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I wonder if Cahill's arm just needed to rebound a bit.
I remember after his first year in Arizona thinking he was poised to really explode forward. A groundball pitcher in that thin air would get all the benefits of a homerun park and offensive support with very few of the drawbacks due to his GB tendencies. Especially since he'd taken a step forward in his K rate. He'd shown a lot of durability and looked like a good #2 starter for a very long time.
Then he just came apart.
I think ultimately we kinda forget that the guy made 128 starts and threw 800 innings by 24 yrs old. The A's rode him really hard early in his career and he just always seemed to have lingering arm soreness.
In '15 and '16 he was able to decompress a bit, pitch fewer innings and perhaps take some strain off an arm that had been worked really hard, really young. It seems to have done him a lot of good (as has a 3rd pitch).
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