My fearless Rolen/Edmonds prediction, uh, hasn’t quite come in yet. So I have to console myself with predicting the end of Colby Rasmus’s yearly arbitrarily-endpointed slow start. A few weeks ago I suggested that those of us who watch closely for the perfect moment to begin counting Rasmus’s stats would start at his April 19 game. He went 3-5 with his first homer that day, and it pulled his average all the way up to .238. After homering in both ends of a double header yesterday, his stats since that date look like this:

 G  PA  AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  K  SB   AVG  OBP  SLG
14  56  51  17   5   1   4   5  4   3  .333 .393 .706

Most startling is his strikeout percentage, which momentarily became a major concern after he struck out in a third of his at-bats in Johnson City back in 2005. Seven percent is unsustainably good, unless he’s been taking lessons from David Eckstein, but it’s a great sign to see him do it for any length of time. For the season he’s now hitting .273/.347/.534 (with a K% of 14.7), which is itself pretty great for a guy in AA whose baseball age is 20.