Edwin Jackson is a pitcher everyone wants to acquire, but then seemingly can’t wait to unload as soon as possible.

Or at least, that’s the impression you get from looking at his trade history. Jackson has been traded six times over the course of his career, with five of those trades happening within the last three years. He’s been traded for exciting prospects, not exciting prospects, an enigmatic center fielder, a powerful outfielder with platoon issues, and a multitude of relief pitchers. He’s 27-years-old and has yet to become a free agent, but he’s already been on seven different teams in his career. For comparison, Ricky Henderson — the prototypical man-of-many-hats — only played on nine different teams over the course of his entire career.

As Jackson was at the heart of the recent Colby Rasmus trade, I wanted to take another look at all the place he’s been. So without further ado, I present to you my pitiful, Paint-tastic attempt to visualize Edwin Jackson’s full trade history (click to enlarge):

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With the non-waiver trade deadline past us, we can take a step back and see how each contender upgraded its roster. Because the season is two-thirds over, these players might not have an enormous impact. But for a contender sitting on the fringe, or a leader wanting to solidify its position, these acquisitions could make enough of a difference now, and then a bigger one come playoff time, when everyone starts from scratch.

To project the positional upgrade the team will receive, we’ll look at the wRAA the team has received so far from the position, the projected wRAA for the incumbent, and the projected wRAA for the replacement, based on ZiPS rest of season. We’ll assume 230 PA, which is based on a prorated 700 PA season. I’m leaving out defense, because I’m not comfortable projecting 1/3 of a season. I’m also leaving out guys such as Jerry Hairston, who are injury fill-ins rather than upgrades.

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In an effort to sure up their interior defense, the St. Louis Cardinals agreed to a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, bringing Rafael Furcal back east in exchange for Double-A outfielder Alex Castellanos. The trade was first reported last night, but could not be made official until Furcal – a 10/5 player – waived his no-trade clause to complete the transaction.

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Ed. Note: Four people were injured in the copyediting of this article.

One word. Change one word of the trade description, and you might see a world in which the Cardinals got fair value for Colby Rasmus in their trade Wednesday night.

The consensus for the most part is that Alex Anthopoulos pulled a coup when he acquired a young left-handed center fielder with power and speed and a decent glove for his collection of spare parts. A rental starter, a rental backup center fielder, a rental righty reliever, and a young lefty reliever is all that it took to get Rasmus. But then there’s that one word — reliever.

Call Marc Rzepczynski a young lefty starter, and suddenly things might seem a little more even.

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If there was ever a precursor to a trade, this was it, via Matthew Leach and Austin Laymance:

Speaking to KSDK TV-5 in St. Louis, La Russa was largely complimentary of Rasmus until the end of the interview. He spoke of Rasmus’ bright future and said that the club is not shopping Rasmus.

At the end, however, La Russa was asked whether Rasmus is listening and responded tartly.

“Well, he’s listening to somebody,” the manager said.

Asked whether Rasmus is listening to the Cardinals’ coaches, he was more direct.

“No, he doesn’t listen to the Cardinal coaches much now, and that’s why he gets in these funks, in my opinion,” La Russa said. “If he would just stay with [basically] what they teach, he would have … but I actually feel concern for him, because he hears it from so many places, he’s got to be confused.”

Approximately 12 hours after that piece hit MLB.com, the Cardinals sent Colby Rasmus packing to Toronto along with relievers Brian Tallet and Trever Miller and minor league stalwart P.J. Walters for a package centered around Edwin Jackson. The Blue Jays also sent relievers Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski and center fielder Corey Patterson to St. Louis to complete the deal.

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The talks started last winter, but they didn’t seem serious. Why would the Cardinals consider trading Colby Rasmus? He’s young, he’s cost-controlled, and he’s a center fielder who has some pop. But he clashed with manager Tony LaRussa, and we’ve seen other players depart St. Louis after such spats. Those talks have heated up again in the past month, gaining momentum as the trade deadline approaches. Today it all came to a head. Early this morning word broke that the Blue Jays were set to acquire Edwin Jackson, whom they’d then flip to the Cardinals in a Rasmus deal. A few hours, everything came together as planned.

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Just minutes ago, during the Cardinals-Mets game currently unfolding in Queens, Albert Pujols hit a home run off of Jonathon Niese. The home run is notable because (a) it came at the end of a nine-pitch at-bat and (b) SNY’s Gary Cohen noted after the foul ball you see GIF’d and expertly embedded above that good hitters are good at fouling off two-strike pitches.

In fact, Cohen’s words were prescient, as, two pitches later, Pujols did this to the baseball:

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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The St. Louis Cardinals moved today to lock up one of their important young pieces, signing pitcher and potential ace-in-the-making Jaime Garcia to a four year contract worth $27.5 million. The deal also includes two club options in 2016 and 2017, the values of which have not been released as of this writing. As Garcia is currently in his second year of service time, the deal guarantees his third pre-arbitration season as well as all three of his arbitration seasons, with the two club options covering his first two years of free agency.

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…even if they want to.

Does anyone recognize this player?

Centerfielder.
Former top prospect, ranked as one of the top 5 in baseball at one time.
Great plate discipline (11% walk rate), but strikes out at a high rate (20+%).
Batting average hovers around .250.
Above-average power, posting around a .160 to .180 ISO.
Called out in the past for “attitude” issues.

Oh, you were thinking of Colby Rasmus? Sorry, I was describing B.J. Upton.

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