At a certain point someone is going to tell you the compressor was already going bad and the larger breaker was not the problem. It may have allowed it to sit there are run at the overload temperature a little longer than it might because of the compressor problem but the breaker is to protect the wire, not the compressor. The compressor would not have sat at locked rotor and operated the overload if there was nothing wrong with it.
My bet, a bad capacitor. I just had that with mine and the AC tech (neighbor) showed up with one in his pocket.
