I was looking back at the time the A's were in Kansas City. From 1955 to 1960, the A's acted and were considered to be the Yankees second minor league system (more on this in the future about how two organizations were intertwined). For the six years that Arnold Johnson owned the team, until his death in 1960, there were 16 trades between the two clubs. I was going to write on each these until I found this great article at the Baseball Almanac, that elegantly breaks down the trades. No need to rehash work that has already been done.
I decided to go ahead and see how much of an advantage these trades were for the Yankees vice the A's. I added up all the WAR that each player contributed to each team after the trade. Though this is not a perfect method, it does show how lopsidedness of the trades. The big prizes for the Yankees (Total WAR in parenthesis) were Roger Maris (28), Ralph Terry (8) and Clete Boyer (19). The top three for the A's were Norm Siebern (12), Bob Cerv (9) and Jerry Lumpe (9). In total, the Yankees got 64 WAR compared to just 36 for the A's.
A comparison of the WAR values for all the trades are after the jump.
| NYY got: | KCA got: | |||
| 03/30/55 | $50,000.00 | Ewell Blackwell | -0.1 | |
| Tom Gorman | 5.1 | |||
| Dick Kryhoski | -0.4 | |||
| 05/11/55 | Sonny Dixon | -0.2 | Enos Slaughter | 3.4 |
| Jonny Sain | -0.2 | |||
| 06/14/56 | Bill Renna | DNP | Lou Skizas | 0.6 |
| Moe Burtschy | DNP | Eddie Robinson. | -1.0 | |
| cash | ||||
| 08/25/56 | Enos Slaughter | 1.7 | waiver price | 10K |
| 10/16/56 | cash | Bob Cerv | 8.5 | |
| 02/19/57 | Wayne Belardi | DNP | Rip Coleman | -0.5 |
| Art Ditmar | 3.6 | Milt Graff | 0.1 | |
| Jack McMahan | DNP | Billy Hunter | -1.5 | |
| Bobby Shantz | DNP | Mickey McDermott | -0.9 | |
| Curt Roberts | DNP | Tom Morgan | 0.6 | |
| Clete Boyer | 19.4 | Irv Noren | -1.1 | |
| Jack Urban | 0.1 | |||
| 06/15/57 | Ryne Duren | 3.5 | Billy Martin | -0.4 |
| Jim Pisoni | 0.0 | Woodie Held | 2.4 | |
| Harry Simpson | 0.1 | Ralph Terry | 2.9 | |
| Milt Graff | DNP | Bob Martyn | 0.4 | |
| 06/15/58 | Virgin Trucks | -0.8 | Harry Simpson | 1.2 |
| Duke Maas | -3.0 | Bob Grim | 0.6 | |
| 08/22/58 | Murry Dickson | -0.9 | Zeke Bella | -0.6 |
| cash | ||||
| 04/08/59 | Jack Urban | DNP | Mark Freeman | -0.2 |
| 05/09/59 | waiver price | 10K | Murry Diskson | -0.7 |
| Mark Freeman | 0.1 | waiver price | 10K | |
| 05/26/59 | Ralph Terry | 8.3 | Johnny Kucks | 0.2 |
| Hector Lopez | 3.6 | Tom Sturdivant | -0.5 | |
| Jerry Lumpe | 8.9 | |||
| 12/11/59 | Roger Maris | 27.9 | Norm Siebern | 12.1 |
| Kent Hadley | 0.0 | Hank Bauer | -1.7 | |
| Joe DeMaestri | -0.3 | Marv Throneberry | 0.5 | |
| Don Larsen | -0.4 | |||
| 05/19/60 | Bob Cerv | 1.0 | Andy Carey | 1.0 |
| 06/14/61 | Bud Daley | 0.1 | Art Ditmar | -0.8 |
| Deron Johnson | -1.4 | |||
| Yankees Total WAR | A's Total WAR | |||
| 64.1 | 36.2 |