I’ve waited a few hours to write this trade up, seeing as rumors are swirling that the White Sox are about to send Jackson to the Nationals in a package for Adam Dunn, but it’s been six hours since this trade was finalized and that hasn’t happened yet, so I’m going ahead with it.
The Arizona Diamondbacks traded righthander Edwin Jackson (who seems to get dealt very often) to the Chicago White Sox for righthander Dan Hudson and minor league lefthander David Holmberg.
Jackson may later be flipped in a deal for Dunn or someone else, so if and when that happens, I’ll analyze it separately. For now, I’ll look at the Arizona/Chicago exchange by itself. Follow me after the jump for my analysis.
The Obvious
Edwin Jackson has serious power stuff. His fastball averages 94 mph, after all, and can touch the upper 90’s. Add in his short, sharp slider and a decent curve and change, and you have an intimidating presence on the mound.
Jackson, however, doesn’t command the fastball well, and it’s never rated as even an average pitch in his eight-year big-league career. The pitch is straight, so it gets hit a long way when he misses up.
It’s no coincidence he has a career 4.74 ERA. Sure, he posted a 3.62 mark last year, but his FIP and xFIP were 4.28 and 4.39, so it wasn’t like he really deserved that mark.
Interestingly, those marks are 4.27 this year, but his ERA has climbed to 5.16, mainly due to a 37-point BABIP jump from .281 to .318. His strand rate is also down.
It’s pretty clear that Jackson is something of an enigmatic pitcher. He can throw no-hitters with his stuff, but he also can have some disaster starts. In the end, he settles in as a 4.2-4.4 ERA-quality pitcher, essentially a decent third or great fourth starter who still carries some upside with his stuff at age 26.
Dan Hudson’s stuff is right there with Jackson’s. The 23-year-old’s heater is in the 91-97 mph range, and he throws a very good changeup and two decent breaking pitches to go with it.
Hudson’s fastball has good life, unlike Jackson’s, but he likes to work up in the zone, so he has an absurdly low 27.5% groundball rate in his 34 1/3 major league innings. He gives up a fair amount of good contact because so many of his pitches are high, so he is prone to allowing a lot of extra-base hits. Hudson’s also struggled with control (5.24 BB/9) in his brief MLB career, but he’s only 23, and that hasn’t been too much of a problem in the minors.
In Triple-A, Hudson had a 108/31 K/BB in 93 1/3 innings, which is outstanding. He did give up 13 big flies, and while he’s leaving the team that plays in U.S. Cellular, he’s going to another small park in Arizona.
The Not-So-Obvious
The third player in the deal is David Holmberg, a hulking lefthander who just turned 19 a few days ago. He was pitching in Rookie ball, posting a 4.46 ERA in eight starts.
Holmberg stands 6’5″ and about 240 pounds or so, but he’s not a power pitcher. He’s more of a Barry Zito type with a plus curve and change to go with an upper-80’s fastball. Unlike Zito, Holmberg throws a lot of strikes and keeps the ball down. He had a 29/9 K/BB in 40 1/3 innings with just two homers allowed and a 56.5% groundball rate this year.
Given his size, Holmberg could add more velocity, and if he does, he has very intriguing potential. Even without it, he projects as a major league pitcher as long as he stays healthy. Lefties with two plus pitches, command, and groundball tendencies don’t just grow on trees.
It seems to me that it’s a shaky bet that Edwin Jackson and his 4.65 career FIP is going to be better than Dan Hudson and his career 4.81 FIP from here on out, particularly when you throw in the fact that Hudson is under team control through 2015 while Jackson’s is up in 2011. Add Holmberg’s considerable potential to that equation, and this deal is an easy win for Arizona. It doesn’t make up for the Dan Haren debacle, but shockingly, Hudson and Holmberg both have more upside than any of the four pitchers acquired in the deal for Haren, so it sure helps.
As for Chicago, this deal is a clear loss unless Jackson is used in another trade. Even then, it makes little sense that the team on the other end of that trade (say, the Nationals with Dunn) would rather have Jackson than Hudson and Holmberg. There’s still the question of whether two months of Dunn is worth that, anyway, but that’s not a question to be tackled until that deal happens; for now, we’re left to wonder not only why Jackson is more appealing to Chicago than the two pitchers the White Sox gave up, but why potential trade partners would also see it that way. I sure don’t.
Conclusions
This deal certainly helps Arizona, as they get a young major leaguer with #2-3 starter potential and a minor leaguer who could possibly reach those heights at well, all for 1 1/2 years of a mid-rotation starter. Chicago’s end of the deal looks poor, although we’ll have to wait and see what happens with Jackson in the next 19 hours before judging Kenny Williams & Co. If 4 PM tomorrow passes and Jackson is still with Ozzie Guillen’s ballclub, though, this was a bad move for the White Sox.