I spent some time watching four of Jackson's games in 2009 (love MLBtv!) and I picked up a couple of things. Here's what I saw in the first half:
In the first half of the season he was able to paint the black quite often, but still uncorked a wild one on occasion.
Jackson, when it is working, has a very nasty slider coming in around 90 mph.
Jackson tends to throw his changeup high
Jackson's curve ball doesn't have much of a break and is rather mushy
Here's what I saw in the second half:
Wildness got worse as the season progressed
Often didn't get close calls because of early game wildness
Slider wilted on him, but when it worked it was still nasty
Lost 5 mph on FB late in games
Didn't seem to lose his composure when things went bad
Something else that an announcer said piqued my curiosity. I guess when the first half was over they had a meeting to figure out what was working and what wasn't. It was determined that Jackson was throwing too many pitches early in games and the plan was to try to pitch to contact more.
One other thing that I saw that has me scratching my head is that he has a pitch that comes in like a FB but it runs in on right-handed batters. I saw this pitch maybe two or three times in each game. It might just be an artifact of poor command, but it should be something that he works on as it was a nasty pitch.
Lonnie
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