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Colby Rasmus is batting .196. He admits that his production has been “terrible” since the Toronto Blue Jays acquired him in a July trade with St. Louis. His manager says Jays’ coaches are plugging away every day, trying to help Rasmus find his timing at the plate.

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 a brief interview fraught with ambiguity and angst, the Jays centre-fielder alluded to the much-publicized tension between himself and Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and the challenge of adjusting to life with a new team in a new league.

On one hand, Rasmus said he likes the Jays’ “laid-back” atmosphere. On the other, he seemed to miss the big crowds in St. Louis.

He feels he has not had one “good year” among his three in the big leagues. On the other hand, he chafes at the expectations placed upon him.

Rasmus, 25, was the centrepiece of a three-team, 11-player trade that liberated him from a troublesome period in St. Louis. At the time, he was batting .246 with a .332 on-base percentage, 11 homers and 40 RBIs.

Entering Wednesday’s game, his line with the Jays included a .196 average, .216 on-base mark, two homers and 13 RBIs in 29 games. In his previous 10 games, he was three-for-37 with 16 strikeouts.

“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.”

Rasmus was the Cardinals’ first-round draft pick in 2005. After hitting .251 as a rookie and .276 with 23 homers last year, he struggled this season, amid complaints from some Cardinal staffers that his father and longtime coach was countermanding the advice of the team’s coaches.

Asked if he found it difficult to adapt to his new environment, Rasmus replied: “I guess if I say it was easy that would be wrong, because I hadn’t done good. But it’s definitely different. It’s a whole different ball game over here.

“There’s a lot of different things. The games are a lot slower. In St. Louis it was a packed house every night. A little different here. The team’s a little more laid-back, the coaches are a little more laid-back over here. In St. Louis, it was pretty tight-knit. They were worried about every little thing, every little detail, so it kind of got a little too much for me sometimes.”

The baggage from that experience clearly remains.

number15 wrote:I hope it works out for Rasmus long term in CF because Anthony Gose is making me nervous.... He reminds of a Rajai Davis with gold glove defense, more and more as the days pass. He cant hit, plain and simple.

If Rasmus can develop, Jays can manage to play the cards with Gose.

unfortunately, with all the love that AA has shown towards Gose, I see him as the CF one day and Rasmus moving to LF eventually. Well atleast temporarily as Gose will get all the chances to run away with the job as he wants.

number15 wrote:I hope it works out for Rasmus long term in CF because Anthony Gose is making me nervous.... He reminds of a Rajai Davis with gold glove defense, more and more as the days pass. He cant hit, plain and simple.

If Rasmus can develop, Jays can manage to play the cards with Gose.

unfortunately, with all the love that AA has shown towards Gose, I see him as the CF one day and Rasmus moving to LF eventually. Well atleast temporarily as Gose will get all the chances to run away with the job as he wants.

purplehaze89 wrote:Anyone worried about Rasmus should cool their jets.

See this article from last offseason: http://thecardinalnationblog.com/2010/1 ... g-in-2011/

TLR and the Cards had Rasmus reinvent the wheel by LOSING 30 lbs and try becoming a slap hitter a la Brett Gardner. Rasmus actually ran 5 miles a day to lose wieght and hit 500 opposite field grounders and bloopers to become more like David Eckstein. For a power player with the third highest OPS amongst CFs in baseball in 2010 that is fundamentally ridiculous. COMPLETELY reinventing the wheel. No wonder his hitting took a nosedive!