The not so hot part of Colby’s game

A lot of prospect rankings are coming out for the various clubs’ farm systems, and undoubtedly we’ll be seeing Colby Rasmus’s name at the top of all of them when concerning the Cardinals. Don’t get me wrong, I have no argument with that, but Jeff Sackmann is introducing defensive stats at the Minor League Splits database, and well, Rasmus is a pretty sucky center fielder. He was -28 runs below average over his 1103 innings between Quad Cities and Palm Beach, -34 per 150 games. To make it relative, that’s old Griffey, old Bernie Williams bad. I know defensive metrics have their differences, and I’ve seen Rasmus in person, I didn’t think he was that bad. (Though now that I think about it, I seem to remember thinking he didn’t make the best jumps on the ball from contact…)

At 20, he’s got time to work on his D, but maybe he’s not quite the 5 tool player we’ve been hearing he is. 4 is more like it. For the heir apparent of Jimmy, he could end up in left unless he can dramatically improve upon his range.