Of course, we can say Tony didn’t like the kid. But, maybe he just didn’t like the kid’s chances. He was clearly too immature to play consistently at that level. He was even too immature to handle being sent back down after the first tryout. He sulked and stunk the place up in the minors.

Teammates could have done a better job accepting the kid. But, you can’t force them to like a guy who is replacing a popular Rick Ankiel…especially if his childish behavior passed him off as entitled.

Could the coaches have done a better job working with Rasmus? Maybe. But, who knows for sure how hard they tried and how much they may have been rebuffed by Colby. Let’s face it, the kid is dumber than a box or rocks. Maybe they just couldn’t communicate effectively with him, and it was Colby who didn’t try hard enough to make it work. The coaches, after all, wanted Colby to be as good as he could be. Colby, on the other hand, apparently only wanted to be in the major leagues.

Look, Colby is who he is. It isn’t his fault he’s not very smart and terribly inarticulate. It isn’t necessarily his fault he’s immature. But, his make up may have played a predominant part for why he wasn’t ready to assume a role in the Show.

Hopefully, like most young men, the brain is in the process of maturing at 25 and Toronto and Colby will benefit from this. I just find it non productive to blame coaches because they couldn’t get to a kid who had too many external influences and too few brain receptors to deal with what would be a challenge to any human being.

If anything, Rasmus needed a sports psycologist. This is probably the area the cards messed up with. And This is probably something his agent also needs to help him with. He seems to be a guy who seems puts alot of pressure on himself. Heck, he nearly gave himself ulcers. I am sure the position he was put into didn’t help. Reading his latest inverview, you can see pressure is an ongoing problem.

Sports Pshycology is not a new phenomenon, but is slow to catch on.

I, personally, think that TLR and the coaching staff did Rasmus a huge disservice. I think that he felt marginalized and ostracized and the coaches exacerbated rather than corrected that issue. I think that the coaching he was receiving from StL was not particularly helpful and that it was focused on turning him into something he wasn’t rather than trying to build up what he was.

All of this is my opinion, which is firmly grounded in my understanding of the situation. I find most discussions of Rasmus to be utterly tiresome at this point but implications that it is all or mostly Rasmus’ fault are, to me, laughably uninformed.

That is my opinion; I understand that not everyone shares it.

Ranking centerfieldrs only works when they are good centerfielders and deserve to be there.

He is a bad centerfielder. You live with a bad centerfielder if they contribute at an above average rate. See Lance Berkman. Since, Rasmus does neither, he proably won’t stay in center. Which moves him to a corner outfielder. At that point, the numbers don’t look so good.

Even what you posted ranks him at 7th. And that isn’t really good.

What if the cards deside to play Allen Craig in center? i mean if we trow defense out the window and accept a bad centerfieler as the stats quo, then measue him against other options. Rasmus is not better that Hunter Pence, who would probably play a much better centerfielder.

Hunter Pence would be a better CF option

in 1580 PAs, he’s been worth 7.9 wins above replacement (which is well above average). he has a career .251/.322/.432 line, which is decent among centerfielders.

like i said, he had a bad 2011. over 2009-2010, he ranks 7th by WAR among centerfielders and 10th by wOBA. until 2011, nobody needed to make any “excuses” for one of the top centerfielders in the game.

So it’s still not a bad bet at all.;)

As a f’rinstance, Rasmus (disappointing as he was to most Redbird fans) gave the team over $30M of production, compared to a total expenditure of barely more than two million bucks. And that’s not accounting for what he returned in trade, either.

I am not saying Rasmus is a terrible outfielder. I am saying he is a bad Centerfielder. You talk about me dismisshing defensive stats, but it seems to be the other way around.When the best defensive metric says he is a below average CF, that is not very good. i also notice his stat slip as the sampe size growns. This further supports my claim that he is not a good outfielder.

You say you have not seen professional call his game weak? I have to strongly disagree. In fact, I find it the other way around. I have not seen anybody call his game strong. It seems you want to want to discuss this at a different angle. The issue I am talking about is his actual play, not his potential. Scouts often talk about potential and not necessarily the current level of play. I agree that he has great ability, but it just hasn translated on the field yet. If you want to discuss CAN he be a good CF, then I would agree with you.

You say his play was better in the minors, even by the eye test? I don’t know, I hadn’t seem him. But how many times have others? At how many levels? And to be honest, he would be judge differenlty in the minors as well. At the level, I would be more condcerned about arm strength vs. Which base he trew to. I would pay closer attention to physical attributes rather than how he performs. Becasue you don’t judge him by his play, but rather by his potential. Its a different standard at the ML level. Seriously, the guy has been in the majors 3 years he still is catching balls flat footed with runners on base. That is terrible.

Of couse I am focusing on the bad. Becasue that is where we are at. I have always beed dissapointed in his defense from day 1. Maybe it was becasue I was told he was a great defensive player and it hasn’t been the case. I will focus on the positives when they start to translate.

I completley agree that defensive metrics are flawed, especially compared to their offensive counter parts. But acknowledging this fact does not dismiss them. Rather, it shows and understanding about them.

If you find my view to be “absolutist” then please explain how so. But the truth is UZR is probably the best metric, but it takes 3 years of data for accuracy purposes. And they And Even UZR has positioning flaws.

And I am not saying that Rasmus is a horrible outfielder, I am saying he is a horrible centerfielder. Part of position judgements is how you compare to your peers. He doesn’t compare well.

Why does my statement have a truck sized hole in it. It is once again a fact that all we are hearing is excuses. Read the article by Gordon. Its my fault, its your fault (the fans), Bernie’s fault, rick Hummel’s fault (the media), Pujols’s Fault, Berkman’s fault (the veterans) everyone elses fault that he had a dissapointing season. Not once did he mention how he was vulnerable to offspead pitches.

Rasums has the tools to be a great player. But at some point you have to say he hasn’t got there yet. But what i find to me particularly dissapointing is his attitude. He doesn’t want to seem to take responsibility, i.e figure out why he isn’t successfull and fix it.

Last season was bad for him, both at the plate and in the field, and the defensive metrics support that view. But his defensive play in the minors and in his first two seasons in the majors was above-average or better, by eye and by metrics. What you are doing is focusing on the bad (in a previous discussion, you actually harped on one bad play as evidence of his inability to play center, despite the fact every single player in baseball history has made the same error in their careers) and dismissing the rest. Yes, Rasmus has issues that can derail him completely or partially as a player (and my feeling is that he’ll probably end up with a productive but disappointing career given his talent, like J.D. Drew), but your own absolutist statements about Rasmus aren’t based in reality.

And yes, small sample size. It’s not an excuse–it’s pointing out that your own statement has a truck-sized hole in it, and following that is the explanation of why (small sample stats fluxuate far more to the extreme because they’re more greatly influenced by slumps, which is why you have to break down what happened during that time to figure out the real issues rather than blithely quoting a counting stat and dismissing the player). Prospect fans sometimes like to use small sample sized performances as a reason to pump up a prospect or young player, so when somebody does the same exact thing to cut down a young player, I’m going to point it out as well.