The A’s Teardown Is Not Going Well

In total, since their teardown began, the A’s have traded eight veterans, worth $190.4M in surplus value according to our model, and received $113.1M in value, for a net loss of $77.3M. On a percentage basis, that’s a 46.1% hit.

Making matters worse, they came out on the losing end of all eight trades. The Olson package was the closest in value, and, interestingly, the Murphy trade would have been very close in value ($51.3M to $47.7M) if they had kept William Contreras, an all-star catcher, instead of flipping him for Esteury Ruiz, a mid-tier (at best) prospect. That portion of the three-way trade accounts for a big chunk of the losses here.

For a low-revenue, rebuilding team, that’s inexcusable. This is exactly the opposite of what the A’s should be doing. One could argue that, because all the other teams knew they were selling off their players, they got lowballed – and there’s likely some truth to that. When your sign says “must sell,” the bids you get are going to be low, and you take the best one. Granted, their timing didn’t help – it’s possible that the lockout worked against the A’s being able to play teams against each other in a bidding war, given the compressed timetable.