Few positions in Major League
Baseball have been as consistently productive over the last 30 years as
centerfield for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Throughout the 1980s, Willie McGee patrolled the largest (quite plastic) pasture at old Busch Stadium,
gaining World Series fame, the 1985 National League MVP, and three Gold Gloves
in the process. During the 1990s, Ray Lankford was among the most underrated
players in the game, five times hitting 20 homers and stealing 20 bases in a
season, and becoming only the third Cardinal to hit 200 home runs. For the first
eight years of the current decade, Jim Edmonds was the star, winning as many
games with leather (six Gold Gloves) as with his bat (241 home runs) for a
Cardinal team that won two pennants and the 2006 World Series.
While Rick Ankiel has performed
capably in centerfield this season, 21-year-old Colby Rasmus — the
marquee name on the current Memphis Redbirds roster — appears to be next in the
chain of hard-hitting fly-catchers for the Cardinals. A muscle strain has forced
Rasmus to the disabled list (and out of what would have been his second straight
All-Star Futures Game), but the Alabama native has gained some traction after a
slow adjustment to Triple-A pitching. After hitting only .210 in April (and .218
in May), Rasmus batted .333 in June with a stellar on-base percentage of .441.
With a silky swing from the left side of the plate, conventional wisdom is that
Rasmus merely needs to see pitching before he starts turning it inside out.
Among the adjustments Rasmus has
had to make for Triple-A, he notes the professionalism of the clubhouse as the
chief difference from Double-A. “It’s more like a job here,” he says. “It’s
harder to just have fun. There are older guys who’ve been around, with lots of
experience. It was hard for me to [adjust]. But I’ve gotten used to it; you just
go about your business.”
Rasmus credits veteran catcher
Mark Johnson for setting a major-league example, even with a minor-league
franchise. (Johnson has been playing professionally since 1994 and has 322
big-league games on his resume.) “Anything he says, most of us young guys
listen,” says Rasmus. “How to carry yourself on the field. He doesn’t talk a
whole lot, but it’s how he plays, how he works.”
Rasmus didn’t exactly grow up a
baseball fan. “Every time we went to a game, even a big-league game [in
Atlanta],” notes Rasmus, “I wanted to play.” He confesses to being not all that
familiar with his centerfield predecessors in St. Louis, though he admires
Edmonds. “I liked Ken Griffey Jr. And I was a pitcher when I was younger, so I
liked Randy Johnson, too.” Rasmus’ father played in the minor leagues and
remains a valuable guide for a young player aiming even higher. (“Dad asked me
if I wanted to make the big leagues. When I said yes, he said it ain’t gonna be
easy.”)
As for when exactly he’ll get a
second cardinal on his jersey, Rasmus feels like he’s already behind schedule.
“I felt like I was ready in spring training,” he says. “If I had gone to St.
Louis, I think I would have been fine. But it didn’t work out. When I struggled
up here, I started pressing some. Early on, I was hitting the ball hard, but
right at guys.”
Gaining a grasp for what a
Triple-A pitcher is throwing — and importantly, when — is a priority for Rasmus,
however much time he has remaining in Memphis. “Pitchers up here are smart,” he
says. “They don’t just throw you fastballs inside; they come after you.
There’s no guarantee that a
franchise’s top-ranked prospect is going to make an impact for the parent club.
Rick Ankiel (the Cards’ top farmhand in 1998 and 2000) has worked out, though
the pitcher-turned-outfielder’s rise couldn’t have been forecast by the most
astute of scouts. But for every J.D. Drew (1999), there have been “can’t miss
kids” like Bud Smith (2001), Jimmy Journell (2002), and Blake Hawksworth (the
Cardinals’ top-ranked prospect in 2004, Hawksworth is 2-6 with an ERA over 6.00
for the Redbirds this year). For what it’s worth, Rasmus pays no attention to
the tag.
“That’s no big deal,” says
Rasmus. “I just play. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what
Baseball America says. It’s what you do between the lines.”
