The news broke late Monday night over at MLB Trade Rumors that former Cardinal centerfielder, Colby Rasmus, may end up wearing powder blue on the other side of the state in 2012.

Rasmus was the center piece in the Cardinals trade deadline deal that brought pitching and bench help to St. Louis during the stretch run. An outfielder with huge potential, Rasmus had been highly touted as a can’t miss player in St. Louis for many years. When he arrived in St. Louis, however, he would struggle under manager Tony LaRussa.

LaRussa, known for his tinkering and adjusting, limited Rasmus in duty against left handed pitchers early on in his career. Colby was no saint in the situation, demanding to be traded not once but twice, and refusing the help of team coaches in an apparent desire to follow the teaching of his father. Colby’s performance and attitude soured and after a year long battle behind the scenes with management, he was shipped off to Toronto.

An already tough season would see the wheels fall off when Colby arrived north of the border. The outfielder struggled in the new system and performed horribly down the stretch. A look at Colby’s career numbers:

Colby’s drop off in 2011 makes him a gamble in 2012. That being said, very few people feel that 2011 was the true Colby Rasmus. He is young (25 years old) and still has a big chance to grow. He is a proven commodity at the major league level and can provide some pop.

The National Post reported in September that Rasmus seemed a bit out of sorts. When asked about his timing at the plate, the article read this way:

Yet when asked about the focus of his daily drills, Rasmus replied: “I’m not working on anything right now.”

He said he is eager for the season to end, for the pressure of high expectations to fade, for a few months away from baseball to dissolve the bitter taste of his final days in St. Louis.

“I still got a lot of stuff going on through my head from being over in St. Louis,” Rasmus said before the Jays’ final home game Thursday night.

In addition, in that same article, it did not appear that Colby was open to the coaching being offered to him:

“I feel like I’ve played the outfield pretty good but my hitting’s been terrible,” he said. “But I wasn’t hitting good before I got here, so I didn’t really put too much expectation on myself to do good.”

The interview took place shortly after manager John Farrell said the Jays want Rasmus to stop trying to pull the ball on every swing. He needs to use the whole field and refine the timing of his leg kick, which serves as the trigger for his swing, Farrell said.

Even after a reporter told him what Farrell had said, Rasmus insisted he was “not working on anything.”

“I’m just going out there and hitting. Trying not to think too much. That’s where I got in trouble in the beginning.”

After joining the Jays, he said he tried “to fix too much stuff in the middle of the season, which is not a good idea. So I’m just going out there and playing and just riding it out, and then work on it in the off-season.”

The concern for me is his attitude. I have been a big supporter of Jeff Francoeur on this team due to his leadership qualities with the younger ballplayers. He has shown solid veteran leadership and fits in well to the grand scheme of the team growing in maturity and competing in the near future. Colby can be a strong part of that nucleus, but if he continues to buck against the system and his coaches, he could quickly become a clubhouse cancer.

With the recent additions of Jonathan Broxton and Jonathan Sanchez, the Royals are showing they are willing to take a bit of a risk on a high potential return. They seem to be making solid moves towards the future. Colby has the potential to be a part of a very strong future in Kansas City. He also has the potential to shake the foundation of the franchise from within.

It will be up to Dayton Moore to decide which side of the argument he feels has the greater potential.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.

The Royals have not been quiet about their desire to add starting pitching this off-season. Nor have they shied away from discussing the many prospects they have in the pipeline in order to acquire a pitcher.

Dayton Moore was able to accomplish what most thought improbable, he improved his starting rotation and dealt from the major league roster, freeing up a spot for one of the talented youngsters going forward. In addition to not trading from the pipeline of minor league talent that Kansas City is enjoying, he added to it.

Melky Cabrera is no longer a Kansas City Royal. After one short season with the club after being released by the Atlanta Braves, the Royals have chosen to trade Cabrera while his value is high and have gained the return of Jonathan Sanchez for the Major League rotation and Ryan Verdugo for the minor league system.

Melky’s stats last year as a Royal:

The goal for the Royals was to find a top of the rotation starter at an affordable price. Sounds easy enough, right? Dayton Moore has successfully added to his rotation depth, but what did the Royals get in return for an outfielder that seemed to have a solid bounce back year for the team?

Sanchez has been one of the harder pitchers to figure out, both for opposing hitters and his own coaches. A dominant pitcher with a live arm, his strikeout rates are consistently high over his six year career. However, so are his walk rates. While he keeps hitters guessing, there are times he has the same effect on his catcher. Our friends at MLB Trade Rumors had this to say about Sanchez in reaction to the trade:

Sanchez, 28, may have been a non-tender candidate for the Giants after a disappointing 2011 season that saw him walk 5.9 per nine innings and miss significant time with biceps tendinitis and a sprained ankle. The southpaw is tough to hit and has big-time strikeout numbers, but control has always been a problem. In Sanchez, Felipe Paulino, and Danny Duffy, Royals GM Dayton Moore has strong strikeout potential for three-fifths of his 2012 rotation. Sanchez projects to earn $5.2MM in 2012, after which he’ll be eligible for free agency. That he was traded for one year of Cabrera shows how much his trade value slipped during the ’11 season. Sanchez was set to battleBarry Zito for the Giants’ fifth starter job next year.

Read Tim Dierkes full take on the trade by clicking here.

On July 10, 2009, Sanchez showed just how dominant he can be by crafting a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. One look at his line from that day and “dominant” is the only way to describe it:

If new pitching coach Dave Eiland can help get the six-foot tall lefty to harness his control, the Royals have found the ace of their staff for 2012. If not, the Royals may be found looking at the trade deadline to bolster their staff a bit, should they find themselves in contention in 2012.

Jonathan Sanchez Career Statistics:

Of course, the dealing of Cabrera also leaves the middle of the outfield open for 2012, paving the way for prospect Lorenzo Cain to join the team fresh from Spring Training.

Cain, a product of the trade of Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers, has had some minor success at the major league level in limited action for the Brewers in 2010. He spent most of 2011 at AAA Omaha for the Royals and showed that he can hit and field his position rather well. His strikeout rate is high, but projecting him to hit either second in front of Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer or sixth behind them and Mike Moustakas could be a safe gamble.

The Royals will not live or die with the success of Cain. His bat will be a benefit to the ball club if they need it. They will, however, need production from Jonathan Sanchez if 2012 is the turning point of this team’s path.

No one knows if Moore is done dealing this off-season, but it appears he got his man early on and next year will determine how solid of a move it was.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.

Former Kansas City Royals slugger Jose Guillen is under investigation for performance-enhancing drugs, and he was left off of the San Francisco Giants’ postseason roster because of the investigation – and not because of an injury, as team officials previously claimed – according to the New York Times.

Guillen’s removal from the Giants’ postseason roster was a surprise to many baseball insiders, but the outfielder has been haunted by injuries in the past, so no one was shocked when team officials cited a nagging neck injury as the reason he was dropped from the roster.

Now, that appears to not be the case. According to the Times, it appears that Major League Baseball directed the Giants to leave Guillen off the roster because of the investigation.

The federal investigation apparently centers around shipments of Human Growth Hormone being sent to Guillen’s wife. In addition to the federal inquiry, Major League Baseball has also opened its own investigation.

Guillen has been a controversial figure during a 14-year big league career spanning 10 organizations. His two-and-a-half season stint with the Kansas City Royals, for which he was given a three-year, $36 million contract, was his longest tenure with any single team. While in Kansas City, Guillen provided a modest spark to an otherwise stagnant offense, but he also caused problems off the field by picking fights with fans, insulting his teammates to the media, and removing his own ingrown toenail without team or doctor consent.

Guillen has also run afoul of baseball’s steroids policy in the past. He was named in the Mitchell Report as one of 89 players in baseball linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Guillen was suspended for the first 15 games of the 2008 season – his first in Kansas City.

MLB Trade Rumors speculates that Guillen’s removal from the Giants’ postseason roster might actually have been a blessing for the team. After defeating the Atlanta Braves in the divisional series and the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS, the Giants hold a 2-0 lead over the Texas Rangers in the World Series. Guillen would have probably taken playing time away from Cody Ross, who is batting .317 with four home runs and a .732 slugging percentage in the playoffs.

Matt Kelsey is a Royals writer and the content editor for I-70 Baseball. He can be reached at mattkelsey@i70baseball.com.