While my opinion may change after I thoroughly think this through, my initial reaction is to completely disagree. I’m all in favor of Colby Rasmus getting a September call up, but in no way do I want the kid playing everyday.

Of course he has the potential to be a great player, and for years to come, but to have him step in to replace a guy like Skip Schumaker at this point in the season seems ridiculous. First off, it’s well documented that Rasmus struggles mightily for a while after each promotion to a new level. It’s extremely probable to for him to do the same after the jump to the bigs. Secondly, Schumaker is having a fantastic year, and in my opinion, is a pretty big part of why the Cards are in the position they’re in. To remove a know commodity, who’s proven himself all year, and replace him with a kid that still hasn’t figured out AAA would be stupid.

Just to clarify, I certainly think that Rasmus will be the superior player in the long run, and most likely, by a big margin, but right now, in a playoff hunt, I’d much rather have Schumaker in there. I think your scenario hurts the club far more than it helps.

“Today’s thread may be a pretty short one”

man i can’t sleep. am i crazy that i’m this excited about going to a Cardinals game? i mean seriously, i can’t sleep.

interesting thoughts HTown. one thing that i’ll point out like you said at the end, Colby isn’t the savior. the Cards chances on getting to the playoffs lay on the shoulders of the young gets at the back of the pen not blowing up. Carp & Adam providing some innings, stability & more importantly health in the rotation. our MI’s playing out of their minds. and the Brew Crew & flubs coming back down to earth.

we really can’t expect Colby to have a first month like Albert did. Colby’s good, and he could be a great MLB player. but he’s no Albert F’ing Pujols. he would provide a great lift at the top of the order if he did come into the show like a bat out of hell. but we really can’t, nor should we expect him to. especially when the Cards are fighting for the playoffs lives. we all know Tony’s not going to play him every day if they stay 2 or so games back of either the WC or Division. Skippy’s like a vet in Tony’s eyes when he stacks him up against Colby, and i’m sorry to say there’s almost no way he’ll start Colby over him. but like you said, a lot of things have to go his way for him to be just another piece of the puzzle that helps the Cards get to October.

i’ll take it one step further. say with the help of Colby, the Cards make the playoffs, do they then pull a move like the Angels did in 02 with KRod & put a vet on the DL, and have Colby take his roster spot? if he’s as good as you say he might be, how could they not?

my final thought, it’s 2:30am. Albert Pujols hit 2 home runs today. were a half hour into SportsCenter & the WWL could care less. for shame.

if Pujols was worth 2 wins over replacement in his first month, is it not possible for Rasmus to be worth 1.25 – 1.5 wins over replacement? Now, Skip so far has been about 4 wins over replacement. That would translate to about .8 wins over replacement per month so the difference between Rasmus and Skip, even best-case scenario, is probably .5 to .75 wins.

i dunno, maybe rasmus is a lock for “1.25 – 1.5” wins… but i really don’t see how you can come to that conclusion based on what albert pujols did in a month.

is how Rasmus would look at the whole thing. He famously starts slow at each level, then accelerates as he gains experience. This year he started to perk up, then slumped and really never got completely on track. In reading the interviews with him, I think he is a pretty simple guy. His whole vocabulary is baseball. He thought if he had a great spring training he would be put on the big club. He did have an excellent spring as HC notes above, but he didn’t make the team.

What I have read is that this left him dejected. His expectations were that he would excel and make the team and that would be that. But according to Joe Strauss, as early as the first week of March (IIRC) he had already been ticketed for Memphis. And the reality is that he probably never a chance to make the team out of ST. So?

So…what we have is failure to communicate. Colby’s a simple guy. You tell him things. He processes them and acts according to them. His mental state adjusts the reactions to his behavior and the cycle repeats. Tony LaRussa never told him he would make the team…but he was just trying to push the right buttons probably, and rather than just get the competitive fluids bubbling, he inadvertently (IMHO) created an expectation in Colby’s mind that he would make the team.

This is not a new development with LaRussa. He plays mental games with many if not all of his players to a greater or lesser extent. Some respond well to them, others get frustrated and a few lose their tempers—or worse, like a certain third baseman who now travels on a visa to work.

Colby now regrets missing the Olympics and is telling interviewers he wants to end the season with a bang. He is absolutely, I think, counting on a call-up to St. Louis. I think it should happen, but how this kid is handled is extremely important. His role needs to be really clear, but it shouldn’t be a token assignment. He needs a bonafide chance to help the team, not sit around like Brian Barton and pinch-hit every fourth game. He shouldn’t be jerked around, and I’m just a little bit afraid that’s exactly what TLR will do to him.

so I’d like to try and explain it and then it can all be done with.

Over the last month or so, certain personalities on here had begun to wear on me. That’s to be expected as the community expands with each season. I had written a pretty abusive reply, which is extreme for me because 1) I know better and 2) I’d rather not give the person or persons I’m replying to the satisfaction of getting the GONG. But anyways, I wrote it but luckily didn’t submit it.

I was still fuming and stumbled upon cardsrul’s reply to a dialogue I was having with mojow11 about the whole Edmonds thing. In so many words, he felt that I was one of the worst behaving personalities on here and that my attitude was one of the reasons he stayed away from the site. I realized that if I was having the same effect on a fellow longtime poster that I felt was trolling on the part of others, then maybe I was the problem.

Sorry to derail your morning post HC but I didn’t think this warranted a fanpost.

But I don’t think he will get to be a everday starter in the final month of the season in a race for the Wild Card. Plus It will be really hard to take Shumaker out of the line-up considering right now he is in the top 10 in the NL in BA. I think Rasmus should get a 4-5 starts in Sept. but he shouldn’t expect anything more than that and most of those starts should be against lefties when Shumaker might be on the bench anyways. And I hope Tony & Mo lets the kid know this but still letting him know that he has a big future with the team.

Mo has some pretty big decisions on how to make up the OF next season. With Ankiel, Ludwick & Shumaker having great seasons it puts Mo in kind of a tough spot. But I think everyone knows Shumaker will be the odd man out even with his great 2008 season. But the good thing is Skip will be MUCH more tradable than he was last off season and I would think Mo could find a good deal for Skip. Ludwick and Ankiel are locks in my opinion. And they just can’t leave Rasmus in the minors anymore. It will be time to see if he is the real deal or not. Mather should be the 4th OF for next season as well to back up Ankiel/Rasmus if either get hurt. At least that’s how I see the way things will pan out going into 2009.

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There is danger in creating the idea, though it wouldn’t be true, that Rasmus is the savior – here to propel us to the playoffs. That wouldn’t be his role. His role would be to support Pujols, Ludwick, Glaus, and Ankiel and not to carry the team. That point would need to be made abundantly clear to him, to the media, and to the fans. But there is a danger if his being called up creates that mindset!’

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”Since we’re behind we have little to lose by trying this?"

We have the the third best record in the NL and we’re one game behind the Brewers in the win column for the WC.

How do you make it clear that suddenly sitting Schumaker and playing Rasmus has no performance implications?

Now you’re the one everybody’s making fun of for not keeping things brief. I feel ever so vindicated.

No way do you sit Skip and play an unproven, just off the DL rookie in the middle of a hot pennant race. Forget about it, bad idea, lets talk about something else. We’ll see Rasmus in 09.

For the record, I’m a fan of Rasmus and think he’s a long term answer, but let me break down point by point why I think this isn’t the best of ideas:

Your first point mentions playing from behind, and adding Rasmus increases the chances of winning—a gamble worth taking. Sorry, but I don’t see it. Skip’s done everything that’s been asked of him and then some this year. If you unceremoniously bench him for an untried, unproven rookie, albeit a talented one, you risk a clubhouse revolt among the veterans. Remember, these are human beings, not machines. I think without the cohesion that this team has had all year, the chance of winning drops. I could buy your argument id there was an outfielder that wasn’t getting it done, but there isn’t.

In your second point, you mention that it will help him acclimate to big league pitching. True, but…so what? With his notoriously slow starting history, a month in St Louis of what he did starting out in Memphis wouldn’t do him or the team any good. To use spring training stats as a yardstick seems to be specious, at best.

Lastly, I think it would defintiely create the impression that Rasmus is some sort of savior—and the added pressure of that could actually retard his development, not speed it.

I like Rasmus, and I hope he becomes one of the all-time great Cardinals. I hope they bring him up in Sept to get a taste of the big leagues, but just not in the scenario you described.

the guy is going to be rusty and he was just catching on to triple A pitching
bring him in for the power off the bench and spot starts
skip has earned his playing time

i hope to see phelps and freese up to
their power numbers have been great in Memphis

1. “Another advantage to this approach will be that it won’t speed up Rasmus’ arbitration clock. He’ll get major league experience, and some service time, but it won’t put him a year closer to arbitration-eligibility or free agency.”

Not necessarily true. I don’t think there is any guarantee that Rasmus makes the MLB team to start next season. If you add this month to his arbitration clock, we probably wouldn’t be able to call him up and prevent him from being a Super 2 until Mid July or so next season. It would cost the team money in the long run to call him up now.

2. I think Rasmus’ tendency to struggle at every level so far in his career initially, will prevent him from getting called up AND get significant playing time down the stretch. I also don’t think he fits in the leadoff role very well, so we’d be strapped by putting someone like Kennedy or Miles in there every night.

3. I just really don’t see this happening. Not at all.

Interesting idea, but I disagree. Rasmus hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire in AAA, in fact he’s been something of a disappointment. Missing significant time to the DL couldn’t have helped either. I think that it would be unrealistic to EXPECT him to put up numbers (specifically OBP) comparable with Skip’s with those two factors in mind. You risk pissing off an entire locker room full of guys, some of whom you’re going to have to reckon with financially sooner rather than later, for production that may, but probably will not, be just a hair better right now. That’s an enormous gamble, considering that the BOB is not exactly dead in the water here.

Now, if Rasmus was going bat-shit crazy with the lumber down in Memphis then we may have something…But he’s not. He’s not proven he’s ML ready quite yet. His minor league OPS is currently worse than Schumaker’s MAJOR League OPS. If that’s NOT beating a guy out for a spot I don’t know what is.

I was figuring on 5, but have no basis for that.
these would probably include Motte, a Flores, Phelps, a catcher and ?

Can’t find it on the p-d or anywhere else, so I figured I’d ask here: How many curves did Wainwright throw last night and how did they look? Anyone know?

I definitely think Raz should get the call before 9/1 just in case he catches fire and we actually make the playoffs. Not that I think the only chance we have to make the playoffs is if he catches fire.

The difference is I would play him the first game or two after he gets called up and just react to what happens. The best guys play, right? I don’t buy into any of this “he starts every level slow” stuff – this isn’t another step on the career ladder, it is the top rung. If he strings together a bunch of good games and costs Skip some playing time, isn’t that a nice problem to have? He could potentially spell Ank and Lud, too.

I do disagree about the part that you just write his name in the lineup everyday irrespective of performance. That is what you do next year, even if he sucks. If it is good enough for Yadi, it works for Colby as well.

rasmus stays in the minors until september 1
skip, ankiel, ludwick are the outfield with the caveat
skip sits against lefties and mather and barton play left

between injury recovery, not that great when he got hurt, and the public and media pressure that will be on him, especially at home, i think we’ll get more out of the rotation given above

call-up, not call-up, etc is one side of the coin. the other is to trade him. i bring this up after watching purported peer (if not superior) jay bruce. the league figured him out pretty quick. this brings up the question: when will jay bruce be worth as much in trade as he was last year? to me, this is the real question mo is wrestling with.