One aspect of Matt Olson trade tosses a complete game blank for the A’s

admin | July 4, 2024 | Other Clubs | No Comments

The Braves have made two major transactions with the Oakland Athletics in recent years, and while they haven’t gotten the worst of it, they haven’t been usual home homers from Alex Anthopoulos, who has shown to be one of the best general managers in the game.

Sean Murphy was an All-Star with the Braves during his debut season last year. However, given that the Braves gave up William Contreras, who was recently selected the starter for the National League All-Star team, as well as other elite prospects, Anthopoulos will surely prefer to have the trade reversed.

Prior to that, the Braves made a massive trade for Matt Olson to replace Freddie Freeman. Olson has had his fair share of highs and lows in Atlanta over the last two seasons, but he isn’t Freddie Freeman, and the Braves paid a high price to acquire him. Joey Estes, for example, recently threw a complete game shutout for the Athletics in only his 12th major-league start.

Joey Estes has his first complete-game shutout 12 starts into his MLB career.

The 22-year-old only needed 92 pitches to complete the feat, the fewest by an A's pitcher since July 14, 2005: https://t.co/7gtBu1s2pm pic.twitter.com/UvibMS3Nav

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) July 4, 2024

I don’t expect these tendencies to continue, but Joey Estes is 3-3 with a 4.39 ERA in 10 starts this season, for 0.7 fWAR. Which happens to be the same number of fWAR Matt Olson has generated this year.

Of course, Olson is coming off a season in which he finished fourth in the National League MVP race and established a franchise mark with 54 home runs. He is unquestionably more valuable than Estes or any of the other guys given to Oakland in that trade. However, given that Alex Anthopoulos could have simply increased the offer to Freddie Freeman and kept him without having to unload any prospects, it appears that he made the wrong decision.

Over the course of two and a half seasons with the Dodgers, Freeman has accumulated 18.0 fWAR. Olson has accumulated 10.3 fWAR throughout the same period. Perhaps Alex Anthopoulos should think twice next time he considers a trade with the Athletics.