Weighing in on the Rasmus Trade
The popular consensus seems to be that Alex Anthopoulos and the Blue Jays might have robbed the Cardinals by giving away a smattering of players for Colby Rasmus. As is often the case these days, Edwin Jackson was the critical piece.Jayson Stark points out that Jackson has now been traded more times than he’s pitched a complete game.
It’s been well-documented that Rasmus has as high ceiling as he does a large attitude problem, especially when it came to listening to Tony LaRussa and other Cardinals coaches. Tony LaRussa does some odd things, but he’s no stranger to winning baseball games. When it comes down to it, one bad egg can spoil the whole 25 egg omelette, and a much more extreme example of this is the Manny Ramirez/Boston Red Sox situation in 2008. There’s no evidence that Rasmus ever went as far as Manny did (faking injuries, refusing to play, all of the “Being Manny” antics), and I don’t mean to say that the two players are at all alike when it comes to personality or work ethic. I do think that some of the trade response has downplayed the impact that these situations can have on team chemistry. For a while, people let Manny do his thing, and he became more and more of a liability.
While I believe that Toronto got away with one here, I’m also interested to see how the team handles Rasmus and how he handles this trade. If Rasmus is as difficult to deal with as LaRussa says, then I can imagine that being shipped away for a package that’s received this kind of response might only exacerbate Rasmus’ negative behavior. Conversely, we hear so much about playing environment and how teams handle young players. The move to Toronto could help Rasmus, putting him in a much less stressful baseball environment while providing plenty of competition in the form of the other AL East teams. I’ll certainly get more chances to see him in action throughout the rest of the year.
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