Catching up on Friday trades

There were numerous deals throughout the league on Friday. Let’s recap in the order that they were announced:

White Sox Acquire Edwin Jackson from Arizona
The Diamondbacks fire sale continues and believe it or not, but they may have picked up a better return for Edwin Jackson than they did for Dan Haren.I’m not sure what the D-Backs franchise plan is at the moment, but they seem to love trading for mid-rotation starters and then trading them away.

Jackson was traded for the fourth time of his career for pitcher Dan Hudson (No. 66 top prospect according to Baseball America) and low-level minor leaguer David Holmberg. Hudson is a great pickup for Arizona, but I’m not certain that they didn’t have more with Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth when they traded the two of them to Detroit last December for Jackson. I still think they should have held onto Scherzer. Despite throwing a no-hitter earlier this year with about 45 walks, Jackson isn’t having a very good season with a 5.16 ERA, 7.0 K/9 and a 4.0 BB/9. Forgetting about the deal last year, this stand alone deal was a good one for Arizona. Jackson will provide the White Sox some rotation depth with the loss of Jake Peavy as they battle the Twins for the AL Central title, but I can’t help thinking they gave up way too much in this deal. Though there’s also rumors going around that their plan is to flip Jackson around to the Nationals for maybe Adam Dunn? Crazy shit going down right here.

Rangers pick up Jorge Cantu and Cristian Guzman
Yesterday, the Rangers dealt for Marlins first baseman Jorge Cantu for two Double-A pitcher (Evan Reed and Omar Poveda) and today they added speedy infielder Cristian Guzman. Texas will send another couple of Double-A pitchers in Ryan Tatusko and Tanner Roark, which begs the question of who’s left at Double-A Frisco?

Guzman could have waived his 10-and-5 rights, but agreed to the trade. Guzman is hitting .282/.327/.361 while playing shortstop, second base and right field. Cantu has 10 home runs, 54 RBI and a slash line of .262/.310/.409 in 97 games. The Marlins may also not be done dealing as it looks like Cody Ross is also available. Neither of these guys (Cantu and Guzman) are going to single-handily win a division title for the Rangers, but they provide the team depth, experience and someone to play first base.

Yankees Bring Berkman to the Bronx
First the Yankees acquired Austin Kearns for a player to be named later from Cleveland. They like his right-handed bat. Ah, whatever. The next deal will make headlines. The Yankees continued to wheel and deal, trading for long-time Astros slugger Lance Berkman. In exchange, the Astros got reliever Mark Melancon and low-level minor league infielder Jimmy Paredes. Apparently after years and years of thinking they were still in the hunt, the Astros have finally given up the fight and are selling, selling, selling.

For some reason the Astros are sending about $4MM to cover part of Berkman’s salary for this year. Isn’t one of the prominent reasons to trade with the Yankees is that they have no payroll and will pay anyone and anything to play for them?

This trade will make big headlines in New York, but it would have been great had it been two years ago when Berkman was hitting like Lance Berkman. He’s currently in mist of a disappointing season with 13 home runs, 49 RBI and a slash line of .245/.372/.436 through 85 games. And I swear most of those home runs and runs batted in were against the Pirates this season. He’ll play DH for the Yankees and is an obvious upgrade over Colin Curtis, who has been playing there. Plus, the big guy still gets on base with 60 walks in 85 games for a .372 OBP. Berkman has the 10-and-5 rights, but waived his no trade clause in this deal, which he did when the White Sox attempted to get him.

There are the deals that went down today with possibly another one on the way with twitter blowing up right now on how the Dodgers are close to acquiring Ted Lilly from Chicago. Now does Paul Maholm go anywhere or Adam Dunn or Jose Bautista? Ah, the trade deadline. Don’t you just love it?

 

Edwin Jackson’s no-hitter

So Diamondbacks pitcher Edwin Jackson threw a no-hitter the other night against the Rays. Yes, the Rays were no hit…AGAIN. I missed the game, most people missed the game and I haven’t heard much since it so it doesn’t seem like very many people care. Maybe that’s because Jackson’s no-no included a ridiculous eight walks. Not to take anything away from Jackson’s performance because it was a no-hitter and the only person who beat him on the field was himself with the walks, but I can’t be all that impressed by someone who walks eight. Walks are kryptonite to the pitcher and exactly what you don’t want to do when you have a lead, yet he walked eight. The only two pitchers to walk more batters in no-hit games was AJ Burnett, who walked nine in 2001, and Jim Maloney, who walked 10 batters in a 10-inning no-hitter in 1965.

The most impressive thing to me about his feat was the 149 pitches he threw in the game. That’s obviously the most this year and will stay that way. Actually, it’s the most pitches thrown in a game since Livan Hernandez tossed 149 in 2005. That’s just insane as he dialed up the old days of pitching.

As far as no-hitters go, Jackson’s 149 pitches are the most by any no-hitter thrown in years that pitch counts were tracked. Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax threw the next most with 138 pitches in their no-hitters.

Jackson’s no-hitter is the 65th this season. OK, not quite but seriously what’s next in this season of pitching?

 

Weekly Recap

I wanted to kick each week off with a recap of the recent happenings around the league throughout the last week. I’m not sure what day this will end up on from here on out—Monday makes the most sense since it’s by the beginning of the week and a lot of teams have an off day on Mondays, but depending on my schedule the day may fluctuate.

Let’s start off with the Tigers rolling out to a 5-1 start. What happened to everyone who said they wouldn’t be a good team without Curtis Granderson or Edwin Jackson? Well it looks like the Tigers benefited from some nice scheduling to start the season starting off with the Royals, Indians and now the Royals again for a three-game series. The Tigers rotation will be crucial to their hopes this year. Let’s see where they end up at the end of April after they get the Angels, Rangers and Twins the rest of the month.

Speaking of Jackson, now a member of the Diamondbacks rotation, want to know how shitty the 13-run 4th inning against the Pirates yesterday got? Jackson recorded two hits in the fourth inning, a single and even a home run. This from a guy that had four hits in eight major league seasons even though a bulk of that was spent in the American League.

With Cliff Lee out for probably all of April, the Mariners cannot afford to get in a hole early as they are struggling out of the gate already to a 2-5 mark. Someone in that rotation not named Felix Hernandez needs to step up for the M’s to stay even close to contention until Lee gets back. It’s still early, but after all the additions Seattle made in the offseason it will be an interesting trade deadline if they fall out of it early.

The Houston Astros are the only team yet to win a game in 2010. Not a real surprise here, but I’m curious to know if the Astros are 0-fer at the trading deadline does the brass still make moves to go for it as if they were in a pennant race?

Roy Halladay seems to be enjoying the National League very much so. He’s already 2-0 with 0.56 ERA in 16 innings with one CG, 17K’s and only two walks. Yikes to the rest of the NL East! We knew Halladay was a beast and now in the NL, if he stays healthy I’m predicting at least 15 CG from him this year.

The 5-2 Twins will open Target Field this afternoon against the Red Sox on ESPN. This will mark the first time the Twins have played outdoors in Minnesota since 1981. Anyone have the weather forecast for Minneapolis? Actually, it appears to be in the 60s today so that shouldn’t be much of a problem, but the weather channel’s website actually did an interesting feature on the typical weather to expect in April and October at Target Field. It’s safe to say at some point soon we’ll see some snow at the new ballpark.

The Giants ran off a nice 5-1 start thanks to a 2.79 ERA, good for fourth best in the major leagues. The pitching was expected, but they are also fifth in the league with a .289 average. I doubt they will hold that average and score runs, but they have a chance to extend their solid start with three upcoming home games against the Pirates.