Former Cardinals Watch

[Jmodene]

And all 13th round picks are as valuable as Pujols.

At some point you have to evaluate the logic of your argument in favor of the trade and consider that maybe it isn't as defensible as you think...

The trade isn't defensible? I don't believe that. It got rid of a head case and replaced him with cogs that ran much better all around. I am firmly in the 'we don't make the world series without that trade camp'. Getting rid of the Rasmus Circus was worth the trade even if we didn't make the post season.

Absolutely. Remember, we didn't just trade Colby... we traded his dad.

[cpebbles]

Judging by the quality of the arguments for it, it was an indefensible trade. Even if we accept that the absence of Rasmus directly led to the postseason berth (Which is an absolutely ridiculous thing to accept unquestioningly) the fact remains that the return for him was sub-par in the estimation of, oh, only every single person who weighed in on the trade, including some rival GMs who could have offered more.

I was one of those saying Jay was a perfectly acceptable CF. I said at the time that trading Rasmus was the logical route to go in improving the team. But it was ridiculously simplistic at the time to view the trade as a question of whether or not Rasmus should be traded, and it's ridiculously simplistic to view everything subsequent as a result of that one decision.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

There is about 1 thing that makes that trade defensible...

An utterly ridiculous September and October run. The odds they even made the playoffs were, at one point iirc, about 1%, putting the odds of them winning the WS at about 0.1% or around there.


Had the Cardinals not made the playoffs, we'd still be arguing every day about it. So really hitting the lottery of winning the WS is what makes that trade defensible. Yeah, it would be nice to happen every year, but in reality it's not a sustainable plan. You just simply don't have trade bait that valuable laying around every year and the fact remains Mo got not much in return. A couple months of a so-so pitcher, a cost controlled lefty reliever, Dotel and LOL Cory Patterson.

No one is arguing it didn't work, obviously it did. But, it's akin to putting a quarter in a video poker machine and hitting the royal flush. Just because you won, doesn't mean it's a logical decision.

But, also like I said, I wouldn't go back and change anything....so I'm not all that upset. Or as upset as I was when it happened I should say....

[heyzeus]

Not the easiest comparison to make, but post trade, the players we dealt to Toronto totaled -1.6 WAR. The players we got from Toronto gave us .5 WAR. And that doesn't include the WAR contributed by Jay post-Rasmus departure, or account for the difference in WAR between Jackson and McClellan in the rotation post-trade (not sure one could even come up w/ a number for that).

We wound up at 90-72, with the wild card; Atlanta wound up 89-73, sitting at home. That 2.1 WAR difference matters a great deal in terms of what we got to enjoy last fall.

[doe_boy]

There is about 1 thing that makes that trade defensible...

An utterly ridiculous September and October run. The odds they even made the playoffs were, at one point iirc, about 1%, putting the odds of them winning the WS at about 0.1% or around there.


Had the Cardinals not made the playoffs, we'd still be arguing every day about it. So really hitting the lottery of winning the WS is what makes that trade defensible. Yeah, it would be nice to happen every year, but in reality it's not a sustainable plan. You just simply don't have trade bait that valuable laying around every year and the fact remains Mo got not much in return. A couple months of a so-so pitcher, a cost controlled lefty reliever, Dotel and LOL Cory Patterson.

No one is arguing it didn't work, obviously it did. But, it's akin to putting a quarter in a video poker machine and hitting the royal flush. Just because you won, doesn't mean it's a logical decision.

But, also like I said, I wouldn't go back and change anything....so I'm not all that upset. Or as upset as I was when it happened I should say....

Rasmus had to go because it had become clear he and TLR and come to an impasse.

Had the Cardinals not made their run, TLR would probably have retired anyway and we would have been left to argue the trade's merits.

But, regardless, I don't think there was any way Rasmus was going to remain in a Cardinal uniform in 2011.

Mo made what he thought was the best deal possible. Was it? I didn't particularly care for it. But, they were sort of over a barrel.

[Cronos]

Mo made what he thought was the best deal possible. Was it? I didn't particularly care for it. But, they were sort of over a barrel.

Yep. He made the best of a bad situation. I was impressed he was able to get much of anything for Rasmus considering all of the bad press that had come out about the situation as well as all the interference and baggage about Rasmus the Elder that would be included.

[wart57]

Who [expletive] cares. They Won the freaking World Series. We will never know if they could have or would have with Rasmus still on the team, we know for a fact they won it without him.
If Rasmus is still on the team this year, do they go out and sign Beltran? I doubt it. You can't look at the trade as over and done, each trade, every move is just a single domino in the chain reaction.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Mo made what he thought was the best deal possible. Was it? I didn't particularly care for it. But, they were sort of over a barrel.

It's impossible to say.

Maybe Mo had one thought and that was:

We need the best pitcher we can get and we don't want to be on the hook for anything after this year. We need two solid relievers and one of them has to be a lefty. Hopefully cost controlled. And we need an absolutely horrible player that's like fast or something.

If that was his thought and he knew that those were the pieces that were needed to go on the run they did...then hell yeah, he made the best deal possible.

Personally, it's not what I would have been thinking....but hey it worked so the guy must be a genius....or lucky.

[greenback44]

If Rzepczynski never amounts to more than a .5 win reliever and Rasmus is putting up ~3+ win seasons, yeah, it was a bad trade.

At first I read the wavy line as a minus sign.

If the Cardinals had traded Jay (and Tallet and Trever Miller and Walters) for Jackson, Dotel, and Patterson (but not Rzepczynski), I'm guessing nobody gives a [expletive] about the trade. I'm conjecturing on opinions occurring under a counter-factual here, so if anybody objects, I'll drop it. But is Jay + Rzepczynski really that much worse than Rasmus?

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Who [expletive] cares.

Obviously the [expletive] talking about it.