Season-altering trade

ST. LOUIS -- Long before the team meeting that helped alter the course of their season, the subsequent on-field turnaround, and the Atlanta Braves' stunning collapse, there was the trade.

On July 27, the St. Louis Cardinals sent centre fielder Colby Rasmus to the Toronto Blue Jays for relievers Marc Rzepczynski and Octavio Dotel, outfielder Corey Patterson, and starter Edwin Jackson (via the Chicago White Sox), a deal that didn't look very good back then given that they parted with a star-level talent for little more than competent but unspectacular complementary parts.

Turns out it was a masterstroke.

"I'll tell you if that trade had not been made, I believe we probably would have been an under .500 club," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said Tuesday, ahead of the World Series opener against the Texas Rangers on Wednesday night. "That's how important it was to us.

"We were just getting so thin," he added later, "it would have been hard to finish."

Instead it was the Braves who bungled their way to the finish line, in part because of a lack of pitching depth, allowing the Cardinals to claw their way back from a 10½ -game deficit on Aug. 25 in the wildcard race.

A team meeting after the lowly Los Angeles Dodgers completed a three-game sweep helped the clubhouse refocus on keeping the heat on, and after taking two of three from the Milwaukee Brewers on Sept. 5-7 and a sweep of the Braves Sept. 9-11 right after, a real belief set in.

And thanks to the trade, the Cardinals had the roster depth to pull the comeback off.

"It's crazy, but it happens when you get a team with such perseverance and a lot of heart to continue to battle every day and continue to fight and not give up and just see where we end up at the end of the day," said Jackson. "It got us to where we are right now."

Jackson was a Blue Jay for mere minutes, picked up from the White Sox for reliever Jason Frasor and pitching prospect Zach Stewart. He never spoke with anybody from Toronto, told by the White Sox of the first deal and to hang tight for something else to happen.

With St. Louis, he went 5-2 with a 3.58 ERA in 13 games, 12 of them starts, logging a crucial 78 innings.

Rzepczynski, a sophomore lefty emerging into a very effective bullpen piece, was the toughest player for the Jays to surrender. In 28 games, he posted a 3.97 ERA, logging 22 innings, often facing the opposition's best left-handed bats.

He was 10 minutes from leaving for the Rogers Centre on July 27 when Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos phoned him and told him of the trade. Initially shocked, the converted starter quickly embraced his new situation.

"It's a lifelong dream for me to be in the World Series," he said. "I didn't think I was going to be where I am today, but I can't ask for anything more. Hopefully now let's get a ring out of it."

Given the option of making the Blue Jays roster out of spring training as a reliever or continuing to start for triple-A Las Vegas, Rzepczynski chose to work out of the bullpen.

It's a decision that has played out brilliantly for him.

"If I was still a starter, who knows what would have happened, and for me right now, relieving works," Rzepczynski said. "I like pitching in the eighth inning facing guys you're going to face four times in a series. As a starter you get to pitch once, maybe twice in a seven-game series, I was able to pitch five out of six games (in the NLCS).

"Starting, I'm still not eliminating that, but right now I'm relieving and having a great time doing it."

Also having a great time is Dotel, the well-traveled 37-year-old who never found a role in Toronto but has become an effective weapon in La Russa's bullpen.

In Toronto, he pitched just 29.1 innings over the first four months of the season, going 2-1 with a 3.68 ERA in 36 games. He proceeded to pitch 24.2 frames in two months with the Cardinals, posting a 3-3 mark and an ERA of 3.28.

On the last day of the season, Jays manager John Farrell said one thing he would have changed from the season was the way he handled the team's closing situation with Frank Francisco, Jon Rauch and Dotel, something Dotel says affected him negatively.

"It hurt me over there, I'm not going to lie to you," said Dotel, set for his first World Series appearance in 13 seasons and 12 teams. "Farrell, I understand his situation, his first year as a manager, he's kind of learning the game, trying to do his best, but at the same time, when you start managing for the first time, there are a lot of things (on paper) you can see about this guy, about this guy and this guy and it kind of hurt the way he used us.

"But I'm happy and glad he understood that he didn't do it the right the way. At one point, the way I was used in Toronto, I felt like I guess next year I'm going home because I wasn't used by the team enough. After I came over here, Tony asked me, 'Hey, how you feel?' And I just said, 'Hey Tony, I just want to pitch because at this point I only got 29 innings in four months of the season.'

"I'm glad I came through and do my best for this team, I'm glad where I am right now."

So too are the Cardinals. The Blue Jays? They're hoping their payoff comes down the road.

Shi Davidi is the MLB Insider for sportsnet.ca. Come back to read his insight and opinion regularly.