This team has lost a ton of games in the 11 years of its existence. Why do you pick a meaningless stats? They won didn’t they?

They lost those games because the talent sucked. Edwin Jackson’s has more talent than any former Ray pitcher. PERIOD!!!! Again he is only 24 years old give it time.

He is what he is.. inconsistent from one game, one inning, one batter to the next.

Sometimes he looks brilliant, sometimes terrible. If/when we have better options, let someone else try to fix him the same way Rick Peterson was going to fix Victor Zambrano.

The issue is how can we project whether he will be successful down the road. Of course, all such projections are uncertain, but there are rational ways to think about it.

If a pitcher walks a lot of batters and does not strike out many, it is a bad sign. If in addition the batters hit a lot of line drives, it is a worse sign. If in spite of those facts, the pitcher is winning or getting away with few balls dropping in or runs scoring, we may reasonably project that such luck will be unlikely to continue.

Naturally there may be factors we are missing or development we may not be seeing, but it is still important to be aware of the counter facts. The stats mean a great deal; they tell us what underlies results, and those underlying factors help us project.

I am less pessimistic about Jackson than are Patrick or R.J., partly because I think he may be developing the mentality to pitch out of trouble, but think their reasoning is absolutely legitimate. Were a reasonable trade available now, I would have no problem letting go of Jackson. Should a couple of our young pitchers emerge, I would have no problem replacing Edwin if his underlying stats remain the same.

And it is usually a problem. Tonight I though he did a decent job pounding the lower half with the fastball. That’s his ticket if he can make the leap.

I would trade him too, from a position of strength…hes a daniel cabrera type who appears to be showing slgns of increased control…i’ll take the results and not complain about them though. RE: Sonnanstine. He has zero upside, imo. He won’t get any better than he’s been the first 4 games. And thats OK. Could be an innings eater that gives you a chance to win. He just wont miss as many bats as he did in the minors. And he gets hit, and always has in the majors. You talk about EJAX regressing to the mean, well so will Sonny, his K to BB ratio doesnt mean much if he isnt missing enough bats to make up for marginal stuff.

that having zero upside meant having zero value.

I agree totally. It was a smoke and mirrors performance. He should have given up at least 3 runs based on the walks, all of the hard hits right at fielders, etc. Still a quality start I think, but no way he should have kept Boston at 1 run.

I feel he is the odd man out based on the performances so far. My 5-man staff would go:

Kazmir
Shields
Garza
Hammel
Sonnanstine

I particularly like an off-speed Sonnanstine sandwiched between hard throwing Hammel and Kazmir in a 3 game set.

However…

I still would give E-Jax a substantial amount of starts, almost like a 6 man rotation. With a bunch of young arms, and Kazmir coming off injury, it is important to watch pitch counts and to keep everyone fresh headed in September. I would consider E-Jax a long relief guy and give him a decent frequency of spot starts to keep everyone fresh.

I am not fond of radar guns; they are like TVs in restaurants. I hate the distraction but keep glancing at them anyway.

One thing they have done is focused us on the wrong details. I watched quite a bit of the Cubs/Nationals game yesterday. Lilly lost but looked quite good. They had the radar readings and he never reached 90. In fact he topped out at 88 and sat at 84-86.

I know the standard for lefties is a bit different and different guns record differently. But it is not uncommon for pitchers with 84-88 mph fastballs to succeed in the majors. I am not talking about Maddux; Lilly has been a useful pitcher for years, but not a star.

Sonnanstine gets his fastball up to 90-91, but more ordinarily is in the mid to high 80s. That is plenty fast enough and gives enough separation for his off-speed stuff. He is not a junk-baller or dependent on one pitch or simply on the breaking ball. On the contrary, as noted a lot recently, he is best working off the fastball, and so long as he commands it he can succeed.

I hesitate to assert anything without the data, but I am quite certain baseball is littered with hard throwers who fail, and I would not be surprised if the mid 90s fastballers fail at the same rate as the mid 80s fastballers.