Trevor Cahill

We here at Baseball Professor think about our readers first and ourselves second—albeit a close second. That’s why we decided to reach out to other bloggers (who follow their respective teams more closely than we do) to give you a deeper look into the important issues every fantasy owner has to come to grips with this season.

Since the A’s last made the playoffs they’ve had successive win totals of 76, 75, 75 and 81, and thus been stuck in mediocrity.  But there is reason for optimism this year, thanks mostly to a young pitching staff that took a huge step forward last year.  

It hurts me to write this, but it must be done. Don’t buy into the hype surrounding Trevor Cahill, his 18-8 record or his 2.97 ERA last season. I really like Cahill. He doesn’t walk a lot of batters (2.88 BB/9) and he pitches in a spacious ballpark, but it’s almost impossible for him to approach his numbers from last season.

Right now the Oakland athletics are trying to establish a core of a winning team. They have already given two players multi-year contracts: Brett Anderson and Kurt Suzuki. Although they still have some cheap young players who haven't hit arbitration, I think they should continue to create a young core and give some players long contracts.

Prior to making the offseason moves for Rich Harden and Brandon McCarthy, the Oakland Athletics already had the best pitching staff in the American League.  Their 3.56 team ERA ranked first in the AL last year and fourth in the big leagues behind San Francisco, San Diego and Atlanta.  The starting rotation stands to get better with another year of experience for young twenty-somethings Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson and Gio Gonzalez.

I don’t know if you noticed two things, but the Oakland A’s with their ragtag, no-name pitching staff and always-youthful roster somehow stumbled their way to an 81-81 (.500) record last season in the suddenly wide-open American League West.

Trevor Cahill enjoyed a breakout season in 2010, his second full season in the Major Leagues.  At the surface the numbers are certainly impressive, but there certainly are reasons to be concerned.

Before we get to the reservations, let’s take a look at his statistics:

18 Wins
196.2 Innings
2.97 ERA
1.11 WHIP
118 Strikeouts (5.4 K/9)
63 Walks (2.9 BB/9)
.238 BABIP

Expectations can be tricky things.

Often times, teams with high expectations fail to measure up, while squads without expectations do better than anticipated.  For the 2010 Athletics, the latter is true.

Without any considerable power threat on the roster (Jack Cust started the season at Triple-A), it was hard to imagine the non-explosive A's coming close to .500 record.  With two games the left, Oakland is two wins away from finishing 81-81.  

The year 2010 has been the year of the pitcher in Major League Baseball. It is filled with no-hitters and perfect games, from very different pitchers all throughout the league. 

Last year, Zack Greinke surprised us all by having a 3 under ERA, and earning 15 wins even with low run support. 

This year, only two pitching candidates are veterans, and one is only 24 years old (guess who it is)!

This has certainly been a surprising and exciting season thus far, and this discussion gives us another reason to love baseball.

It may be all over except for the crying.

With eight innings of one-hit ball on Thursday afternoon against the Oakland Athletics, C.C. Sabathia has become the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award, and he may have even clinched it.

Why?

Well, I'll tell ya.  C.C. Sabathia will be the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner because . . . 

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