Has anyone noticed that Jim Edmonds has quietly hit 13 home runs since he was acquired the Cubs in May, and has surreptitiously resurrected his career?

Talk about moves that paid off! Jim Hendry’s astute mid-season acquisitions Reed Johnson and Edmonds are exhibit A that sometimes lefty-righty platoons actually do work.

Playing exclusively against right-handed pitchers, Edmonds is batting .275 with the aforementioned 13 dingers and a .936 OPS since he came over to the Cubs.  Edmonds has also put to rest fears that he can no longer play centerfield, playing at least passible defense and even making the occasional spectacular play in center for the Cubbies while avoiding injury so far (perhaps the extra days off when lefties pitch helps).

Meanwhile, Reed Johnson, who now only plays against left-handers, is batting .318 with a .410 on-base percentage and an .865 OPS when batting against lefties.

Put that together and you have some truly impressive offensive production out of the centerfield spot, cobbled together from other teams’ scrap heaps.

You gotta feel for the guy.

Today, it was announced that the San Diego Padres released center fielder Jim Edmonds. The team had stumbled out of the gate in 2008 to a thus-far-disappointing 12-23 record and felt that they needed to make a change.

Prior to the season, we had speculated that Edmonds would be a “boom-or-bust” addition to the Pads, and clearly, the organization already labeled him the latter. Edmonds was batting an abysmal .178/.265/.233 line prior to today. Admittedly, I am yet to see a San Diego game this year, but the article (linked above) mentions how it wasn’t just poor offense that did him in:

While Edmonds once made spectacular catches while with the Cardinals and Angels, he clearly lost a step or two and simply couldn’t catch up to fly balls.

Again, not having seen Edmonds play, it’s difficult for me to comment much on this, except to say that I’m sure his decline on defense is made far more visible by the very spacious outfield at Petco Park.

For those of you now wondering if your team should sign Jim, there are things to note:

PRO: Edmonds has a .227 BABiP this year, which is well below his career norm (more in the .300 area). So there’s room for improvement.

CON: His BABiP has been decreasing annually since 2004, so it might not be much of a fluke.

PRO: His line-drive rate is as good, if not better than, his prime, so when he makes contact, it’s been solid a good portion of the time.

CON: He’s also making contact on fewer occasions. His strikeout rate is at 23.3%, which is higher than his career norm. And he always was very strike-out prone to begin with. Combine this with a BABiP trending down, and it’s a big warning sign.

PRO: But he’s back to seeing 4.2 pitchers per plate appearance! The old, more patient Jim is back!

CON: Despite this, he’s still not walking as often as he used to. Besides, when you’re batting .178, it doesn’t matter much anyway. You’re still an offensive liability.

PRO: But the glove! THE GLOVE! In a smaller outfield, he can still be a good defensive player, right?

CON: Probably not. At least not in center field. Even last year, playing in Busch Stadium which has much less space in center towards the corners, it was becoming clear that those Gold Gloves were a thing of the past.

So is this it for Jim? Knowing what I mentioned above, would you still take a chance on him?