How Much Confidence Should We Have in Colby Rasmus?

After watching a twitter fight between Mike Wilner and roughly 150 Colby Rasmus haters, where Wilner was totally unwavering in his belief that Rasums would have a good season, it had me wondering if we all are as unwavering in our belief in Colby.

As a digression, I couldn't do Wilner's job, no matter how much you paid me. When I see the twitter comments he gets or the calls he gets on Jays Talk, it reminds me of the Albert Einstein quote "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." Can you imagine if Albert had seen the internet.

Anyway, I'm very confident that Colby will improve on what he did with the Jays last year's season. He'll hit better than the .173/.201/.316 line he had with the Jays. But, will he be better than the .246/.332/.420 line he had with the Cards? I hope so, I think so, but I'm not sure. I asked Kevin Goldstein if Colby would reach his potential this year and he said:

Probably not. That's a guy I'm not really high on and is there potential still there? Absolutely, but the further we're removed from it the lesser the chances we have of him reaching it. I think that's important. This is a player who was really good in 2010. I'm talking about a guy who had .276 with 23 home runs and nearly slug .500 and it all went backwards last year and it got even worse when he got to Toronto. We can make a million excuses for him or we can be concerned and I'd rather be in the concerned pile, rather than someone just making excuses about stuff I don't know about.

He's right in that we shouldn't forget about last year, but then he is only one year away from a really good season. Most players have a bad season somewhere in their career.

He did have troubles with Tony LaRussa and his numbers in Toronto were helped along by the wrist injury had last year. Maybe LaRussa was right about him. Maybe it isn't the same case as Yunel Escobar and his time in Atlanta.

Colby's spring didn't do a lot to ease our minds. He hit .185/.274/.241 in 54 at bats, with 7 walks and 17 strike outs. I'll admit, I totally ignore walk and strikeout rates for spring. I think batters go there to work on timing and they should be swinging. Nearer the end of spring, then they can start working on watching the strike zone.

But then batting, I don't think that is something that can be turned on and off. I know Rasmus was working on changes to his spring, but I'd have hoped that by the end of camp he'd be hitting a little better. There didn't seem to be much improvement as the spring went on. I'm slightly worried that, if he gets off to a slow start, that he snowballs and he can't get out of it.

So, while Wilner doesn't allow for any chance that Rasmus might have a anything less than a great season, (I hope he's right) I don't think it is a sure thing by any means.

How confident are you in Colby Rasmus this year?