artie_fufkin wrote:

OK, bats. Wakey, wakey.

did furcal just offer a textbook demonstration of how to roll over a pitch and bounce into a 5-4-3 DP?

Wow.  That was bullshit.

Ballgame.

Season.

That "win now" trade looks better every day.

forsberg_us wrote:

Ballgame.

Season.

That "win now" trade looks better every day.

and i'm liking that trade to get westbrook, so that we could sign him to a hometown discount more and more.

tkihshbt wrote:

Max wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

Raz, or Ankiel? I seem to recall Ankiel had a decent arm.

RAZ!  As in, watching Ankiel I think we will not long miss RAZ.  FWIW, Ankiel can field and throw, for sure.

Good grief.

Over his last 900 plate appearances (that's the past 2.5 seasons) he's hit .229/.302/.388 with 229 strikeouts. That's a strikeout once every three plate appearances.

I know you hate Rasmus, but saying that Rick Ankiel is better than him (and he's nowhere close to being a good fielder either) is taking it just a bit too far.

We know you like him . . . an ordinary amount.  But Raz was not a good fielder.  Watching a mediocre to bad player like Ankiel emphasizes how ordinary Raz was.  We will soon forget the Rasmus Era.

[ps: let's go back to the reason why we have these protracted arguments: find the place where I said, or even inferred that Ankiel was overall better than Rasmus, cut and paste, please.]

forsberg_us wrote:

"We will soon forget the Rasmus Era."

I doubt it.  A player doesn't lead major league baseball in OPS in his category by accident.  To do so at age 23 suggest that perhaps there's a little talent involved.

After his bad start, Rasmus has a 7 game hitting streak (.357 during that stretch).  Meanwhile, Jon Jay is hitting .217 as the starting center fielder.  I suspect we'll be lamenting the Rasmus trade next spring when we're trying to figure out who is going to play center field in 2012.

I think we will see the trade as a bad deal for us, because I think we could have and should have gotten something better: the trade will neither put us over the hump this year, nor will it give us anything of lasting value.  Shame on Moz.

I think Rasmus is not a good, well-rounded centerfielder, and is closer to Chris Duncan than to Mickey Mantle.  He is an athletic guy who makes bad reads and much of the time looks lost.  The large majority of his throws are hopeless, regardless of his arm strength.  When he shows patience at the plate he gets some walks, and his OBP is not bad, although he has not yet shown the ability to consistently hit for average.  He hits with some power and that makes headlines.  He has some speed for a big guy.  If he regularly puts up numbers like he did in 2010: .276    .361    .498, he'll be considered an above average outfielder, but I don't ever see him winning a GG.

FWIW, Ryan Ludwick led all right-fielders in MLB in 2008 in OPS, and HR, RBIs.  Granted he wasn't 23, but it does seem to be little more than a difficult to explain blip in his career.

Last edited by Max (8/11/2011 10:22 am)

tkihshbt wrote:

I just don't see where all these bad reads are coming from. FWIW, I think he plays balls over his head pretty terribly and John Dewan's system backs that up, but as for catching balls in the gap, he does fine. All of his mishaps have come when trying to judge balls at the track.

Is there a metric for assessing how well he does at low liners that are in front of him?  Ankiel did a fine job of making a running catch in shallow center.

alz wrote:

I'm already exhausted with the Rasmus trade, he's hitting better in Toronto. I'd be lying if I said I was watching him to know if he's still dogshit in the field, or if he remembered how to do that too.

For any number of reasons, he couldn't do it here. Because Moz thought we had a chance to win now, he made a deal he thought would help us now. As amazing as Jackson is, the Brewers added Marcum and Grienke to their team, and then landed a guy with 46 saves in Franky Rodriguez, and don't even need him to close for them.

Should we advance, Philly went after Cliff Lee, got him back, landed Pence before the deadline, and last I saw they spotted LA 6 runs before beating them to put them about 3512 games over .500.

We're fucked, we were fucked the second Wain-o's arm snapped, we had some life late, but that's over. We're fucked. Get Pujols back to the table, and try to resign him before the end of the season.

well said.