Edwin Jackson has played for 13 teams and has been traded six times in his career. These are the eight best players he’s been traded for, including one future Hall of Famer.
Edwin Jackson has had an equally lengthy and impressive career. The 34-year-old is pitching in his 16th MLB season and claimed All-Star honors in 2009 and won the World Series two years later in 2011.
He was at his best from 2009 to 2013 when he amassed a 14.1 fWAR in stops with the Tigers, Diamondbacks, White Sox, Cardinals, Nationals and Cubs.
Those six clubs represented a significant chunk of the staggering 13 franchises that Jackson has suited up for.
Fast forward to 2018 and the veteran is enjoying a bit of a career renaissance with his current employers, the Oakland Athletics.
Providing Oakland with rotation stability when so many starters (Brett Anderson, Paul Blackburn, Sean Manaea and Andrew Triggs) are or have been on the disabled list, Jackson has soaked up 68.1 innings over a dozen starts for the A’s.
Over that span he’s worked to a 3.03 ERA and a 4.53 FIP. The starter’s average fastball velocity is currently sitting at 93.6 MPH and while he won’t miss as many bats as he did earlier in his career—Jackson’s 8.2 singing strike percentage is on par to be his lowest since 2008—he’s been a gem of a signing for the Athletics.
Jackson is also the owner of a 0.6 fWAR, which is his best statistical outlay in the category since 2013. In fact, his current fWAR in 12 starts for the A’s outpaces his collective fWAR (a cumulative -0.1) in the last four seasons.
For a player who’s been around so long, Jackson has been traded a fair amount.
While he’s changed teams strictly by free agency dating back to 2011, Jackson has been a part of six notable trades in his career.
Here are the top eight players he’s been traded for based on FanGraphs’ fWAR.
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Max Scherzer 49.5 fWAR
Scherzer was traded to the Tigers in arguably one of the most significant trades of the last decade in December of 2009.
Detroit traded away Jackson and Curtis Granderson in a three-team trade with the Diamondbacks and Yankees, receiving a haul of four players that included Scherzer, Daniel Schlereth, Austin Jackson and Phil Coke.
Scherzer and Schlereth came from Arizona in the swap, with Jackson going the other way. Granderson was essentially flipped to the Yankees for Jackson and Coke in a deal that also included Ian Kennedy heading to the desert.
(That’s the primary reason for Jackson and Coke not making this list. Although they were traded in the same deal as Jackson, they were essentially swapped for Granderson.)
Schlereth hasn’t been able to stick at the Major League level, but the other three players in the deal turned into key contributors for a Tigers team that was among the league’s elite from 2011 to 2014.
Hindsight is 20-20, but Scherzer developed into one of the game’s best starters in Detroit and has kept things going in Washington with the Nationals.
He’s won the Cy Young three times, once with the Tigers, and the last two iterations of awards with the Nationals.
He’s also a future Hall of Famer.
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Colby Rasmus 18.3 fWAR
Although Rasmus never quite developed into the five-tool threat some thought he would be, he’s still had some quality campaigns.
The outfielder racked up a 4.0 fWAR in 2010 with the Cardinals and was worth a 3.9 and 2.9 fWAR in 2013 and 2015 with the Blue Jays and Astros respectively.
He’s appeared in parts of the last two seasons with Tampa Bay and Baltimore, collecting a 0.7 fWAR and a .768 OPS in the process.
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Matthew Joyce 15.5 fWAR
Joyce has always been a righty-smasher for a while now, collecting a .347 wOBA, a 121 wRC+, an .802 OPS and a .202 ISO versus the handed pitchers in his career.
Originally drafted by the Tigers, Joyce was flipped to Tampa Bay for Jackson in a one-for-one swap in 2008.
Confidentially, he’s now Jackson’s teammate with the A’s.
The outfielder enjoyed one of his best seasons in 2017 with Oakland (2.6 fWAR, .343 wOBA, .230 ISO and a 12.1 BB%) and is playing a key role for the A’s as they try and chase down the defending-champion Astros for first-place in the American League West.
Related:
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Daniel Hudson 8.5 fWAR
After half a season in Arizona, the Diamondbacks moved on from Jackson. Arizona dealt him to Chicago at the deadline in 2010 for David Holmberg and Hudson.
Although Hudson wasn’t anywhere close to the pitcher Scherzer became, he was a solid get for the D-Backs.
The right-hander was a frontline starter in 2011, racking up a 4.6 fWAR, but he was slowed by injury in the next few years and remerged as a quality bullpen option in 2015.
He’s filled that role for Arizona, Pittsburgh and now the Los Angeles Dodgers where he’s currently on the 10-day disabled list.
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Jason Frasor 6.2 fWAR
We now move fully into the retired player portion of the list with Frasor, who was a dependable bullpen arm for the better part of a dozen Major League seasons.
His best campaign came in 2009 with the Blue Jays, when he turned in a 1.4 fWAR and a 2.99 FIP in 57.2 relief frames.
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Danys Baez 3.8 fWAR
Baez racked up 114 saves over his 10-year MLB career, including 96 from 2003 to 2005. He made the All-Star team in the last year of that span.
Tampa Bay capitalized on the season, sending him to the Dodgers that winter with Lance Carter for Jackson and Chuck Tiffany.
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Trever Miller 1.6 fWAR
Trevor Miller, LOOGY extraordinaire, was a LOOGY for many years—13 to be exact. He threw baseballs professionally until he was 38 and donned eight different uniforms. He turned in a 4.18 ERA and a 4.39 FIP in 523.1 lifetime innings.
Miller moved to Toronto along with Rasmus, P.J. Walters and Brian Tallet with Jackson, Octavio Dotel, Corey Patterson and Marc Rzepczynski heading to St. Louis.
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Brian Tallet 1.2 fWAR
Speaking of Tallet, the southpaw was a useful reliever for Toronto in the mid-2000s before increasing his workload with more work in the rotation in 2009.
During that season the pitcher made 25 starts, appearing in 37 games overall and pitching 160.2 innings.
His numbers that year, 5.32 ERA, 4.68 FIP, 6.72 K/9 and 4.03 BB/9, weren’t eye0cathcing, but he did manage a 1.3 fWAR.
Following that season, Tallet was never quite able to carve out a consistent role in the Majors.
Ironically, his fWAR in 2010 (-1.3) was the inverse of his output the previous season.
Other players Edwin Jackson has been traded for: Daniel Schlereth, David Holmberg, Zach Stewart, Lance Carter and P.J. Walters.
