37 Jays in 37ish Jays - Colby Rasmus Is Running Out of Runway

Who: Number 28, Colby Rasmus. Centrefielder. Bats left. Throws left. 26 years old. 6’2”, 200 lbs. Lovely hair.

Provenance: Columbus, Georgia, U.S.A. Attended high school nearby in Seale, Alabama. Drafted in the first round (28th overall) of the 2005 amateur draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. Received $1 million signing bonus.

Acquired: Via trade on July 27, 2011 as part of a three-team deal with the Cardinals and White Sox. Many players were involved. But that's neither here nor there.

Contract Status: Avoided arbitration with a one-year, $4.675 million deal in January. The Blue Jays hold one more year of arbitration rights before Rasmus becomes a free agent the 2014 season.

Back of the Baseball Card: .313 OBP, .422 slugging in 571 games (2205 plate appearances) with St. Louis and Toronto. Hit 76 homers and stole 24 bags. Posted a 9.2 career WAR (as per Fangraphs) and 3.3 WARP (Baseball Prospectus). Strike out rate of 23.0%, walk rate of 8.9%.

2012 Stats: Set career high in games played (151), but career low in OBP (.289). His OPS of .689 was only fractionally better than his previous low of .688 posted in 2011. Matched career high in home runs (23). Walk rate of 7.5% was lowest since his rookie season. Struck out 23.8% of the time.

Injury History: Missed a few games with groin problems in 2012. His only DL stint over his career was a month in late 2011 with a wrist sprain, but he has a long list of minor boo-boos in recent years: Fingers, abdomen, leg, knee, ankle, foot.

Looking Back: Colby Rasmus has become a polarizing figure among Jays fans. Many casual observers wonder what the fuss was about this alleged blue chip prospect who strikes out too much and never seems to live up to the hype.

On the other hand, those who like Colby like him a lot. If you cut up the season into convenient slices, you can find moments where he looks like the emerging star who can provide very good defense and tear the cover off the ball at the plate.

For instance: If you take the 52 games from May 5th through to the All-Star break, Rasmus posted a .908 OPS (.352 OBP) with 13 homers and 14 doubles. He also lowered his strikeout rate to 16.7% over that period. He was exciting in much of that first half of the season, and a fan could start to dream on the idea that he was finding his footing. If only that was the end of the story.

Following the All-Star break, Rasmus fell off significantly, with an almost unfathomable .515 OPS through his final 66 games of the season. Part of that might have been due to extraordinary bad luck, as evidenced by his .227 BABIP post-break. But it seemed as though some of the improvements made in his swing and approach - the quicker, quieter swing and his daring proximity to the plate - went missing at times as he struggled down the stretch.

I hate the word "inconsistent", because it is entirely overused in sports talk. But Rasmus seems to tinker with his swing and approach and mindset so often that you never really know which player is about to step into the box on any given at bat.

Looking Ahead: One wonders if Rasmus heard Anthony Gose's footsteps behind him as they took they took their frigid tour of Western Canada this winter.

While Gose might have struggled in his first taste of the Majors, there's reason to believe that over a full season, he might be able to put up equivalent offensive value to Rasmus' while providing defense that is at least the equal if not better. You have to think that the Jays' brain trust will closely monitor  the return on their investment in Rasmus in 2013 with a view towards planning out the 2014 season.

And if we're talking about these players in econometric terms: Colby Rasmus is a volatile commodity. At Colby's best, it's hard to imagine anyone in the Jays' plans matching his dynamic offensive game. At his worst, he's a below-replacement-level centrefielder who might struggle to maintain his playing time on a team with more depth.

For those of us who genuinely like Rasmus, love watching him play and constantly hope for him to prove himself to the non-believers, this year could be agonizingly tense.

Pessimistically: Rasmus continues to hack away at the bottom of the order, doing little to keep his spot. He paves the way for a move out of Toronto to become someone else's reclamation project.

Optimistically: In a deeper lineup where he could have become a role player, Rasmus asserts himself as a significant bat in the middle of the lineup, posting an OPS over .800 with game-changing power.

Friday Tweet Bag - Answering Your Winter Questions, Such As They Are

For those of us north of the border, it is ridiculously cold, and Spring Training seems so very far away. It's almost disheartening, isn't it?

So let us warm the cockles of our shivering hearts with a little baseball chatter. You tweeted me your questions, and I shall answer them to the best of my abilities, acknowledging the fact that I'm just some slob who has little authority to do so. Let's dig into the Tweet Bag.

(Before we start: Sorry for that weirdly over-enthusiastic piece of self-effacement. It's just that some people have spent too much time in academia and dislike when people speak a degree of certitude. But reading all that weaselly passive voice is no one's idea of fun. And that's what this is supposed to be: Fun. That's all.)

Onward! Tweet Bag regular @whatadewitt asks: With Gose looking so good in Sept (I know don't count sept stats) how long of a leash do you give Rasmus this year? 

Before we start down this road, I'm a bit shocked that Anthony Gose played 56 games last season. Was it really that many? Oddly enough, those games split perfectly between 28 played in his initial call to the bigs, and 28 in September.

Let's agree to disagree on just how good Anthony Gose looked in September of last year. He certainly didn't look as bad as he did in July/August (.256 OBP, .244 SLG), but his .740 OPS (.347/.393) could just as likely be a blip or the result of some weaker pitching as it is an indication that he'd turned a corner and steadied himself at the MLB-level.

My guess is that we will see Gose for a sizable chunk of the season, but that it will have little to do with Rasmus' performance. If an everyday outfielder goes down with an injury, I'd assume that the Jays will look to Gose to fill in. I doubt he'll come up unless he were to get full time at bats.

Nextly, @coolhead2010 asks: How much weight do you see AA put into the personality/outlook of his player acquisitions?Does this bode well for Colby Rasmus?

Wow, you guys really have it in for Colby Rasmus, don't you?

To your first question: I think that the "soft skills" matter somewhat to Alex Anthopoulos, but not to the degree that you hear them discussed after roster moves are made. On-field performance still matters most, but "intangibles" talk is easier to expound upon with the members of the media.

Don't forget that a year ago, Anthopoulos went through a period of criticism for his lack of transparency among members of the baseball press. Talking up the intangibles provides lots of fodder for the public discussion about these moves without AA being forced to open up in any sort of substantive manner about the process behind the transactions.

As for how any of this affects Colby, I don't get the impression that Rasmus is a bad dude at all, though that's a position I take from a perspective that is far detached from the clubhouse, and a point of view that is sympathetic to him in general.

The bottom line is that if Colby hits like he showed he could for a significant chunk of last season, we'll talk a lot less about his demeanour and hair and all these trivialities.

And so on...@KenInToronto asks: How many AB does Cooper get this year? Any chance he forces Lind to the bench?

On the one hand, I think that people should brace themselves for a lot of Adam Lind this year. He might be hidden from tough lefties, and me might only start four days per week, but by the season's end, I'm guessing that he has at least 400 ABs in a Blue Jays uniform.

Think of it this way: Lind is an asset with virtually no value at this point, and the only transactions left for the Jays to make are to eat his salary and release him or eat his salary and trade him for nothing. Same difference, pretty much.

But put yourself into Alex Anthopoulos' shoes for a moment, and imagine that you're walking down the hall to tell your bosses - who just opened up their wallet and provided a sizable increase in your operating budget - that you're about to flush $7 million down the toilet because you just want to get this one player out of town. Do you think that's a wise use of Anthopoulos' professional capital within the organization?

There's probably some sort of argument to be made that David Cooper - the unremarkable mayonnaise sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off that he is - might be a marginally better option for 2013, especially if he were used as a platoon player in the way I'm supposing that Lind will.

Cooper's 111 OPS+ (in a tiny 145 PA sample) was nominally better than Lind's 96 (or Brett Lawrie's 97, or J.P. Arencibia's 89), but he pulled that off with a 2.8% walk rate (i.e. four bases on balls) and a BABIP of .333. If you're asking me to bet on the sustainability of those numbers versus the possibility of a decent-enough year from Lind, I'd take the latter.

Moving right along, let's finish off with the Speed Round!

@JamieWine asks: With the Jays make over will venom to be directed at Rasmus and/or Lind? Or will it be someone else? Or will it be a love in?

I think the first few questions should give you a sense of that. I'm guessing someone other than those two unexpectedly emerges as a significant goat this year, though I also imagine that Jays fans won't let up on either player until they are moved.

@tJays05 asks: What are the chances of someone other than Mark DeRosa being the 25th man? 

I suppose it is possible. There's a chance that DeRosa arrives in Dunedin and there is a sudden realization - either on his part or the team's - that he's no longer cut out to be a major leaguer. I don't see anyone wresting the job from him in a Spring Training battle.

@walshag asks: Is there really a competition for back up catcher, or is Hank White (Henry Blanco) a lock?

Given the need for a catcher who can reliably handle the knuckleball, I'd assume the backup catcher job is Josh Thole's. Not to mention the fact that Thole has an outside chance to push Arencibia for playing time if he reverts to his 2009-11 form (.350 OBP in 672 PAs.) Blanco strikes me as org depth.

@mattyjames1 asks: Who's gonna hit more dingers next year, Lind or Rasmus? Lawrie or Arencebia? EE or JB? Gibby or Fasano? 

Yeah! Never mind the rate stats, these are the dingers! The long bombs! The jackxxxxxxs! My best guess is that Lind hits more than Rasmus, Lawrie hits more than JPA, and Encarnacion bests Bautista. Though I could go either way on those, which probably makes them decent prop bets.

As for Gibby and Fasano? Pfft. Now you're just being silly.

‏@Roll_Fizzlebeef asks: New Orleans Pelicans new logo/colours out today. Your thoughts? Bets on next baseball team to go through the laundry switcheroo?

Ah, nice job appealing to my uniform nerdery. I really like the Pelicans name and logo. There's a great little detail at the top middle of the logo with a wrought iron feature, playing off the local architecture. I'd want to see more of the actual uniform kit before I pass judgment, but this is a nice start.

As for which MLB team takes the plunge next, you have to consider who hasn't made a change in recent years, which narrows the pool. My best guess is that given the new ownership, the Los Angeles Dodgers might add a new alternate jersey. Or not. Who knows? Regardless, there will probably be at least five teams making uniform amendments for 2014. 

@JoshKogon asks: If you were managing, how closely do you examine Bonifacio vs Izturis for starting 2B?

Seriously, I've gone back and forth on this question all winter long. I like both players, and have since before they became Jays. At the moment, I'd lean towards Izturis because I think he has better walk and strikeout rates, as well as more experience at the position. But ask me in five minutes, and I could change my mind.

Finally, @EthanDR asks: How much do you miss baseball? Use specific, comparable examples.

I miss baseball like...um...A LOT. Like a...um...Sorry, I'm not good with similes.My mind is like an empty pail when it comes to similes.

But needless to say, I look forward to baseball season. Like Tom Hanks looked forward to having an awkward moment with Helen Hunt at the end of Cast Away. Does that work?

Angst Now, or Angst Later?

The last time I blogged hereabouts, I was railing against the dying of the light, refusing to go gentle into that good night, swearing I would enjoy the last few weeks of the Blue Jays' disastrous 2012 season.  It's been a challenge, friends.

Since then, out of thirteen games, they've won... [counts]... TWO?  Two goddamn wins?  Yes, that's apparently accurate.  I've tried to focus on the positive -- the settling in of Adeiny Hechavarria, the emerging adequacy of Aaron Loup, I'm sure there are one or two others -- but losing sucks.  The fight to finish fourth in the division ahead of the equally discombobulated Boston Red Sox has been as dreary an endeavour as you might expect.

I think it's jealousy that I'm feeling, actually.  I've taken to cursing the improbable Orioles every time they pull another extra-inning win out of their hindquarters, because I refuse to believe the talent they've assembled there is better than what Toronto has on a position by position basis, yet there they are, challenging for the division lead in late September.  We haven't seen that for two decades as Jays fans, and to see another long-suffering AL East franchise enjoy such a stretch now makes me envious.

On the plus side, though, this ugliness has probably provided me with a certain amount of objectivity I didn't have before about some players on whom decisions will need to be made in the off-season.  As a fan, I want them all to succeed, and even when they don't, I often look past their flaws or assume they can be easily rectified with some off-season coaching, adjustments, and presumably pixie dust.  But this season's struggles have led me to question whether I'd be prepared to see even some of my favourite players be moved in off-season deals if it meant an upgrade.

I think it's healthy to begin to re-evaluate which players are untouchable when it comes time to address the needs that Alex Anthopoulos has candidly identified.  Last off-season, I was singing Yunel Escobar's praises as a long-term solution at shortstop.  Now, given his dismal offensive season, to say nothing of his other issues, I wouldn't hesitate to include him in a trade (even if that's admittedly selling low on an asset).  But the Escobar situation is pretty much self-evident by now.  Who else on the roster is untouchable now -- or more to the point, who would you have considered a longshot to be traded six months ago that now might be more realistically on the block?  Does Colby Rasmus still get the benefit of the doubt after what we've seen apart from one strong month?  Is next year's 23-year-old version of Brett Lawrie more valuable as a trade chip than he will be over the long term as the Blue Jays' every day third baseman?

I expect the Jays' marketing department and/or the Mounties to show up at my door at any moment for daring to suggest that the Blue Jays could trade Brett Lawrie.  And I'm not even saying they should.  Maybe it's just this bleak, brutal September that has me thinking things are worse than they are, and players that were once seen as cornerstones could now be trade bait.  Thankfully there are people who actually get paid to think about baseball making these decisions on a more informed basis than me.

But I do believe there are some surprises in store this off-season with respect to what the team will have to give up to get those much-needed upgrades.  Some prospect-porn types on whom we've been dreaming might end up on some other team's Eastern League affiliate.  And yes, even some big-league players to whom we've become attached will change uniforms too.  The last couple of off-seasons have been filled with one kind of angst:  the kind that comes from the team perceived to be doing little or nothing to improve.  If Anthopoulos starts dealing, we might be faced with a whole different kind of angst this time around.

Stepping Up

Image via Daylife

This 2012 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays has a way of keeping you on your toes, doesn't it?

There's been plenty of virtual ink spilled over the past several days about the return of  a certain rosy-cheeked carnivore from the deserts of Nevada, and the underwhelming-yet-still-fascinating trade the club made on Friday to dovetail with the prodigal son's return.  Especially this time of year, it's easy to spend so much time picking through the entrails of roster moves and transactions, or speculating about the next deal we'd like to see, that we forget to sit back and just enjoy baseball too.

The game is easier to enjoy, of course, when your favourite team is hanging 28 runs on the Red Sox in their own ridiculous ballpark over a three game sweep.  But it's also particularly fulfilling when the players we so desperately want to see fulfill their enormous potential begin to do so before our very eyes -- when the call-ups for which we have pined show signs of that elusive breakthrough, or the acquisitions we believed would pay dividends begin to do so.  Such is the case with what now constitutes two-thirds of the team's starting outfield:  Travis Snider and Colby Rasmus.

As the Jays put the finishing touches on a comprehensive beatdown of the Beantowners this afternoon, I remarked on Twitter that the travails of this season, from the rash of injuries to the Ricky Romero regression, will have been worth it to me if we could look back in the offseason and say that this was the year that Snider and Rasmus cemented their places as outfield stalwarts for years to come.  There was no shortage of question marks about the roster entering the regular season, but the performance of those two players were top-of-mind for me and I'm sure for many others.

But with Snider opening the year in the minors again, and Rasmus struggling in the early going, the bandwagon was emptying quickly.  Now, before everyone hauls out the small-sample-size-stick and begins beating me about the head with it, I know that Snider's 1.112 OPS comes from only the three games in Boston.  But my heavens, it's hard not to like what I see already.  A spectacular diving catch in the ninth inning to help preserve Saturday's victory. A rocket to the deepest part of Fenway Park today, off a left-hander against whom he'd had zero previous career success.  A ringing double off the Green Monster as a further display of the power to all fields that had scouts, fans and front offices drooling for years.  Snider's a little older now, and how I hope he's found whatever it is that great ballplayers have that allows them to maintain their elite form for years.

Because there's little I'd like more than to see a healthy, productive Blue Jays outfield of Snider, Jose Bautista and Colby Rasmus for the next three or four years at least, the way it's supposed to be.  Rasmus, as we've seen, has turned things around dramatically from the lost and laconic castoff from St. Louis from the late part of 2011 and the early part of this season.  While his production has tailed off in the past month -- his OPS has dropped from a season high of .828 on June 25 to .781 entering today's game -- he continues to hit the ball extremely hard, and his .213 BABIP over the same period would seem to indicate there are better results to come.

More revealing, though, is just how big the gap appears to be between Rasmus as a major leaguer and the recently recalled Anthony Gose.  It may have been presumptuous to think that Gose would immediatly rake in the bigs given his somewhat mixed minor league track record.  Again, the small sample size police are free to start their sirens here regarding not only Gose's time in the majors but the Rasmus resurgence as well.  Regardless, it's hard not to compare how the two at least look at the plate and see that one belongs and one -- well, let's just say not yet.  Gose may yet force the issue in centerfield, but I'm very happy to see that Snider is being given a greater opportunity.  If he needs an example of a couple players who've taken advantage of such opportunities, he only has to look to the outfielders to his left.

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy

It's amazing what a short losing streak can do to a team in the American League East, isn't it?  Make no mistake, the Blue Jays are in the midst of a bit of a funk, but it's not a historically bad spell of losing, nor has it come against teams they "should" be beating with more regularity.  Yet here they are:  at the time of writing, they've been swept in Arlington, after losing two of three in Tampa, and all of a sudden, they're back to being .500 for the first time since April 19.

All of which wouldn't be so bad if the Jays were in a normal, sane, happy division where a team can coast along winning one game for every one they lose, maybe get hot at some point in the summer, and still be in the thick of a playoff race.  But that's not the AL East.  Things are still a little topsy-turvy in the division -- I maintain that there's something altogether unholy about the Baltimore Orioles even being close to first place this late in the season, and I'm stocking up on holy water just in case -- but, as Mike Axisa of Yankees site River Avenue Blues pointed out on Twitter, it's starting to look a little more familiar.

So the Jays will wake up tomorrow far closer to last place in the American League East than they've been all season.  Last place!  After being in a playoff spot just a few short days ago!  The arse is gone right out of 'er!  Would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?  Yes, I would, Org Guy.

Now: let's not be too sarcastically sanguine about things.  Winning is better than losing, and I'd be a helluva lot happier if this team could find a way to win again.  It's a lot more challenging, though, when you're already dealing with health issues in the batting order that created the curious double play combination of Brett Lawrie-Omar Vizquel in the later innings today.  Kelly Johnson's cortisone shot in his leg, stacked on top of Yunel Escobar's departure with a groin issue, will likely necessitate more roster moves.  Don't look now, but the shuttle between the big club and Las Vegas is getting much more frequent, and there are no signs of it slowing down.  We might get an Adeiny Hechavarria sighting on the big league roster before the week is out.  Unfortunately, far too many of his 51s teammates, especially in the bullpen, have been summoned ahead of him, and having Texas take a... well, a Texas-sized chunk out of the pitching staff this weekend didn't help matters.

If there are tickets for flights back to Vegas in the travelling secretary's desk drawer, it feels like only a matter of time before one ends up in Eric Thames' locker.  The somewhat defensible decision to take advantage of Travis Snider's last remaining option year, keeping Thames in Toronto for the start of the season, has simply not been a success.  Unlike the clear improvement over time that we've seen from Colby Rasmus, it doesn't look like more at-bats will make it much better for Thames.  It's easy to say we all predicted this and that Snider should have been up the whole time, but it shouldn't be forgotten that Thames didn't do anything to lose the job to open the year.  Fair's fair, but by now, after -0.5 bWAR on the still-young season, I think the team knows what it has in Thames, and it isn't anything special.  I'd be a lot more optimistic about not only a switch in left field, but an overall improvement out of the position, if Snider didn't seem to have some lingering wrist issues he can't seem to shake.

A Travis Snider injection, or a Vladdy Guerrerro, Adeiny Hechavarria or Anthony Gose, aren't going to make this team an instant contender (or at least not a significantly greater threat to contend than they are currently).  But a winning streak -- a real, honest-to-goodness streak of like seven straight wins -- would sure mean a lot to this team.  The Jays have won four in a row on three separate occasions in 2012.  In the AL East, four in a row just never seems like enough, and there are so many landmines in between those strings of wins.  They need to start dodging more of them.

Backyard Baseball

I was a bit nostalgic this afternoon watching the second half of Toronto's 6-5 loss to the visiting New York Mets.  My viewing of the first half of the game was pre-empted by some much-needed yard work, which is as much a May Long Weekend tradition as sitting on my ass watching baseball.

I finished up in the backyard, craving a cold drink and a place to put my feet up, and I remembered fondly my days as a youth, when I would spend more than a few afternoons like this one on the back patio of the house where I grew up, watching Blue Jays games with my dad.  He wasn't a hardcore baseball fan, but he was certainly television-addicted, and he was good with electronics to boot.  I don't know of another house on our block that illegally split a cable TV feed into as many locations as ours, including a permanent jack on our back deck.  A little portable colour TV set would be set up in a spot shady enough to restrict the glare and create an outdoor viewing experience that, while imperfect, was still better than being inside.  I watched a lot of great sports, including some great baseball players, on that back deck.

I don't think I could convince The Org Wife to let me begin drilling holes through our walls and feeding coaxial cable through the drywall.  But as both the mercury and Henderson Alvarez's ERA steadily rise this summer, the thought has certainly crossed my mind.

About that Alvarez stuff:  it's been covered to death elsewhere, by people who have a stronger grip on the stats involved than me, but the last two starts for Alvarez, including today's, are looking very much like a manifestation of the much-dreaded regression that was just bound to happen sooner or later.  In fact, The Alvarez Regression has seemed like such an inevitability for so long that very few people seem all that surprised -- as if nobody really believed he was as good as his results were making him out to be, even if they couldn't put their finger on why.  It's a really good thing thing this team's fan base isn't prone to overreaction or anything, and they'll continue to give Alvarez the benefit of the doubt as more of those ground balls find holes.

Besides, it's not like fans don't have better things to worry about.  Like, say, the fact that the much-ballyhooed yet laconic centerfielder acquired in a big trade at last season's deadline is a bit of an offensive black hole at the moment.  With Adam Lind now optioned (outrighted? waived? It's something like that.  Anyway, we don't have him to kick around anymore) to Las Vegas, I imagine by about the second game of the upcoming series against the Rays, the calls will be loud and lusty to give Colby Rasmus the same treatment, albeit with little consideration given to whether there's a player on the roster capable of manning center in his absence.  Oh, sure, if you have to, you can run Rajai Davis out there, and he's at least getting on base at right around his career average, and hitting with a bit more pop in limited time this season, and... wait.  Scratch all that.  I don't want to give anyone any ideas.  I don't think we have to worry about Rasmus.  Yet.  But maybe soon.  (Excuse me while I anxiously look at Anthony Gose's K rate.)

A guy we don't have to worry about is Jose Bautista, not that I'm telling you something you didn't know.  He came through on my prediction of three more home runs this week, although his OPS hasn't yet cracked the .800 mark.  But it's going in the right direction, and with a thumping Bautista in the mix, this team can boast some pretty strong offensive depth.  I'll quit while I'm ahead on the prediction front, and simply take solace in the fact that the Jays have won four of their last five games, with mixed pitching (a dominant Brandon Morrow, as opposed to more ordinary outings from Alvarez and Ricky Romero) and some contributions all over the lineup.

Blue Monday - Five Things We Vaguely Recall from the Weekend

Blue Monday, oh, it's Blue Monday. Got to work, would rather sleep all day...But since that's not an option, here's a few top-line impressions from the weekend.

Who You Laughing At?: Being the perpetual fourth-place finisher, it's hard to resist the urge to give noogies to the perpetual fifth-place finisher. You've got to find someone to pick on, don't you?

This weekend's series against the Orioles should be a bit of a wake-up call to those who figured that the 18 games against the Baltimore boys would be an easy walk-over all year long. The Orioles might have their flaws, and those organizational flaws might be ongoing and systemic. But when you see them on the field, they have the tools to knock the ball around and put runs on the board in a hurry. There are weaknesses in their rotation, bullpen and on defense, but we won't be quick to underestimate Nolan Reimold or Chris Davis again.

Full Tilt Lunacy: Somewhere among all the splendid attributes displayed by Brett Lawrie is a profound confidence in his abilities that is etched into his psyche like the ink is etched into every available spot on his epidermis. So it shouldn't have surprised us to see him take off for home with the bases loaded and José Bautista at the plate on Saturday afternoon. You halfway expected him to pull off his jersey as he took off to display a giant "YOLO" scrawled across his chest. It's hard to imagine Lawrie feeling as though he couldn't make it.

Lawrie then went on to compound the issue by making another out on the bases, getting gunned down by the strong arm or Matt Wieters. In the moment, we wondered if what sort of reception would be given to Colby Rasmus or Edwin Encarnacion or Eric Thames if they were to make two spectacular, inning-ending outs on the basepaths. We highly doubt it would be generous, but when it comes to our demonstrative countryman, there are many who we heard making the case for how those plays were positives. Can't knock the hustle? We beg to differ.

It's fair to remember that for all of the things that Lawrie does very well, he's still young and we're going to be witness to his maturation process over the next few years. Rookie mistakes? He'll make a few, for sure. We just hope that he learns from them.

Edwin Smiles Are the Best: There were weeks on end last season when Edwin Encarnacion would seemingly always wear a sad face with far-away eyes. Like he was miserable, lost, and waiting to be booed or scolded for whatever he'd just done. As someone who has been a fan of EE since he arrived, it was tough to watch, and even worse to hear some fans identify this as a sign of his lack of heart. If anything, we thought he took too much to heart.

So there are few things that are as heart-warming to us as to see the broad smiles and gregarious demeanour that EE has had on display thus far this year. Early in the season, he leads or is tied for the lead on the team in hits, doubles, homers, RBI, stolen bases, slugging, OPS and total bases. For a guy who fans were chasing out of town until well into July last season, Edwin has the chance to be a big part of this year and the future of the team.

Introducing Evan: It was nice to see the Jays give Evan Crawford his shot at an inning of work on Sunday afternoon. For a player who was far back on prospect lists up until this spring, the 25 year-old Crawford has made a quick move up the board with some tremendous strikeout numbers over the past two seasons.

Crawford looked amped up for his ninth inning appearance, but threw strikes down in the zone and touched 93 MPH a couple of times on his way to a one-hit, scoreless inning. Also, on the scouts' 20-to-80 scale, his high socks were a 65. We wouldn't be surprised to see him back before the year is out.

Otherwise...

-Another strong outing for Kyle Drabek, who has surrendered just two earned runs in his first two starts of the season. His 10/4 strikeout-to-walk ratio is also promising, and he may be pitching his way into a permanent position in the fourth slot of the rotation.

-Colby Rasmus continues to impress, and finally had a game where his hard-hit balls weren't directly at a fielder. If you can't see that he's playing well, we can't do much for you.

-Henderson Alvarez pitched well for the most part, but he seriously short-armed his pitch to Chris Davis on Saturday, which was turned around quickly for a tape-measure shot. We're not sure if he was overly concerned with the runner, or just wanted to quick-pitch Davis, but the result was a slow fastball well up in the zone. Let's hope it was a glitch.

Video Daily Double - Strombo and AA on Rasmus, Snider, and the Old Unis

It's Strombo and Antho, together again for the first time.

For those of you who didn't see the Jays' GM on George Strombolopoulos Tonight last night, the video above is a web-exclusive outtake, in which he talks about Colby Rasmus, Trvis Snider, Brett Lawrie and the out-sized expectations that get placed on them.

Also, check out this bit below, in which the sometimes cagey Anthopoulos lets loose his true feelings on the old uniforms. As if our mancrush couldn't be bigger.

The full interview, for those who missed it, is now up on the site at Strombo.com.

30 Jays in 30 Days - How Do You Solve a Riddle Like Rasmus?

Who: Colby Rasmus, No. 28. Centrefielder. Bats left, throws left. 6’2”, 200 LBS. 25 years old.

Provenance: Columbus, Georgia. Drafted in the first round (28th overall) by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2005. Acquired by the Blue Jays in a three-team trade on July 27, 2011.

Contract Status: Signed a one-year deal worth $2.7 million in the offseason to avoid arbitration. Two years of arbitration rights remains. Eligible for free agency in 2015.

Career Stats: 420 games played for St. Louis and Toronto. .322 OBP, .432 SLG, .754 OPS. 53 homers, 171 RBI, 232 runs scored in 1580 plate appearances.

2011 Stats: .688 OPS (.298/.391) with 14 homers in 129 games between the Cards and Jays. Posted .517 OPS (.201/.316) after the trade.

Looking Back: Maybe it’s some sort of Mickey Mantle fixation that we all have, where every talented young “five-tool” centrefielder is just supposed to come blow our hair back and leave us breathless all the time.

After a tremendous 2010 campaign, in which Colby Rasmus showed the potential to be something truly special, last season was one that he’d most likely rather forget. Rasmus struggled mightily from the start of the season, and saw himself the focus of the Cardinals’ displeasure until he was dispatched just before the non-waiver trade deadline.

What occurred after his arrival to the Jays – two months of profound struggles and injuries – certainly didn’t help to build his reputation with his new fan base. And to add insult to injury, the Cardinals went on a historic run after the trade from 10 games back to become World Series champions.

Rasmus truly looked as though he was lost after the trade. When he fell behind early in the count he expanded his strike zone significantly and began chasing breaking balls, leading him to strike out 27.9% of the time while drawing just five walks as a Blue Jay.

The more that we think about it, the more that we recognize why some Blue Jays fans are so quick to dismiss Rasmus and look past him towards the next prospects. It’s not to say that we agree, because we don’t think the player who posted an .859 OPS and hit 23 homers in 2010 was replaced by pod people. It might just take some effort to find him again.

Looking Forward: It’s particularly hard to read Colby Rasmus because he presents himself in such a low key, laconic manner that you wonder whether if there’s any energy there at all. Put him next to a jacked-up, earnestly energetic Brett Lawrie, and you wonder why Colby doesn’t seem more enthused to be given the opportunity to play every day.

But that exterior doesn’t speak to what is actually happening inside the man’s mind, and we hope that in the coming year, he’ll have the opportunity to show the reason why the Jays brass and so many others around baseball were so enthused with his talents.

With all of the other bats around him, Rasmus can probably settle into a spot lower in the line up, and won’t be asked to carry a large part of the load. However, if he does find himself in a spot just before or after Brett Lawrie, or wedged between Lawrie and J.P. Arencibia, his lack of production will be noticeable if he’s not driving them in or getting on base to give them runners in scoring position.

Rasmus’ defense will also bear some scrutiny this season, as he’ll be pushed hard by Anthony Gose by the time next spring rolls around. The advanced defensive metrics dislike Rasmus, giving him negative marks for his range, so if he’s to hang around Toronto in the long term, he’ll likely need to put up enough offense to take a corner spot or play the field well enough to prop up his bat.

2012 Expectations: We think Rasmus is much better than he showed last year, and that if he can find the right approach at the plate, he will post an OPS right around .800. He’ll likely strike out a fair bit and he won’t steal many bases, but if he can show patience at the plate, he can be an asset by getting on base and hitting 15-20 homers.

But the upside is much more than that, which is why we're not nearly ready to figure that we've solved the question of who Colby Rasmus is.

Fresh Starts

There’s really not much to add to what ended up being the biggest Blue Jays-related story of this past week – the new branding scheme and uniforms. I like the new stuff. A lot. The next couple of years of Org Family gift-giving will be predictable indeed.

As is my wont, however, I’m going to use the re-brand as a source for hackneyed symbolism, however tangential you may find it. You all should be getting used to this from me by now.

One of the things that struck me most about the Friday unveiling of the snappy jerseys, caps and associated goods was the level of enthusiasm there was, not just among the fans, but among the players themselves. Twitter was full of the players’ own pictures, with lots of exclamation marks and #BeastMode / #TeamUnit sloganeering. These guys were geeked up about having a new look.

The uniform launch felt like… well, it felt like a launch. The start of something. Especially in an off-season where a whole lot of not much has really happened so far with the Blue Jays, it seemed to put a spring in the step of the faithful.

It got me thinking about how important a fresh start can be. When the Org Kids get up on the wrong side of the bed and catch hell from the Org Wife and me first thing in the morning for misbehaving, we’ll often send them back to their room and have them try it again. Usually works like a charm.

It’s tempting to try to excuse a baseball player’s underwhelming performance by throwing around the old “he needs change of scenery” argument. We can never really get in a player’s head to know whether that’s remotely true. But at the very least, the “fresh start” can be like a bowl of hot chicken soup when you have a head cold: might help; couldn’t hurt.

When they start stretching, sprinting and spitting tobacco juice in Dunedin in a few months, some potentially key pieces of this Blue Jays team are going to be hoping that a fresh start cures what ailed them in 2011, or even before. From where I sit, how those fresh starts turn out is going to be a significant part of the 2012 Jays storyline.

Here are a few of who I mean:

Colby Rasmus

This is fairly obvious, but the very reason the multi-tool talent who will be patrolling centerfield for the Blue Jays is no longer doing it for the St. Louis Cardinals is because someone – Tony LaRussa, John Mozeliak, Alex Anthopoulos, or all of them – thought he needed a fresh start. The start he got as a Jay in 2011 was abbreviated (although long enough to allow Barry from Oakville to bellow his disapproval on the Jays Talk and yearn for the middle relievers he cost to acquire). A full season of the 2010 vintage Colby Rasmus would be a significant piece of an improved 2012 Jays team (again, this is obvious). I hope that starting the season knowing he’s not going to have a manager breathing down his neck with threats to start Jon Jay in his place might make Rasmus a bit more comfortable and a bit more effective.

Travis Snider

Travis Snider is going to turn 24 in February, yet he’s already spent parts of four different seasons with the Major League team. You can argue either side of the more-time-in-the-majors vs. more-time-in-the-minors argument, but one thing the kid hasn’t had at any point in his Jays career is some certainty. A fresh start for Snider can come in Toronto or in Vegas but he should know going in that it’s gong to be a full time job, with an abundantly clear description at the start of 2012 of what is demanded and expected of him, regardless of where he’s plying his trade. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Supernanny, it’s that kids need structure. I’m sure this sounds incredibly condescending. I don’t really mean it to be. These players are all grown-up, professional athletes. But sometimes the most precocious talent is the kind in most need of discipline.

Kyle Drabek

A variation on the Snider theme is applicable to Kyle Drabek. Like Snider, he’s shown flashes of meeting the high expectations so many have had for him ever since entering the organization. Despite his youth, he’s not thought of as a prospect, as much as a promise of All-Star performance unfulfilled. As with Snider, I’m not going to lose much sleep if he goes to Vegas or Toronto out of Spring Training, as long as he gets to tackle whatever has been plaguing him with a knowledge that he’s going to get time to do it.

Spring is a fresh start for everyone, really. There are plenty of others on the roster (for the time being) who could similarly benefit: Frank Francisco, for a chance to start 2012 like he finished 2011; Adam Lind, to start a season healthy, strong, free of expectations that he needs to carry the team offensively and with some confidence at the plate that would come with that.

We’ve seen fresh starts work before. Yunel Escobar is one example of a guy for whom his first day in a Blue Jay uniform was the first day of the rest of his life. I’m really, really hopeful that April 1 will be the same kind of rebirth for some of the Jays who need to capture, or recapture, the kind of performance that we know is in them.

A Little Touch of Terrific

We've made a point through most of this year of toning down some of the outlandish fanboy praise for Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos, if only to pull back the reins on some of the expectations that have been built up by his initial moves over his first two years in the post. Anthopoulos is not wizard, secret agent, ninja, evil genius or whatever other stock movie character to which he has been compared.

And yet, it's hard not to let the plaudits fly after another extraordinary player personnel move yesterday.

Within the past week, we had told people that we thought it highly unlikely that the Jays would have any capacity to acquire a player such as Colby Rasmus. The notion that a player would be available when he is controllable, plays a premium position, possesses all five tools and has seemingly yet to reach his ceiling seemed to be remote at best. Add to that the fact that a number of other suitors were certain to step forward if he were to become available, and the notion that the Jays would empty out their newly restocked system for him just didn't compute.

Of course, we hadn't really factored in Anthopoulos' ability to make possible the impossible. Trading Vernon Wells' contract? Impossible! An unmovable contract! Getting value for Roy Halladay when he's shrunk the pool of possible destinations to one? How could anyone do such a thing? Acquiring another team's number one prospect in their system? That just doesn't happen! Don't be ridiculous!

What we especially love about this deal - and much of the Anthopoulos oeuvre - is how it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. The Jays are a team that, if the baseball scriptures are to be heeded, should be selling. They should be emptying out their system of talent sending pieces to buyers. Because that's how this works.

But this trade is yet another example of Anthopoulos both flouting the conventions, and using the momentum and ambition of other "contenders" in order to extract what he needs to build a solid core of a team that will be in Toronto for at least four-to-five affordable years. And he does it without leaving the other teams feeling as though they were fleeced. That's no small accomplishment when you consider the magnitude of this equation: The bodies, contracts, cash, futures and picks getting balanced out somehow in such a manner that three teams could walk away satisfied.

Moreover, the Rasmus trade is positively brilliant in as much as it makes the team's lineup better now and in the future while essentially costing the team a left-handed reliever and a pitching prospect. (There's a lot of clutter and contracts that were swapped, but in essence, this deal comes down to Stewart and Rzepczynski for Rasmus. And were you to tell us that the cost of acquiring Colby Freaking Rasmus would be two young pitchers drawn from a growing crop of hurlers, we would have told you to stop dreaming.

In baseball, as in most other pursuits, there are no sure things. It's entirely possible the Colby Rasmus ends up being a decent centrefielder who hovers below an .800 OPS and occasionally rubs his teammates the wrong way. But there's evidence to suggest that, at 24, he can grow into a transcendent player who is the sort of star that we as Jays fans covet when they are given outlandish contracts by the Yankees or Red Sox.

The true brilliance of this trade is that it's as if sometime, eight-to-ten years down the road, Alex Anthopoulos decided to forgo the free agent sweepstakes, hop into his modified DeLorean and zip back to a time where he could acquire the $100 million player for pennies on the dollar and enjoy the years which built him up to that value before someone else paid through the nose for that past performance.

And there we go...getting all supernatural again. Alex Anthopoulos brings that out in us.