In Defense Of The Rasmus Trade

hellenkellerref

So…

If you’re going to be wrong, might as well spectacularly wrong, amiright?

Yesterday we thought Colby Rasmus was a much bandied about trade rumor that had no real chance of being moved – a player destined to annoy the piss out of his manger and roughly 45% of fans at any given moment.

Today he was traded.

And if you thought the deal that sent Rasmus, Brian Tallet, P.J. Walters and Trever Miller to the Toronto Blue Jays for starter Edwin Jackson (free agent after 2011), Octavio Dotel, Marc Rzepczynski and … GULP… Corey Patterson was a fleecing by ‘America’s Hat’ known as Canada – well you wouldn’t be alone.

MLB Trade Rumors rounds up all the reaction: LINK HERE (Hint- it’s not going to make you feel good)

Cards Diaspora reserves the right to change our collective mind… but I don’t know if the Cardinals got bent over as bad as many pundits would lead you to believe.

Now on potential alone, Toronto cleaned up. Rasmus could end up being a perennial All-Star and Jackson could walk after 1/3 of a season and we look back on this deal in 4 years as a harbinger of the John Mozeliak era failure.

But as it stands today, the Cardinals are probably a better team in 2011.

Jackson has been pretty solid for a very inconsistent White Sox team and Dotel/Rzepczynski give the Cards a L/R bullpen upgrade that – SURPRISE – coughed up another game on Wednesday night.

In a long standing rant on this site, we believe that the Cardinals are one of 5 teams in MLB that shouldn’t really worry too much about the next few years and do everything they can to win THIS year. If you’re the Rays or the Reds – you need to protect your prospects. But the Cardinals, for all the talk of being cheap, do have the pockets to make a few mistakes and not get killed.

Nothing is promised tomorrow. So you might as well see what you can do now.

Some people like that kind of attitude. Others, for whatever reason, worry about how much the Cardinals spend. For all the promise that Rasmus has, we really don’t know what kind of MLB player he’s going to be like. In fact, it’s probably not even fair to judge this trade for another 3-4 years.

The Cardinals are mildly better today for trading Colby Rasmus. Frankly, that’s all I care about. They have a better shot in 2011 to win the division. That’s all you should care about.

Arrow to top