Category: Spring training
Posted by Lynn Henning (The Detroit News) on Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 6:03 PMWhy getting Edwin Jackson was so important
I've been waiting for almost three months to get a bead on the most intriguing guy in the Tigers' 2009 starting rotation.
Edwin Jackson answered a couple of questions Thursday in his two-inning stint against the Washington Nationals.
He throws every bit as hard as billed. Jackson unleashed a couple of fastballs that had to have been in the 97-mph range (no radar guns at Space Coast Stadium). He did so effortlessly, which is the way it goes with a guy who is so graceful of an athlete he looks more like an everyday shortstop when he takes pre-game ground balls.
I still don't know how the Tigers got a starting pitcher of Jackson's caliber for a corner outfielder. This is no reflection on Matt Joyce, because Joyce has a chance to be a powerful and valuable outfielder for a long time.
But acquiring a 25-year-old pitcher who has just won 14 games and who has an arm as powerful as Jackson's normally calls for a truckload of talent on the part of an acquiring team.
Jackson could prove to be invaluable, for a couple of reasons:
He represents a third power pitcher in the rotation behind Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman. Opposing teams get no break when they go against Jackson. He is not the "comfortable 0-fer" that you often see deeper in a team's rotation.
Jackson, if his control holds up, will be a nasty follow-up to Verlander-Bonderman.
He also looms as an insurance policy in the event Bonderman does not return as quickly as is foreseen. The "normal stiffness" that has knocked Bonderman out of his Saturday start is considered no big deal, but you never know. If he -- or another starter -- runs into trouble ahead of Opening Day, the Tigers at least have in Jackson an industrial-strength right-hander to assume his spot.
That's an important man to have added for the price of a corner outfielder.
And it's why I tend to believe the acquisition of Jackson could have the longest-term payoff of any move the Tigers made during the past off-season.
