WHY I LIKE EDWIN JACKSON AS AN OPTION

We all know CJ Wilson and Yu Darvish are the two best starting pitching options that are both extremely likely to become free agents/posted after this season. Mark Buehrle is an option if the Yankees fail to sign one of the first two, but Edwin Jackson could be a very good option as well.

Edwin Jackson has had his up and downs in his career. He started his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2003-2005, before getting traded to the then Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2006, and in his three seasons with Tampa he had his up and downs, mostly downs.
In his first six seasons with the Dodgers and Rays he looked like this:

2003-2008: 106 games, 77 starts, 25-30, 5.15 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 6.1 K/9, 4.5 BB/9

Those numbers don't look that good. But over the last three seasons, Jackson has matured as a pitcher. Before the 2009 season the Rays traded him to the Detroit Tigers where he spent one season before getting sent to Arizona as part of the Curtis Granderson three-way trade before the 2010 season. He struggled in Arizona (5.16 ERA in 21 starts with a no-hitter on June 25, 2010), before getting traded to the Chicago White Sox in July. He spent the rest of 2010, and part of 2011 with the White Sox before getting sent to the St. Louis Cardinals (he was sent to the Toronto Blue Jays first for an hour) where he's pitched well and has a chance to get a World Series ring.
Here's what he's done the last three seasons with the Tigers, D'Backs, White Sox, and Cards, and the numbers are nice:

2009-2011: 97 games, 96 starts, 35-30, 3.96 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 7.1 K/9, 3.0 BB/9

There was a story that Edwin Jackson could have tipped his pitches in the middle of 2009, and probably even before then. Read that story HERE.

Maybe correcting that could have helped him as a pitcher. Who knows. Jackson is 28 years old, so he's in the prime of his career, and can still improve. But, the negotiations to sign Jackson could get a little tricky because Scott Boras is Jackson's agent, and as we know, Boras likes to oversell his clients. Now, I'm not saying Jackson should be Plan A, or even Plan B for that matter. All I'm saying is if the first few plans to upgrade the rotation fail, Jackson could be a good pickup. As we've seen before, it is possible that Plan A and Plan B fail, thus the Yankees have had to look elsewhere.




--Jesse Schindler, BYB Staff Writer




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