Techniques are provided to adjust the behavior of a cache based on a count of cache misses for items recently evicted. In an embodiment, a computer responds to evicting a particular item (PI) from a cache by storing a metadata entry for the PI into memory. In response to a cache miss for the PI, the computer detects whether or not the metadata entry for the PI resides in memory. When the metadata entry for the PI is detected in memory, the computer increments a victim hit counter (VHC) that may be used to calculate how much avoidable thrashing is the cache experiencing, which is how much thrashing would be reduced if the cache were expanded. Either immediately or arbitrarily later, the computer adjusts a policy of the cache based on the VHC's value. For example, the computer may adjust the capacity of the cache based on the VHC.