I thought I was tough on Colby Rasmus.
I trashed him when he was whining at the end of the 2010 season.
That prompted his defenders to start writing to me, saying he was one of the 20 most valuable players in the game. (?)
I poked fun at him when he was dealt to Toronto and wondered where he was watching the World Series as the Cardinals won without him.
And of course some readers thought I was overly harsh and unfair.
(I realize that he is a major leaguer and I’m not and I don’t have 1/1,000,000th of his talent. I would also know not to whine myself off of the Cardinals.)
But my blog posts are not nearly as brutal as this picture I found on the CN Jersey’s website.
They sell uniforms of many of the Cardinal players from last year’s World Series.
Sure there is Carpenter and Pujols and others.
But a Rasmus Cardinals uniform with the 2011 World Series patch on it?
He was sitting on his Barcalounger watching the game, drinking a Schlitz during the World Series.
He was already a member of the Blue Jays while the pitchers he was traded for, Octavio Dotel, Edwin Jackson and Marc Rzepczynski (sic), were helping St. Louis clinch a title.
Rasmus is 25 now. This is the time he should be breaking out. Instead the 2009 season remains his high water mark. He was rotten in 35 games with Toronto at the end of last year and this year, has been plodding along at a .232 average and an unimpressive .708 OPS.
He DOES have 3 more homers this year than Albert Pujols.
In 2009, when Rasmus was a Rookie of the Year candidate and Pujols was running away with back to back MVPs, the two looked like they were going to be the foundation of many great Cardinals titles to come.
If St. Louis had announced at the end of the 2009 season that they were signing Pujols to an 8 year extension and locking Rasmus up beyond his arbitration and first year of Free Agency, the Cardinals would have been praised as a great long term thinking organization.
Here we are in 2012, Rasmus and Pujols are struggling. The Cardinals got 3 pitchers for Rasmus who helped win a title, will get 2 picks for Pujols and a decade of salary relief.
And oh yeah, the Cardinals are in first place.
They are indeed a great long tern thinking organization.
As for this Rasmus jersey? I’m just glad they are being sold as “Replicas.”
I do NOT think this was a mistake.
I think there was someone there who is a Cardinal fan who thought “F— that guy.”
Sully Baseball 