA in his short time there.
If your talking about the 2011 Pagan, I’d agree, if you talking about the 2010 Pagan, I’d disagree entirely.
Somewhere in the Giants OF equation, you have to factor in the loss of Beltran, even though he only played in SF for a few months. He did produce 7 HR’s and a .390 wOBA in his short time there.
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He had great rate stats, but got hurt, so Beltran only accumulated 1.2 WAR as a Giant. Pretty easy to match or even improve on that total.
If you add the losses of J. Sanchez and Beltran, that gives 7.7 WAR.
Posey might get 4, Melky 2, and Pagan 2. Basically a wash.
cs3, I’ll gladly bet you that the combined WAR of (Sanchez, Torres and Ramirez) will top that of (Pagan and Cabrera minus the lost WAR of Belt being benched or yo-yoyed again) this season.
You have a wierd idea of what constitutes an improvement.
did you miss the entire conversation?
what about the biggest difference maker, Posey?
and what are you talking about with Belt? he did nothing last year, so anything he does this year will be an improvement.
And if you want to talk about Sanchez, then you’ll have to take into account Surkamp, (or whoever the Giants 5th starter in 2012 turns out to be).
You have a weird idea of what constitutes relevant.
oh and re: Ramirez.
The Giants bullpen is so deep and talented that he wont be missed much, if at all. The Giants can start by giving 1/3 of his innings to a much better pitcher – Sergio Romo.
Giants fans are funny
In regard to the trade itself, i dont think Cahill is anything special, but shouldnt he have netted a better return given his very team friendly contract?
I would have thought the A’s would nix the deal if Bauer wasnt included.
I think teams are wary of Oakland helping pitchers’ numbers, and he didn’t exactly look great last year. Plus, Parker is a top prospect, so the A’s can easy justify the deal as “We’re not getting much worse right away, we’re saving some money, and we got a couple of extra players out of it.”
I guess that makes some sense. Does Parker project to be much better than Cahill?
He has more upside, though I believe that Cahill just needs some coaching to put it all together.
Im the guy above you, bitch!
?The guy above me is gay and the guy below me is his boyfriend?
P.S Cahill will get hit around big time in the Desert.
and your in the middle. What does that make you?
There ain’t gonna be any middle any more!
and the guy below you!
People keep pointing to Cahill’s sinker and high GB% being ideal for Arizona, but he still gives up HRs at a high rate. He gave up 19 last year (20 was AL average), despite his home ballpark depressing HR rates. He might give up a ton of HR’s in AZ, even with that good GB%.
Cahill gets lit up. He’s a highly overrated pitcher because of that one sub-3 ERA year he had. He gives up runs in bunches and now he’s leaving Oakland’s pitching haven. His ERA is going to go even farther up. Its not going to be pretty.
The A’s easily win this trade. Congrats to Billy Beane
Agreed. Everything I’m reading seems to be coming from this standpoint that Cahill is something special. He’s not better than a 3 or 4 on any team not called the Royals.
This.
While GB rate is great an all, he still has yet to post a sub 4.00 FIP.
If he can somehow continue his upward K trend going, maybe this pans out, but is he even a “#3 starter” (sorry to use the generic arbitrary labels) with his current peripherals?
Not sure if I’d agree that the A’s “easily win” this trade as Parker is not without his own question marks, and Cook has to validate his recent performance with another season or two, but I like this trade for the A’s.
Yeah, I’d say so. The past two seasons he’s put up 2.5 and 2.2 WAR, which is average to solid average. Isn’t that exactly what a #3 starter is? I think that’s his realistic downside, while he has a chance to get better as he refines his command as he matures and his K rate has been trending up.
Haha yeah.. Easily win is probably a little bit over the top. 😉
Cahill is 72nd in WAR over the last 2 years (just behind fellow #3 starters Livan Hernadez and Rick Porcello).
While technically that’s right in the middle of the pack (divide by 30 teams), on a team with playoff aspirations, that’s not a solid 3 in my view..
I certainly think he can improve, but that one year where his ERA massively outperformed his FIP and xFIP seems to have really has really colored people’s perception of him.
I agree with the first paragraph, but Jarrod Parker doesn’t look like anything special.
Did they really bolster their rotation?
Pitcher A – K/9: 5.48 BB/9: 3.35 GB%: 53.3% HR/FB: 12.1% FIP: 4.51 xFIP: 4.23
Pitcher B – K/9: 5.94 BB/9: 3.91 GB%: 52.6% HR/FB: 10.2% FIP: 4.39 xFIP: 4.35
Two very similar career stat lines, right? Pitcher A is Trevor Cahill. Pitcher B is Charlie Morton. Actually Morton might have been better for the Dbacks. With all the talk about how Cahill’s ground ball pitching style will play well in AZ people seems to not notice that he actually is very homer prone. Also he benefits a lot from Oakland’s ball park.
Cahill’s career home ERA: 3.24
Cahill’s career away ERA: 4.71
As a Dback fan, I would like to congradulate Oakland fans for this trade. They definately came out ahead. Cahills 18 win season was a fluke and is easily going to be the best of his career. Last year all the more likely from here on out. Parker will be better than that. Look at Cahills whip (1.43) in OAKLAND!! Now he is off to Chase field. Holy crap, our outfield is going to be “chasing” flyballs all over with him. Towers missed this one. Nice work Oakland.
A high whip + a high HR rate. I’ve heard some reports say Parker has ace upside (though I believe #2 upside is a little better a bet). Not a very good job by Arizona unless they thought they needed to compete RIGHT NOW. Who knows though, maybe Cahill is just one little adjustment away from being a star; doubt it though
Melky gonna show you Giant fans that at 26 yrs old he entering his prime and learned from his youthful mistakes he was o e of a handful of AL players with 200+ hits. He is gonna produce,get ready to be surprised.
You Kirk Gibson disciples get ready for Gibby to light that Cahill fire, kids K rate goin up young and in the bigs.
Look at both these guy,each played as 20 yrs olds in the big leagues they still got room to grow and been doing it at mlb level. Good move for both team seen Melky almost everygame he a different player, and entering his prime.
nuff sai