For a certain generation of St. Louis Cardinals fan—the one I'm in, basically—Colby Rasmus is always going to be the superstar that got away, even if it seems increasingly clear he'll never be a superhero and even after the trade that sent him to the Toronto Blue Jays was exonerated by an entirely improbable World Series victory. Even after his awful start to the season, where it looked like Rasmus's 2010 would stand alone, forever, as a fluke season that only appeared to confirm his massive potential and duped fantasy baseball owners.
↵Now: Well, he's hitting pretty well, again, all of a sudden. On the season—even after the awful start—he's hitting .248/.310/.454, with nine home runs and 29 RBI, a 24-homer/77-RBI pace. He's not walking enough, and he's striking out too much, but the power and the speed he's always flashed have come back just in time for the Blue Jays to push him up their batting order. It's a basically league-average OPS, although the low-OBP makes him a worse "average" than usual.
↵And that's without using arbitrary endpoints to make him look better. In April Rasmus hit just .232/.281/.427; in May he drew a few more walks, pushing his line up to .237/.317/.430. It's June, however, in which he's excelled—he's hitting .302/.348/.558, with three home runs in 43 at-bats. He's even cut his strikeout rate down, making the average bump a little more organic than it would otherwise be.
↵He may have left the Cardinals under poor circumstances, and he may not ever turn into the star I thought he'd be after he was drafted in 2005, but I'll keep rooting for him. Prospects have a way of sticking like that.
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