forsberg_us wrote:

That simply isn't/wasn't good enough return.

I agree with that.

Sorry, I don't agree. I think we got the best price we could get for Rasmus. I quite simply don't feel he's very good. I think he "could" be, but for whatever reason he isn't. I see he went 2/6 today to bring his Toronto average up to a whopping .167.

That's pretty much exactly what they paid for. I think 3 draft picks and Rzepcynski isn't an awful deal to get rid of a guy who was a failure on offense, a failure on defense, and had to hide behind his daddy instead of speaking for himself.

I know it's not a popular opinion, but if I'm a GM, I'm not blaming the entire mess on LaRussa, and I'm certainly not giving up much of anything for the priviledge of inheriting the Rasmus' family.

alz wrote:

Sorry, I don't agree. I think we got the best price we could get for Rasmus.

At the time of the trade maybe, but since the manager decided to go on one of his crusades which made Rasmus' value plunge, they didn't do themselves any favors.

I quite simply don't feel he's very good. I think he "could" be, but for whatever reason he isn't.

He hit .275/.360/.490 a year ago. I don't know how on earth you could surmise that he's not very good after a season like that.

I see he went 2/6 today to bring his Toronto average up to a whopping .167.

Since arriving in Toronto he's faced Derek Holland, Colby Lewis, James Shields and David Price. Today he rocked an opposite field double off the wall against Jake McGee, who has held lefties to a .165 average. I think it'd be awfully foolish to draw conclusions a week after the trade. And as I said a couple weeks ago, if teams abandoned players as quickly as the Cardinals abandoned Rasmus, Justin and BJ Upton, Matt Kemp, Jacoby Ellsbury and Jay Bruce would all be playing for different teams.

That's pretty much exactly what they paid for. I think 3 draft picks and Rzepcynski isn't an awful deal to get rid of a guy who was a failure on offense, a failure on defense, and had to hide behind his daddy instead of speaking for himself.

This is wrong in a lot of ways. I'm not going to dispute that he was going through a rough patch on offense, that he had concentration lapses and that his father needs to pipe down. But he was not a failure at all. And he never hid behind his father, either. Colby himself has never said anything. His father is just a dumb, loudmouth hick who needed to get away from the message boards.

know it's not a popular opinion, but if I'm a GM, I'm not blaming the entire mess on LaRussa

Maybe not, but La Russa does this team no favors when he brings shit up in public. I know Fors has said Brendan Ryan was a pain in the clubhouse, but La Russa made a point last year to publicly express how bad Ryan was. And he was not so bad that he should've been shipped off for the next Esteban Yan.

tk I understand the objections, and agree that Larussa would have been better served by shutting up. A great time to trade Colby would have been at the end of last season when he was a .275/.360/.490 guy with 23 HR's. Instead, he was a .246 .332 .420 when we traded him. Currently, he's a .167 .194 .267 guy with Toronto. That's not a slump, that's a shit season.

From the defensive side of things, I don't understand how he could be called much of anything except a failure. He's a centerfielder who defers to the corner outfielders, is scared of the wall, plays badly with anything hit over his head, and makes way too many bad throws for way too few good ones.

So. Aside from the upscale of promise, you have a young centerfielder who is a near liability on defense, had one decent/average season (.275 with 23 HRs isn't dazzling, it's not bad, but it's not Musial), and two shit seasons.

Fors: According to Strauss, Tampa offered Jeff Niemann, J P Howell and a prospect.  In terms of the future, that package would have been a lot better than what we accepted. I would be inclined to agree with you on this, and thus ends my argument that the cards couldn't have got more for Rasmus. I would have made that trade in a blink. I didn't know about that. =(

alz wrote:

Instead, he was a .246 .332 .420 when we traded him. Currently, he's a .167 .194 .267 guy with Toronto. That's not a slump, that's a shit season.

What he's done in Toronto has been over a span of seven games.

Of course he's having a bad season. That doesn't mean he should be discarded for Edwin Jackson, though.

From the defensive side of things, I don't understand how he could be called much of anything except a failure. He's a centerfielder who defers to the corner outfielders, is scared of the wall, plays badly with anything hit over his head, and makes way too many bad throws for way too few good ones.

Michael Bourn also makes a lot of bad throws.

This wall nonsense started with Andy Van Slyke and makes me want to ram my head into the wall. I have no idea how a player not wanting to crash into a wall (which rarely ends in anything but injury) is anything but a player beig smart.

So. Aside from the upscale of promise, you have a young centerfielder who is a near liability on defense, had one decent/average season (.275 with 23 HRs isn't dazzling, it's not bad, but it's not Musial), and two shit seasons.

Who cares? The talent is there and outside of a lost season in 2008, Rasmus never not hit as a minor leaguer. There is a track record of success and you don't abandon a player after 2.5 seasons. It's ridiculous.

alz wrote:

Tk, he's played 3 seasons, two have been bad, one was decent/average.

I don't see why his rookie season and two months of 2011 carry more weight than 2010.

He may be the best minor-leaguer to ever grace a bus, but at the big league level, the pinnacle of his success has been 23 hrs on a .275 average. For his career, we're dealing with a .257 hitter with modest power numbers.

And he's only 24 with plenty of room to grow.

To put this in perspective, we've been all over Albert Pujols' ass all season because that sorry sack of shit is hitting .280 with 25 hrs so far this season. Adjust the expectations is all I'm saying, Rasmus could have 10 tools, but until he USES them in games, I don't see him as a stud, or even a good major leaguer.

The standards for Albert Pujols and Colby Rasmus are drastically different.

I don't know why there's such an insane love affair with Rasmus, you don't have it with Theriot (better offensive numbers, similar shitty defense), Jay (much better offensive numbers, much better defense), Schumaker (better offensive numbers, bad infield defense, better outfield defense)....

Neither Theriot or Schumaker have better offensive numbers. And they are both seven years older than Rasmus.

I'm just saying, I think somehow Rasmus has been put on a pedastal that he hasn't earned at all in here, and it surprises me because this group is a bunch of hardasses if the results aren't there, apparently Rasmus gets a (insert equivalent of Larussa bucks for this board) pass.

Nobody is giving him a pass. I'm saying that giving up on a 24-year-old with 2.5 seasons is remarkably stupid and short-sighted.

Max wrote:

tkihshbt wrote:

Nobody is giving him a pass. I'm saying that giving up on a 24-year-old with 2.5 seasons is remarkably stupid and short-sighted.

just glad it isn't me this time.

but for the same of argument, how old was reyes and how much service time did he have when we gave up on him?  what would it have been if we had traded him after the CWS game?

He was 25 with less than one year of service time. The game against the White Sox was only his fourth start, so...not much.

alz wrote:

"Nobody is giving him a pass. I'm saying that giving up on a 24-year-old with 2.5 seasons is remarkably stupid and short-sighted."

How is this not giving him a pass? It sounds remarkably like giving him a pass. I don't say this to be rude, I say it because you're granting Rasmus leeway you do not give to other people with better play. I do not understand that. Normally here, we call a spade a spade.

I said that he's been bad. I've also said he should still be on the team and the Cardinals should not have given up on him and if they were going to, then the return should have been better.

You're calling Rasmus a 24 year old with a tremendous upside and potential for greatness. I'm calling him a 24 year old waste of incredible talent with neither the drive or mental toughness to make it in the majors. Both are extreme, he's maybe in the middle, but I'm basing it off what he's done, over three years collectively. You're basing it on hopes. So my main confusion is that I'm normally the dream chaser on the board, while the rest of you berate me with facts until I finally fall through whatever cloud my head was in...

I'm not basing anything on hope. I'm basing it off of his minor-league pedigree, his secondary batting skills and the fact that he's not even entered his prime. These are all very good reasons why he can still be a productive player. We're talking about 1,500 plate appearances of a .769 OPS between the ages of 22 and 24. As badly as he's struggled this season, he's still got the 11th highest OPS among center fielders. Unless the team was convinced that there was no way, no how that Rasmus could ever come close to last year's numbers again (dubious), then he should have been kept.

"I'm also not sold that this team doesn't have a real chance getting to and running through postseason."

That's clearly what they were hoping for when they made these moves, I just think it's bad planning on their part.  They're counting on 2006.  Here's why I find a repeat of 2006 highly unlikely.

In 2006, the Cardinals opened the playoffs against the Padres.  The Padres' rotation for that series was Jake Peavy, David Wells, Chris Young and Woody Williams.  We moved on to face the Mets who threw Tom Glavine, John Maine, Steve Trachsel and Oliver Perez at us.  The Mets had beaten the Dodgers, who started Derek Lowe, Hong-Chi Kuo and Greg Maddux against the Mets.

In 2011, the Phillies are a virtual lock for the playoffs.  That means a rotation of Halladay, Lee and Hamels.  If the Giants make it back, you get Lincecum and Cain.  If Atlanta makes the playoffs you're looking at Hudson, Hanson, Jurrjens and Lowe (or Beachy) and a lock-down bullpen. 

The difference between 2006 and 2011 is the quality of the opposition.  None of those 2006 teams were obviously better than the Cardinals.  All of those teams were flawed.  I'm not saying the Phillies, Giants and Braves don't have flaws, but those flaws are relatively minor compared to their strengths.  Also, in 2006, we had a dominant pitcher in Carpenter.  The rest of the rotation left something to be desired, but Carpenter offered that one solid guy who rarely faltered.  The 2011 Carpenter isn't the same pitcher, and as much as I like Garcia, he isn't at that level yet.  Also, the 2006 Cardinals was a much more fundamentally sound team than the 2006 Cardinals.

Just my opinion, but the flaw in comparing 2011 to 2006 is overlooking stronger competition and greater weaknesses on our own team.  That's why I would have placed a greater emphasis on future return rather than instant gratification.

forsberg_us wrote:

Just my opinion, but the flaw in comparing 2011 to 2006 is overlooking stronger competition and greater weaknesses on our own team.  That's why I would have placed a greater emphasis on future return rather than instant gratification.

and if I were William DeWitt, Jr. I would say: "Yada, yada, yada.  More defeatism from the nattering Nabobs of negativism.  Tougher competition you say?  Hey, 4 or 5 of those guys might be injured by October, I respond.  No fundamentals you say?  We still have six weeks to learn baseball fundamentals, I respond.  If we can squeak past the Pirates and the Brewers then that means we have a pretty good ball club and anything can happen in October."

alz wrote:

Playing the Rasmus trade for a future that likely doesn't involve Pujols could be considered a bad planning move too.

I tend to see the 'win now' strategy as being a part of the 'keep Pujols a Card for life' strategy.

"One thing you didn't mention, Fors, was that the winds of fortune all came together at the right time to turn Jim Edmonds into a Hercules who could carry the Cards across the finish line on his shoulders through willpower alone."

Edmonds hit .250 in post-season 2006, including .227 in the LCS and .235 in the world series.  His primary contribution was his leadership through the "game ball."  I don't think a "game ball" is going to make this team any better.

"Just my opinion, but the flaw in comparing 2011 to 2006 is overlooking stronger competition and greater weaknesses on our own team."

Your points about the pitching and defense are valid, but this version hits much better than the 2006 team. Say what you want about Patterson, but the addition of him and Furcal turn the Cardinals from probably the slowest team in the league to a team that can make you worry a little bit about their speed. There's not a more dangerous threesome in the league than Pujols-Holliday-Berkman, and presuming Freese can stay healthy, they have a .275 hitter at every position but shortstop, and Furcal is obviously a better hitter than his average right now.
I know the adage is good pitching beats good hitting, but if I'm a pitcher on a prospective playoff team, I'd rather not face the Cardinals in the playoffs.