For anyone who still thinks that the Jackson/Joyce trade was the end of the world I implore you to check out Christina Kahrl’s review of the trade on Baseball Prospectus.

Her central points:

1. Finding OF who hit well enough to play is much easier than finding starting pitchers who are under team control for three years and are at least average.
2. Jackson’s stuff is good and he has no serious injury history. His frustrating habit of leaving fastballs up in the zone should not be nearly as difficult to correct as the various other problems in the Tiger pitching staff. Though she does wonder why it simply hasn’t been corrected already. She also points out that Jackson is less than a year older than Joyce.
3. Joyce’s future is by no means a sure thing. He hit .218/.336/.345 over the final two months of the season and isn’t very good against lefties. She also notes that he goes fishing on low pitches and has a tendency to pull off.

Basically at this point all we know is that both teams traded for need and there is no way to determine a clear winner. At the end she writes “this seems like a reasonable bet on both sides of the proposition.”

I think too much is made over all of this “once a top prospect” myself.. but then again, Edwin Jackson throws cheese.

I think adding a man who went 14-11 with a 4.42 ERA in the AL East could help this team out. It’s better than the alternative, Nate Robertson and D Train. I highly doubt any of us expect Jackson to come in and do anything more than be consistent, I’ll take 13-13 from the guy as long as he stays healthy and we leave Miner or Robertson in the bullpen.

This team has made bigger mistakes than acquiring Jackson, but I’ll take Jackson as a consellation prize after losing Jurjjens for basically nothing last offseason. Jackson has the ability to become our Kelvim Escobar, his fastball is live and his slider has tilt. I think pitching around other solid pitchers has made him better.

Hopefully his career growth will continue… I feel DD sold high on Joyce because I do not expect Joyce to become this feared power hitter that his 12 bombs in limited duty lead us all to believe.

Especially for the Tigers that have too many out fielders and not enough pitching. I hope they trade another outfielder.

I know that sound bad to pay a player to go away but you could take the 7 millions in saving and sign Cruz or put it towards Fuentes.

speaking of selling high.

Whatever they can get for Maggs, who has all of the sudden turned into Tony Gwynn (I know he still hits the occasional homerun) is a bonus.

He’s got to the be the first one to go if things start to fall off this season… he’s not worth a haul like the Marlins got for Cabrera, but he is worth a big league ready arm or bat.