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TORONTO — Since everybody admits there's no other body part – oops, make that shoe – to fall, trading Scott Rolen for Troy Glaus seems to be one of those six-of-mine-for-a-half-dozen-of-yours transactions.
But the reason the Toronto Blue Jays believe they will be a better team with Rolen at third base is that if … if … he stays healthy, he is a better all-round player than Glaus. Injured, either one of them is a liability. So the race is now on: Which team has the better doctors and medical staff, the Blue Jays or the St. Louis Cardinals?
Gentlemen, start your MRIs. Now we'll see who has the better medical system.
If Rolen stays healthy, the Blue Jays have taken a little hit in the power department for someone who should hit for a higher average and be productive gap-to-gap at the Rogers Centre. Defensively, the Blue Jays believe there is a significant difference between the two, even though they'd acknowledge that Glaus's defensive limitations weren't as pronounced as other people think.
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As one of the Blue Jays' baseball people said: “Rolen plays with a lower centre of gravity. He'll get to more balls than Troy. Healthy, we think Rolen is better. Healthy, we think the sum total of a left-side infield of Rolen and [shortstop] Dave Eckstein is better offensively and defensively than one of John McDonald and Troy Glaus. It's that simple.”
Healthy, that analysis is right, as much as it pains McDonald's ample following.
Financially, the deal is not exactly a wash because Rolen has one more guaranteed year remaining on his deal than Glaus does, even now that Glaus apparently has agreed to exercise his player option for 2009 ahead of time. So much for the thought that the Cardinals would be sending $8-million (all currency U.S.) along to allow the Blue Jays to swing a deal for another pitcher, say, Erik Bedard.
Some time Monday, if he isn't busy finding a spare shovel to take to tomorrow's Congressional hearing on steroids for all the malarkey he'll be dishing out, commissioner Bud Selig will sign off on the $4-million the Cardinals will send the Blue Jays as part of the deal. There will be some money going the other way for accounting purposes, which means the net gain for the Blue Jays will be about $3-million.
Then, the Blue Jays doctors will need to clear Rolen, who has had two major surgeries on his left shoulder and this winter had another arthroscopic procedure on his shoulder. Their counterparts in St. Louis will need to clear Glaus, who is bothered by a foot condition (plantar fasciitis) that some Blue Jays officials believe will never really improve.
That steroid stuff that Glaus was implicated in last year? Not an issue.
“Nobody on this team had trouble with Troy,” the Blue Jays' baseball person continued. “He was a standup guy. He was in Gibby's [manager John Gibbons's] corner and did whatever anybody asked him to do. We think there's some similarities between the two in terms of personality. That's what we hear about Rolen.”
Like everyone else, the Blue Jays also know that Rolen has feuded with Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa for the past two years. Tough to read anything into that. LaRussa has an ego to match or exceed even the best-paid superstar, but Larry Walker said in his short tenure with the team, most veteran Cardinals simply rolled their eyes at his quirks and moved past them, because LaRussa was a winner and made sound fundamental baseball decisions.
Unstated was the fact that he was also successful at bullying both ownership and some elements of the local media. The Cardinals – lavished with uncritical affection from their happy, middle-class, corn-fed, Midwestern fan base and graced to be playing in a one-newspaper town with a deep tradition of baseball excellence – had a cynical group of veterans personified by their distrustful superstar, Albert Pujols. It's possible that Rolen chafed under all that, just as he chafed under manager Larry Bowa in Philadelphia. That in itself is no big deal, because he's joining a list that includes everybody who ever played for Bowa.
Of greater concern would be anonymous sources who referred to Rolen as a “clubhouse cancer.” But know this: In 2001, Bowa said Rolen was the best defensive third baseman he'd seen. Not a bad compliment from a guy who played with Mike Schmidt. In 2006, LaRussa called Rolen “a potential Hall of Famer.” Rolen was healthy when those comments were made. That's all anyone needs to know about him. If healthy …
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