Scrabble Spells “Fair Deal” for Cards

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.

A lot could be made of ‘Scrabble’ not being up to snuff in the American League East, and that he’s been moved to relief for a reason. You don’t have to look too far past Ian Kennedy to realize, though, that the AL East is a crucible reserved for the dominant and for the veteran. Escape the harder league and the hardest division, and things look a little better.

Rzepczynski is called a LOOGY — and his 4.18 xFIP against righties, at first blush, doesn’t suggest that he can’t hack it in a full-time role. Sure, he’s not as good against them. His 9.47 K/9, 2.98 BB/9 and 60.3% GBs versus lefties is much better than his 7.65 K/9, 4.62 BB/9 and 52.2% GBs against right-handed hitters. But those numbers against righties aren’t terrible, especially if he can improve his control. Considering his better-than-average control against lefties — and consistently decent minor league walk rates — it’s not a stretch to imagine the 25-year-old in the Cards’ rotation at some point.

He doesn’t lack the tools to iron out his split and his sinking fastball and his slider both have hefty platoon splits when thrown by a righty to a lefty. That might be contributing to his problems. But changeups are a great equalizer. They either have no platoon splits or a reverse one. As a reliever, Rzepczynski has moved away from his change, but he’s still used it around 10% of the time and it’s close to a scratch pitch by linear weights (-3.5 runs career). He can make it work.

What Rzepczynski does do well is combine strikeout stuff with ground balls. All that despite his lack of elite velocity. His fastball hasn’t averaged 90 mph over his career, but he has an above-average swinging strike rate (9% career) anyway. The slider is his best pitch, and he uses it a third of the time with strong results (+19.6 runs career).

We know from Matt Swartz’s work on SIERA that 60% ground ball rates are exponentially better than 50% rates, so it’s not surprising that Rzepczynski has seen his best results when he’s pushed his ground-ball rate over that threshold. Who better to help the young lefty work on retaining those results while moving back into the rotation than ground-ball wizard Dave Duncan?

Still, there hasn’t been an indication that this is what the Cardinals are thinking. Kyle McClellan has long been rumored to be returning to the bullpen, but he will be replaced in the short term by Edwin Jackson. In order to become the starter and fully realize his potential, Rzepczynski needs to beat out Jake Westbrook, who’s under contract for 2012. His advantage (other than his current FIP and xFIP, which are both a full run better than Westbrook’s) is the fact that he’s under team control until 2015. As the rest of the team gets older and more expensive, Scrabble could morph into an affordable starter for the long-haul.

This year, we’ve seen Justin Masterson overcome a platoon split that’s even more pronounced, and he’s done it without a real changeup. With a little bit of work, the Cardinals might just find themselves with a young lefty starter with a wicked slider — on the cheap.

Is that the same value as a young center fielder with power and speed under control until 2014? Maybe not, but it’s a heck of a lot closer.