The Detroit Tigers are set to acquire right-hander Edwin Jackson from the Tampa Bay Rays for outfielder Matt Joyce, according to a major-league source.
Per Fox Sports
Now official.
Joyce is a young, power-hitting corner outfielder with good defensive skills. His minor league stats are pretty impressive, considering he's been young for his league. He'll swing and miss (and strike out) but his walk percentages have been consistently over 10% throughout the minors. Dave Cameron compares him to Jayson Werth, that seems like a pretty good comparison. He's under team control for six additional seasons, and he's only 24 years old.
UZR has him at +6 in right and +15 in left, a bit of a small sample size on the right field readings though. If his bat plays as well as it did last year, as well as his glove, you're looking at a 2.7 WAR player, and that's assuming he's more like 6 runs on defense rather than in upwards of 10. That's, um, a pretty nice upgrade for a pitcher projected to be more like 1.5 < x > 2.0 WAR next year.
Compared to the Rays RFers last year, Joyce appears to be an upgrade. Depending on whether those left field defensive numbers stand up or not, he's on part with Gross defensively, and a superior hitter. This also means no more Eric Hinske, which means less balls dropping anyways. The one problem with Joyce is his tendency to not hit left-handed pitching. That's not uncommon, and he still managed an OPS over .700 against them over his minor league career. Jeremy Hermida is similar in that regard, are as a number of other left-handed hitters, in fact left-handed hitters as a whole had a .699 OPS against left-handed pitching last season -- if this weren't typical, there wouldn't be LOOGYs.
Based on what we know at this moment, the Rays win this and it's not particularly close. Jackson has the physical tools, and the arguments have been stated constantly, but at the end of the day he's yet to show the results or even the processes that reflect on the potential. Thank goodness he has more value to some than I imagined.
Farewell Edwin, hopefully things work out for you.