The Curious Case Of Edwin Jackson

As I continue to hear rumors of the Brewers having interest in a possible trade with the Tigers for Edwin Jackson, I continue to be confused on how I feel about that possibility. On one hand, Jackson is a starting pitcher who is still relatively young at 26, has an electric fastball always in the mid 90's and a pretty good slider. He is coming off a career year where he looked very dominate at times. But on the other hand, Jackson struggled A LOT in the second half of the season, still walked a lot of batters struggling with control and wore down. But he wore down mostly because of Jim Leyland abusing him. His final numbers for the season were very solid though:

13-9, 3.62 ERA, 214 IP, 161 K, 70 BB, 1.26 WHIP

But, let's look at the 1st half compared to his second half:

1st Half: 7-4, 2.52 ERA, 121.2 IP, 95 K, 35 BB, 1.06 WHIP
2nd Half: 6-5, 5.07 ERA, 92.1 IP, 64 K, 35 BB, 1.53 WHIP

As the numbers show, he was tremendous in the 1st half and pitched the best ball of his career making his first All-Star team, his 2nd half was more like his career numbers. So the question is, was he a half a season wonder or did he figure it out but just got burnt out in the 2nd half? This is why I am on the fence on if I want the Brewers to go after Jackson or just let him be. He definitely has the stuff to be a solid #2 pitcher and his 1st half of 2009 shows that, he also had a pretty good season for Tampa Bay in 2008. His biggest issue seems to be control and keeping the ball down. I'm not sure what the Tigers would want for Jackson, if it was not Gamel I would probably be willing to listen to what else they might want in return. There was a report before Hardy was traded to Minnesota the Tigers wanted to swap Jackson for him.