In the winter of 2008, the Detroit Tigers sent a 24 year old player named Matt Joyce to the Tampa Bay Rays for a pitcher named Edwin Jackson.

In 2009, Matt Joyce only got a small taste of life in the show with the Rays, so his contribution at the MLB level was negligible.

In 2009, for the Detroit Tigers, Edwin Jackson went 13-9 with a 3.62 ERA making 33 starts for the Tigers and pitched 214 innings. Which to date, if you look at the back of Edwin's baseball card pretty much marks Edwin's best statistical season, and Edwin was selected for the All Star team.

In the winter of 2010, with only 2 years of controllability and with Scott Boras as his agent thus dimming the likelihood of having Edwin as a longer term team asset, the Tigers traded Edwin Jackson to the Arizona D-Backs for Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth. While Schlereth never really panned out for us,

in 2010, Edwin Jackson for 2 different teams went 10-12 with a 4.47 ERA pitching 209 innings.

Max Scherzer in 2010 went 13-10 for the Tigers with a 3.50 ERA pitching 195 innings. It should be noted, Max Scherzer was making less than $1M while Edwin Jackson was making several million dollars.

Playing part time for the Rays in 2010, Matt Joyce in 77 games hit .241 and had an .837 OPS.

2011 was Edwin Jackson's last year of controllability before he became a free agent. In 2011, Edwin Jackson while playing for multiple teams went 12-9, with a 3.79 ERA pitching 199 inninngs, which was close to his 2009 performance with the Tigers, but Edwin's WHIP was 1.44 for the 2011 season, and of course Edwin was making $8M

In 2011, Max Scherzer, while earning something less than $1M, went 15-9 with a 4.49 ERA pitching 195 innings and a WHIP of 1.35

2011 was Matt Joyce's first full season with the Rays, hit .277 with a .825 OPS and I believe was named to the All Star team.

in 2012, Edwin Jackson was a free agent and signed elsewhere, like he would have with the Tigers had we kept him. Therefore what Edwin Jackson did statistically is somewhat irrelevant, but Edwin went 10-11 with a 4.03 ERA, and got his WHIP back down to a respectable 1.22, and made something like $11M doing it.

in 2012, Max Scherzer went 16-7 with a 3.74 ERA and a WHIP of 1.27, all while making $3.7M for his 187 innings pitched.

in 2012 Matt Joyce regressed a little, he hit .241 with a .769 OPS, when you probably want something a little better than that from a corner outfielder.

So far, since the winter of 2008 when we traded Matt Joyce, from 2009-2012 for the Rays, Matt Joyce has produced 49 Home Runs, 181 RBIs, and roughly an .800 OPS.

From trading Matt Joyce, who will be 29 years old this year

from 2009-2012 the Detroit Tigers thusfar have received 57 wins, 35 losses, and 791 innings pitched

Matt Joyce is up for Arbitration for his first time of three with the Rays, Max Scherzer, who will also turn 29 this year, is up for his second arbitration of three. It should also be noted that the Rays acquired uber prospect Will Myers in the James Shields trade, so Matt Joyce could at some point in time this season, see his playing time cut, but just the same, Thank you to Matt Joyce for all you have given to the Detroit Tigers baseball organization.

I saw Joyce play in Columbus with the Ray's triple A team the summer after he was traded. I was right behind home plate and when he came up to bat I yelled "Thanks for Edwin Jackson". He hit a home run and then stared me down. I got a kick out of it.

Dombrowski felt Clete Thomas would pick up where Matt Joyce left off.
Obviously that never materialized.

what else can you do at that point?

Don't forget we also got A-Jax in that Arizona deal.

Yankees in: Granderson
D-Backs in: Ian Kennedy, Edwin Jackson
Tigers in: Max, A-Jax, Coke, Schlereth

I think we know who won that one.

I was several "pops" in, I believe I may have yelled something to the affect of "do they put triple A homers on the back of your baseball card?"

The D-backs?

Great story !!!

That team in Arizona.

I can't be the only one that calls them that. I also typically still refer to that team in Tampa as "the Devil Rays"

Now what did Ryan Perry net us ???

:)

We did and I wasn't sure how I wanted to address that aspect of things. I left that out, because from our standpoint, although it was a 3 team deal, it was kind of like 2 separate trades.

Edwin to the DBacks for Scherzer and Schlereth, and Granderson to the Yankees for AJax and Coke.

Because the focus was more oriented around Joyce and Edwin Jackson, I kind of left the other part of that trade out because Joyce didn't get us something that we flipped to get from the Yankees.

So far, in comparison, Granderson and AJax were about even in 2010, Granderson much better than AJax in 2011, AJax better than Granderson in 2012. Anything that Coke adds (or subtracts) from this is just more sugar on the cereal. But also the financials involved and years of controllability that we gained, we certainly won on the Granderson side of that trade as well.

haha, sorry, I believe I missed the point the first time around.

Kennedy was a monster in 2011 but I couldn't imagine him doing that in the AL.

It's all a flow down.

By Jackson solidifying centerfield and leadoff and Max being similar to Edwin only MUCH cheaper we were able to land Prince.

So really the trade looks like this:

Tigers- Max, A-Jax, Coke, Schlereth, Prince
Arizona- Kennedy, Edwin
Yankees- Granderson

lol, no. I know who you talking about. I was saying who won the trade. :p

EDIT:
<<<haha, sorry, I believe I missed the point the first time around.>>>
Yeah, I see you got it. nevermind...

I'll give you Victor Martinez maybe, and Justin Verlander's 5 year contract extension (3 years beyond his arbitration), but we were eating money on Sheffield, Bonderman, Willis, Robertson, and a declining Magglio Ordonez. We had to get controllable, good and cheap talent to jump that hurdle.

I think the Prince signing is a completely different animal, as was the case with Johnny Damon, that all was Boras working Mr Illitch's personal wallet over more than anything else. In both of those cases, until Mr Illitch stepped in to contribute his own personal funds, the organizational position at the time was "we are on a budget and are fine going forward"

Certainly a franchise defining trade though.

On a kind of unrelated to the topic tangent....

I love a good conspiracy theory so here goes: Cabrera didn't decide to get in shape to play 3rd just starting in late January, that was discussed immediately following the season. I think Illich always wanted Prince since he was a pre teen and hitting homers at old tiger stadium in batting practice. DD was the one pumping the breaks knowing that if Cabby couldn't make the switch to 3rd that Victor was already entrenched at DH and we'd have one too many bodies when the music stopped. When Victor went down that opened up the plan B of having the DH spot as a backup. Cabby handled 3rd just fine and plan B was never needed.

I think the whole "they only signed Prince because Victor went down" was played upon by the lazy and uninformed national media. A similar situation to this occurred during Cabrera's initial switch to 1st. That season Guillen was supposed to play first but anyone who watched those first few games recognized how awful Carlos was at 1st. His footwork was a complete mess and I remember him coming close to getting in the way of base runners. This forced the flip flop. However the lazy national media saw it as "Cabrera is too fat to play 3rd".

I do agree that Mr I has probably wanted Prince since Prince was a kid. I think it was probably in the works long before anybody in the general public got a whiff of it.

Exactly correct.
Prince was coming to Detroit, regardless if VMart got hurt or not.

I will always believe that the only reason Prince was signed was because V-Mart went down.

For one thing, ..Prince was signed very late (after V-Mart's injury).
For another thing, if I recall correctly ..at the time Prince was signed, there were no reports of any other club even close to offering him a long-term mega-million $$$ contract.

The late signing was attributed to finding out the price and length. Once that was discovered, Ilitch bought the player.

Ilitch said at the end of 2011 that another hitter was needed. He said it in such a way that anyone could see it in his face, that a search for a hitter would take place that winter.