Arizona Diamondbacks designate Trevor Cahill for assignment

It’s been a tough ride in Arizona for the former All-Star Trevor Cahill. He’s never quite matched his dominant 2010 season, where he posted a 2.97 ERA and 56% ground ball rate. Cahill has also dealt with comparisons for the man he was traded for, Jarrod Parker, who has done more in his two years with Oakland than Cahill has in his three years in the desert.

After another poor showing to start the 2014 campaign, GM Kevin Towers and the rest of the front office has decided to designate Cahill for assignment, according to Ken Rosenthal.

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Cahill had a strong 2012 season, pitching well enough for a 3.78 ERA and 3.85 FIP, but the wheels came off immediately after. In 2013 he threw his cutter, his best pitch,  career high percentage of the time, but hitters were away of it and hit less grounders, plus they shrunk his strikeout rate to only 16%.

As bad as he was in 2013, his 2014 has been even worse. Through only four starts Cahill had an ERA of 9.17, and manager Kirk Gibson had seen enough; Cahill was sent to the bullpen. He had decent success, pitching well enough for a 3.04 ERA and raising his strikeout rate to 23%. But most of his innings were lower leverage, and the front office had seen enough and decided to make a move.

The Diamondbacks are on the hook for $7.7 MM this season and $12MM for 2015 if they end up dropping him to waivers. Another option is for a team to swing in to try to take the overpriced pitcher on a low-cost, moderately high reward move.

And there’s also speculation the Diamondbacks were actually impressed with his bullpen stints, and want to stretch him back out to move to back the rotation. For that to happen Cahill would need to accept the assignment (speculation has led to thinking he already has, otherwise the organization wouldn’t make such a move) and no other team could claim him to block the move.