Shut down the offseason! Edwin Jackson is back!

This happened yesterday.

In the grand scheme of things it's not all that important Minor league deals are things teams throw at a lot of veterans to see if any stick. The money involved is usually minimal and that is true in this case. He'd earn under 2 million if he makes the team. Edwin Jackson, who ended the season with the Nats is the perfect candidate for such a deal. He's not a good pitcher so you don't want to be contracted to pay him, but it wouldn't surprise you if he put up a mid 4.00s ERA for most of a year and that has value. So you see in the Spring if that's what he looks like.

The belief floating around is that last year he was a pretty good pitcher for the Nats until those last 5 starts. Actually he had a lot of  "scattered hit" games in his successful time. 5 hits, 2 walks, 1 homer in 6 innings - 1 run. 8 hits and a walk in 7 - 1 run. 6 hits, 3 walks, 1 homer in 6 innings - 2 runs. 6 hits, 4 walks, 1 homer in 6 innings - 2 earned runs. You usually don't find a WHIP of 1.4 leading to a 2.18 ERA unless you are cutting out all homers (he wasn't - about 1 per game) or striking out everyone (he wasn't - about 5.4 per 9).

That's not to say he was pitching poorly. Something more like a high 3.00s would have been expected and perfectly ok! But then those 1 homers became 2 and 3 and that 1.4 WHIP became 1.8 and you can't luck out of that. He really was earned awful those last 5 games.

That's the real question going forward. How much of Edwin Jackson is that guy who can be a 5th starter that we saw for 6-7 games and how much of him is the guy that can't that we saw for the last 5?  A mix of the two isn't good enough. He has to be pretty much all the former to be useful.  

The other thing that bothers one about a deal like this is that it's a late February deal made in early January. This is a last piece kind of thing. "Eh, we're still not completely happy with our starting pitching. Let's throw in a few other vets on minor league deals here just to see if we get lucky" What does it mean to be doing this now?  Are the Nats done with the off-season already pitching wise? Or was this just offered up to them and they couldn't refuse.

I'm not excited or bothered by the deal by itself. It has some worrying connotations, but we'll have to see if those actually play out. The free agent market is moving so slow that those that want movement still can't worry about inaction.