With the Detroit Tigers struggling to hold on to their lead in the AL Central, they can't afford to have any more poor outings from their starting pitchers -- guys like Edwin Jackson, who got off to a great start this season and was 7-5 with a 2.64 ERA in the first four months of the season, but is 5-2 with a 5.22 ERA since August. The record is fine, but that ERA is going to have to come down to finish off the Twins and beat the Yankees -- the Tigers' likely first round opponent.The good news for Jackson is that his pitching coach Rick Knapp thinks he knows what the problem is. It seems that Edwin has been tipping his slider in recent weeks, allowing hitters to lay off of it and sit on his fastball.
One of the things pitching coach Rick Knapp mentioned Sunday that he and bullpen coach Jeff Jones were working on with Edwin Jackson in his morning side session was a quirk that they believed was tipping his slider, letting hitters know it was coming. But the thing is, it's still a good enough pitch that hitters haven't been pounding it. Really, they haven't been swinging at it, and Knapp's belief was that by knowing it was coming, hitters were taking it so that Jackson would fall behind in counts, or just not finish off hitters with two strikes.
I don't know what Jackson was doing to tip his slider; Knapp obviously isn't going to say it. But I do know he had Jackson working on his mannerisms over and over leading into his delivery during his side session Sunday morning in the Metrodome.
Obviously this isn't the first time in baseball history a pitcher might have tipped his pitches to opposing batters. A few years ago Jackson's rotation-mate Justin Verlander did something to tip off his changeup that the White Sox picked up on. They pounded the pitch repeatedly, and since Verlander figured it out he's dominated the White Sox just like he does everybody else.If it is indeed the case that Jackson has been tipping his slider and he's figured out how to keep from doing it, that could be a nice boost for the Tigers as we come down the home stretch of the regular season.
