After Tuesday night's win over Cleveland--another superlative effort from Edwin Jackson--Chuck Garfien of CSN said without an immediately discernable hint of sarcasm "to all the doubters of the Edwin Jackson trade, shame on you." Garfien has less of a sense for subtlety than I have a vertical leap, so chances are that he's actually bitter about all the naysayers (myself included) who weren't all in for trading for a guy with a 4.76 career ERA, and actually believes the front office should get full credit for getting an 210% of the expected return on their investment in the journeyman hurler.
I snapped at this absurd notion, said that Garfien should "go to hell" on Twitter, and immediately lost two followers. Uh, lesson learned I suppose.
But that doesn't mean Jackson's turnaround should be seen as anything other than what it seems: a random, unforeseeable gift from above.
Jackson's transition has just been simply absurd. In posting a 1.47 ERA and 1.04 WHIP in five starts with the White Sox after being over 5.00 and a shade under 1.50 in those departments with Arizona, Edwin has not simply gotten some good breaks as much as he has completely transformed. Having a season, nay a career, brought down by too many walks, Jackson has promptly cut his walk rate by more than half, vaulted his career strikeout rate from 6.6 per 9 innings to over 11; the absurdity of which is best exemplified by Edwin only having two double-digit strikeout games for his career before coming to the White Sox, but having now tossed his third in a row. In no uncertain terms, Edwin Jackson was one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball during the month of August.
This is unsustainable. If for no other reason than if Jackson pitched this well for an entire season he'd win the Cy Young, MVP, and would have my vote for Time's Man of the Year. He's profiting off of some absurd combination of a new approach, unfamiliar hitters, being grateful to be rescued from baseball hell, and just plain being in the friggin zone. I'm sure Don Cooper has helped out Jackson plenty as well, and Jackson has said as much; he's given credit to Coop for fixing his mechanics and showing him how to stop tipping his pitches.
But of course, there's no real way the White Sox could have known that things would work out this well. For all the careers that Cooper has turned around (Thornton, Floyd, to some degree Jenks), there have been times where the scheme of trying to turn around former high draft picks has failed too (Mike MacDougal, Javy Vazquez, to some degree Jenks). Converting mediocre pitchers into superstars is not exactly a sure thing.
Remember the circumstances that this trade was made in. The Sox were probably trying to pick up a final asset to make the Adam Dunn trade, and figured if all else failed, they could ditch Hudson for what would at least be a break-even replacement with potential to witness some improvement with Cooper, and thestamina to eat a lot of innings. At the close of the trade deadline, Kenny Williams appeared frustrated and beaten down, and was widely referred to as one of the losers of July 31st. Generally the mood of a General Manager who's just dealt for an ace is not of irritation and annoyance witht he media, that's more suited to someone who just took a flyer on some damaged goods.
So the next time someone claims that you should have seen it coming when a man on his 5th major league team pitches two runs below his fielding independent pitching score for the season, and accounts for over a full win over replacement in only five starts, there's a chance that you've encountered the greatest scouting prognositicator of all-time, but it's most likley you just met a shill for the Sox organization attempting to assign them with foresight they couldn't possibly have had.
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Filed under: Media, Player Performance, Starting Pitching, Trade Talk, White Sox culture
Tags: baseball, Chuck Garfien, Edwin Jackson, White Sox
