1. If we give up another pitcher, the back end of our rotation becomes Braden/DiNardo and we have to call another guy up from AAA. I’d be pretty surprised to see Duke dealt since that would mean trading 3/5 of our opening day rotation. I’d be especially surprised to see him dealt for 1/3 of Rasmus.

2. GMs usually prefer quality to quantity, and here you’re proposing a lot of quantity to make up for Rasmus’ quality. I don’t think it’s the way deals get done. Embree is a fairly marginal player, as is healthy Crosby (I’ll let PT defend me on this one). Duke is having a great year, but will almost certainly regress to the mean in the second half. He’s been VERY lucky and quite good. Street is busily blowing saves to ensure he can’t be traded. I think if the Cards are focused on contending through Pujols’ contract, they’d be better served with Rasmus plus FAs.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents (but I’d love to see Rasmus). I think the more likely way we get an impact bat is Burrell/Dunn as off-season FA signings.

But, I’d be pretty disappointed if EVERY SINGLE TRADE CHIP LEFT was dealt for another player who won’t play the left side of the infield.

Rasmus is awesome, but he’s still just a prospect. That’s a whole lot of MLB talent for one maybe.

If the Cards think they have a shot this year — and I think you’re dead-on with the whole Pujols window — then they should be willing to deal Rasmus for a couple of key pieces. Give them Street, give them Ellis too, and then who could complain about that on their end? A proven closer and a major upgrade at 2B? Hell, if the secondary prospect coming back is good enough, give them Embree too. But there’s no reason Duchs should be in this deal.

including Ellis and Duke for a guy who is not even in the big leagues yet. No way! If we do a trade like that, it better be for someone who is producing big time in the bigs.

He didn’t seem too thrilled when I suggested Street/Blanton/Patterson for Rasmus, so I don’t think this is an easily argued position.

Perfect together. Like duckies & bunnies.

Embree and Crosby are expendable (Crosby less so), but I don’t know if Crosby’s value would tilt the trade enough to make it worthwhile in dealing him. I’d throw Embree in a deal for Rasmus, but I doubt it would be a sticking point or even someone the Cards would go after. Wouldn’t they rather someone like Blevins?

Ellis is incredibly valuable, even just over the stretch run. I want an extension for him, damnit. No dealing him in my scenario, not with Duke and Street for just Rasmus.

I’d like Duke for an extension too, but this is a gray area. Personally, I don’t think Duke has enough perceived value to net someone like Rasmus. He doesn’t have a Mulder track record. And Street’s not enough on his own.

Short end, I don’t believe it’s the match made in heaven that you’re painting.

Trade you my cheese crackers, banana, and juice for your snack pack?

Thinking in terms of trades, I’d like to think how a deal might go down if the front offices and not the personnel (or vice versa) were switched. So what would the A’s want for a talent like Rasmus?

If the A’s were in the Cardinals position, contending in a 3 year window with the Cardinals personnel, I don’t think they would move Rasmus. I know there are other holes for them talent wise, but CF doesn’t have a 3 year solution outside of the top prospect. And it’s not like there are a bunch of hot hitting center fielders in the system. Heck, there’s not even two. Just Rasmus.

Look at the players Beane has acquired via trade and how that has happened. Beane doesn’t seem to be the person to make the initial call for a trade (he prefers to receive calls), he already knows the players from each system that he wants, and I think he also has an idea of the players he doesn’t want to involve in the deal for the other side.

In fielding calls, if Beane didn’t even ask about Vitters, why would he bring up Rasmus? Even if the Cardinals call about some combo of Duke/Street/Crosby, I don’t think Colby’s name comes up in the conversation. My belief is that Beane finds the cost of top prospects to be highly inflated in relation to their actual value.

Beane extracts most of his value from clubs is through their talent surplus. The Cubs had little to no use for Patterson, Donaldson, and Murton. Arizona was stacked with outfielders and what they felt were middling SP prospects at AAA. I think the Phillies have this guy named Chutney, or Utlase, or something. They didn’t need Cardenas if he wasn’t going to stick at third in their minds. Point is, Rasmus is no surplus for the Cardinals, he’s the nest egg and they’re not frittering it away.

The Oh Noes:

So, if the A’s deal again, they’ll want to deal from their own talent redundancy, preferably from the top. I guess we’ve actually already seen that with Haren, Harden, Gaudin, and Blanton. And, unfortunately, this line of thinking has Duke and Ellis on the trading block. I see little evidence that Beane is concerned with filling major league holes. I think he just wants as many good baseball players as he can get. Not a bad strategy if you ask me.

{apologies for the lack of cohesiveness in this post, I’m more than a little tired}

Actually, I’m gonna do some thinking and come up with some deals for Rasmus that I think are fair, but won’t get done.

if the A’s only give up three of those names, most likely in the form of Duke, Ellis, and Street/Embree…I don’t think giving up all those players would make it fair, even though thats probably the only way the deal could actually happen as a result of inflated prospect prices. I think that for the Cards, having another #2 SP (I’m still not sure he is a #1), a good 2b, and another much needed bullpen arm would help them seriously contend for the next year or so, especially when they have Wainright and Carpenter coming back. They also have Ludwick (no guarantees that he keeps up this kind of production, though) and Ankiel (ditto), which means that I think it wouldn’t hurt them as much to lose the power hitting OF prospect as it would for a team like, say, the A’s. However, I think the A’s would get a lot more value, maybe not in the form of one prospect though, if they sold off each piece individually. The only caveat emtpor to this post is that I am also a Cardinals fan, so for me this would be a win-win situation…

And all 5 guys, even Crosby, are more accomplished that Rasmus. Known quantities have the additional value of being known. You pay a little more for just being rather certain of what a guy offers. There’s still no guarantee Rasmus will perform at the major league level (even though everybody is almost positive he will).

Even though I could see it ultimately working, there’s just no way I give up that much for one player. Not when each player individually could bring in a prospect or three. Then you trade a couple of those guys for Rasmus or some other young, cheap bat.

i think the A’s should take a stab at Barry Bonds and trade away for another decent hitter or starting pitcher to make that last push. You never know, Bonds could smack 15 hr’s in second half for A’s

but why would the A’s trade away Gaudin, Harden, and Blanton, that’s insane

and it appears you piled up a lot of quantity that doesn’t equal the quality of Rasmus. Duke has been a very good pitcher this year, but team’s have learned their lessons in not dealing top prospects with Beane for nearing 30 year old pitchers.

Huston Street healthy may have value to the Cardinals but the rest you listed simply do not. Not only that, but the Cardinals would be giving up 6 seasons of cost controlled, projected All-Star caliber talent for 2 year rentals of near replacement level players nearing or on the wrong side of 30.

There is no way I would trade Rasmus unless I were getting a top flight talent back. That just isn’t happening in this trade scenario and I don’t think the Cardinals would be willing to part with him whatsoever unless they were getting somebody of supreme talent, ala a Tim Lincecum or something- which won’t be happening. Adding Duke would be nice for the interim, but they do have 4 SP that are pitching pretty well right now and then Wainwright and Carpenter are due back. It doesn’t make sense to trade off their best prospect, as well as one of the best in baseball, for these guys.

because afterwards the infield would suck and the rotation would suck.

...no, no, no, no, no, please no, oh no, God no, please God no, and NO! ;) Rasmus is our future, with a depleted farm system. Respectfully, there’s nothing the A’s have that perk my ears up now (Harden might’ve, but definitely not for Rasmus). Nothing against your team; I simply wouldn’t trade Rasmus for many players, possibly two to three (Hanley Ramirez being the only one I’d be willing to pull the trigger on without hesitation).

Go Cards, hope your team does well in the West. Tired of watching the Angels take it.

I agree with the others for several reasons.

1) The Mark Mulder trade: Trading with Billy Beane scares the crap out of me. At this point, I would assume that Billy Beane knows something that I didn’t know if he’s giving away that much talent. Last time you guys got 3 players from us for Mulder, and all three of them have paid dividends.

2) Mark Ellis is not really an upgrade for us. Aaron Miles is having a career year, and even for his career Ellis is a .748 OPS guy. I certainly don’t like the thought of Aaron Miles being our long-term solution at 2nd base, but at this moment, I’d take Aaron Miles over Mark Ellis.

3) The other players are certainly intriguing, but the Duke is the only one I see as a top-tier guy at this point, and I think if you’re going to give up a potential cornerstone guy, and as previously mentioned, a potential cornerstone with 6 cost-controlled years, I think you have to get back a top-tier guy that either puts you over the top or can help you for several years. Our impact “acquisition” that could put us over the top won’t be Duke, it’ll be whether Carpenter and Wainwright can come back healthy. If they can, we don’t really need Duke, if they can’t, we’re going to get crushed in the NLDS anyway.

4) I really am just scared enough of trading with Billy Beane that I feel the need to list this twice.

I don’t think either side would do this, because it cripples you guys for the rest of the year, and I know Beane is certainly not shy from dumping players for max value, even in a pennant race. He’s obviously shown that with his dismantling of the pitching staff.

But this trade would pretty much make you guys a Triple-A team for the remainder of the year. I don’t see that being a wise decision, even for the Billy Beane.

Meanwhile, there are very good points on why some of the players mentioned would be upgrades, and would make our team better. Yet, the players mentioned still don’t make us better than the Cubs, and we’d be trading off the guy that is likely a big part of the Cardinals future.

I certainly am not saying the package mentioned is a bunch of bums and losers, but I think it’s a situation where the sum of those parts to Oakland is greater than Rasmus, and lesser than Rasmus to the Cardinals, who could use a middle-of-the-lineup player at a premium position for $400,000 for the next few years to free up some money to address some of our other needs.