Ed. Note: Four people were injured in the copyediting of this article.

One word. Change one word of the trade description, and you might see a world in which the Cardinals got fair value for Colby Rasmus in their trade Wednesday night.

The consensus for the most part is that Alex Anthopoulos pulled a coup when he acquired a young left-handed center fielder with power and speed and a decent glove for his collection of spare parts. A rental starter, a rental backup center fielder, a rental righty reliever, and a young lefty reliever is all that it took to get Rasmus. But then there’s that one word — reliever.

Call Marc Rzepczynski a young lefty starter, and suddenly things might seem a little more even.

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If there was ever a precursor to a trade, this was it, via Matthew Leach and Austin Laymance:

Speaking to KSDK TV-5 in St. Louis, La Russa was largely complimentary of Rasmus until the end of the interview. He spoke of Rasmus’ bright future and said that the club is not shopping Rasmus.

At the end, however, La Russa was asked whether Rasmus is listening and responded tartly.

“Well, he’s listening to somebody,” the manager said.

Asked whether Rasmus is listening to the Cardinals’ coaches, he was more direct.

“No, he doesn’t listen to the Cardinal coaches much now, and that’s why he gets in these funks, in my opinion,” La Russa said. “If he would just stay with [basically] what they teach, he would have … but I actually feel concern for him, because he hears it from so many places, he’s got to be confused.”

Approximately 12 hours after that piece hit MLB.com, the Cardinals sent Colby Rasmus packing to Toronto along with relievers Brian Tallet and Trever Miller and minor league stalwart P.J. Walters for a package centered around Edwin Jackson. The Blue Jays also sent relievers Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski and center fielder Corey Patterson to St. Louis to complete the deal.

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The talks started last winter, but they didn’t seem serious. Why would the Cardinals consider trading Colby Rasmus? He’s young, he’s cost-controlled, and he’s a center fielder who has some pop. But he clashed with manager Tony LaRussa, and we’ve seen other players depart St. Louis after such spats. Those talks have heated up again in the past month, gaining momentum as the trade deadline approaches. Today it all came to a head. Early this morning word broke that the Blue Jays were set to acquire Edwin Jackson, whom they’d then flip to the Cardinals in a Rasmus deal. A few hours, everything came together as planned.

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Just minutes ago, during the Cardinals-Mets game currently unfolding in Queens, Albert Pujols hit a home run off of Jonathon Niese. The home run is notable because (a) it came at the end of a nine-pitch at-bat and (b) SNY’s Gary Cohen noted after the foul ball you see GIF’d and expertly embedded above that good hitters are good at fouling off two-strike pitches.

In fact, Cohen’s words were prescient, as, two pitches later, Pujols did this to the baseball:

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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The St. Louis Cardinals moved today to lock up one of their important young pieces, signing pitcher and potential ace-in-the-making Jaime Garcia to a four year contract worth $27.5 million. The deal also includes two club options in 2016 and 2017, the values of which have not been released as of this writing. As Garcia is currently in his second year of service time, the deal guarantees his third pre-arbitration season as well as all three of his arbitration seasons, with the two club options covering his first two years of free agency.

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…even if they want to.

Does anyone recognize this player?

Centerfielder.
Former top prospect, ranked as one of the top 5 in baseball at one time.
Great plate discipline (11% walk rate), but strikes out at a high rate (20+%).
Batting average hovers around .250.
Above-average power, posting around a .160 to .180 ISO.
Called out in the past for “attitude” issues.

Oh, you were thinking of Colby Rasmus? Sorry, I was describing B.J. Upton.

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Why do so many Major League Baseball players come from the Dominican Republic (DR)? Why does economically strong, population-rich Japan produce so few MLB players? Why does baseball-loving Colombia have so few MLB alums (nine total)? Well, as it turns out, the answers are not so easy to find.

My previous two articles — one on East Asian talent, th’other on the relationship between height and OBP — have generated a lot of good discussion about what determines where a baseball player comes from.

In the first piece, I proposed that teams should invest in Chinese (and Indian) baseball academies to take advantage of the exceedingly large pool of athletes in those areas. However, several commentors suggested that baseball culture, not population size, determines the talent pool.

I found this a most intriguing analysis, so I went back to the ol’ opening day roster/injury list of foreign born players.

This is how it breaks out:

It does not require an electron micrometer to see the DR and Venezuela give the MLB lots o’ players. These two nations composed 17.5% of opening day rosters, but have a combined population smaller than Korea or Columbia individually.

So what does determine MLB talent sources? Well, it certainly does not appear to be population:

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News came out about an hour ago that Albert Pujols has a fracture in his left forearm and will miss four to six weeks while recovering. Any time you lose the best player in baseball, it’s a pretty big blow, but given the short timeframe and the Cardinals options, this shouldn’t end up affecting the standings too much.

The obvious answer for St. Louis is to shift Lance Berkman back to first base during Pujols’ absence. While Berkman has been a revelation offensively, he’s been as lousy as expected in the outfield, posting a -4.8 UZR in just 463 innings out there. Historically, he’s been an average to above-average defensive first baseman, and it might be nice for the 35-year-old to get a rest from chasing down balls in the outfield for a while anyway.

Moving Berkman to first base opens up right field for Jon Jay, who has been producing enough to get a larger role on the team anyway. Jay is hitting .313/.364/.436 in limited duty, and while UZR hasn’t liked his glove so far, it’s hard to imagine that he won’t be at least a small upgrade over Berkman in right field.

The drop-off from Pujols to Jay in the line-up (and from Jay to whomever replaces him as the team’s fourth outfielder until Allen Craig gets healthy) is still significant (probably about half a win per month), but over just one month’s worth of games, the difference shouldn’t be so large as to really swing the NL Central race one way or another. Every game in the standings is precious to the Cardinals in their bid to hold off the Brewers and Reds for the NL Central title, but a going from Pujols to Jay for 100 or 150 at-bats won’t be the end of the world, especially with the benefit of getting Berkman back to first base for a little while.

If Pujols ends up missing two months and Jay is unable to sustain his BABIP-fueled batting line, this could cost the Cardinals a full win. That’s certainly a loss, but it’s one they are equipped to deal with.

Former Milwaukee, Colorado, Cleveland, St. Louis, Washington, and Los Angeles infielder Ronnie Belliard announced his retirement yesterday. This probably won’t garner too much attention. That is understandable, as Belliard was mostly an unspectacular player at a position that is perhaps the most frequently overlooked. This isn’t a “Belliard was a hidden superstar” post, but he was somewhat underrated, and he certainly had his moments.

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