Alex Jackson Has Been a Relentless, Winning Player for the Twins, and Maybe a Season-Saver

Alex Jackson will make his 15th start of the season Thursday afternoon, as the Twins go for a pivotal sweep of the Guardians at Target Field. Surprisingly, that doesn't feel ominous in the least. Jackson came into this season as a .153/.239/.288 hitter—a former top-10 overall pick turned journeyman, whom the Twins became the seventh team to trade for in a paripatetic 12-year pro career. Even after they dealt for him, the team went out and added Victor Caratini to supplant him as the backup to Ryan Jeffers, stashing Jackson at Triple-A St. Paul to start the season. Now, though, he's become a surprisingly vital ingredient in the team's unexpected surge toward the postseason.

In his first 14 starts behind the plate, Jackson is 9-5. For the second year in a row, he's showing plus bat speed, and results to match. He's batting .314/.340/.431. He's struck out 15 times and drawn zero walks in 53 plate appearances, so that batting line isn't exactly sustainable, but to suggest he'll revert to his previous career norms would be to rashly dismiss what has been not only a tangible improvement, but an impressive bit of hard-won hustle value.

Jackson is a plus athlete for a catcher. He even has average-plus raw sprint speed, according to Statcast. That makes his surge in bat speed, which happened last year in Baltimore, unsurprising; he just needed longer than initially hoped to learn how to get off his 'A' swing. More surprisng, though, is the way he's applied that athleticism every time he takes the field, with a relentlessness and tenacity that have endeared him to fans, teammates and coaches alike.

Jackson has three bunt hits this season. He also hustles down the line on ground balls harder than anyone else on the team. On Saturday against the Yankees, for instance—despite searing heat, the demands of catching under those conditions, and a preposterous combination of hidebound rulemaking and poor preparation that meant the Twins could each wear only one jersey during the game, rather than changing once or twice over nine innings as catchers usually do in such heat—Jackson busted it out of the box on a routine double-play ball in the sixth inning. He beat it out, keeping a rally going. The Twins didn't even go on to score in the frame, but that moment was one distillation of a trend that has been on full display whenever Jackson gets onto the field: effort and hustle in the extreme.

The bunts Jackson has laid down and the grounders on which he's put pressure on the defense by running hard are good examples of the same traits he shows behind the plate: unselfish dedication to the team. It's an impressive attitude for a player who has rarely stayed with any organization for very long and didn't get especially generous treatment from the one he's in now. 

Jackson hasn't been a great defender, in the measurable ways. He's not a good pitch framer, and hasn't navigated the ABS system well. He's not excellent at blocking pitches, though he does have an elite throwing arm. In terms of managing a young and not-very-talented pitching staff, though, he's been great. Between the hustle on offense and the situation management on defense, he's gotten the team over the hump nine times in 14 tries since coming up to take Jeffers's spot when the starting catcher got hurt. 

Yes, the Twins clearly still trust Caratini more. No, this won't necessarily stop them from demoting Jackson (even at the risk of losing him on waivers) when Jeffers returns from the IL. However, when you're a fringy playoff hopeful with a star-caliber catcher and that guy goes down for over six weeks, you brace for a handful of extra losses. In 15 starts, you have to accept that you might lose 10. If the Twins were 4-10 in Jackson's starts, entering Thursday, they'd be lagging the Tigers, in fourth place in the AL Central. They'd be 5.5 games out of the final AL Wild Card spot, with several teams clustered ahead of them. As it is, they're 2 games back in the division and a half-game behind the Rangers for the last prospective playoff berth. 

Not all of that difference is attributable to Jackson, of course. The team has stepped up in various ways over the last few weeks to salvage their season, staying alive longer than was expected of them. They've also gotten a bit lucky, along the way. But Jackson's motor and his surprising competence are echoes of what the team got right from the moment they acquired Kody Clemens, and of what they've gotten from Ryan Kreidler since turning to him in a similar pinch earlier this year. They're giving chances to guys who had nearly run out of them, and those guys are finding success. That's a testament to the team's scouting and analytics groups and to their coaches, but it's also a testament to the dedication, perseverance and baseball IQ of those players. Jackson is as good a symbol of that as anyone. He's the guy the team saw something in and proactively acquired, but whom they didn't quite trust until they were left with no alternative—and who has essentially saved their season, once the chance to do so arose.