HOUSTON – Colby Rasmus feels renewed with the Houston Astros, reinvigorated by a different place with a different culture, comfortable in an environment where he says he’s free to be himself.

The 28-year-old outfielder is a veteran on the largely youth-oriented American League West leaders, a role he’s relishing after a difficult parting with the Toronto Blue Jays over the winter.

“It’s cool,” Rasmus said of being an elder statesman in the clubhouse ahead of facing his former team Thursday night. “I like it in the sense that I can just kind of be myself and not have other people judging me all the time so much here in this environment. I want to say it’s more of a friendly environment.



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“Everybody gets along a little better, not poking and prodding about how much time you’ve got and all those different things. I don’t know what you would call it, worrying about what other people are doing? Here, I think, everybody just kind of does their own thing and I fit in better here as far as getting along and not having to look over my shoulder all the time.”

If those comments sound familiar, they should, as Rasmus said similar things during his time with the Blue Jays following his acquisition from the St. Louis Cardinals in July 2011. Over his 3½ years in Toronto, a relationship that began with promise soured enough that he was benched for the final month of 2014.

By then he’d become a polarizing figure in the clubhouse.

Asked if he felt judged while in Toronto, Rasmus replied: “Yeah, in the sense of how much (service) time you had, and the pecking order, just feeling comfortable in the clubhouse. I’m not going to go into any details, but I feel more comfortable in this clubhouse and in this environment.”

In large measure the reason for the change can be pinned on the change in his performance.

A poor second half of 2011 after his acquisition was considered a write-off given the issues from his experience with the Cardinals, while his second-half fade in 2012 after a monster first half was attributed to his tendency to overwork.

Tweaks were made to his routine and he thrived in 2013, when he posted an .840 OPS, but his game slipped last year, when he hit 18 homers with 40 RBIs in 104 games, striking out in 33 per cent of his plate appearances.

“Last year I came in and my hamstrings were hurting and you know how it is, you’re not playing up to expectations, then things change, friendly smiles aren’t as friendly anymore,” said Rasmus. “That’s just the way it goes.”

Rasmus hit the DL early last season with a hamstring injury and never regained his feet. The Blue Jays needed his production when injuries took Edwin Encarancion, Adam Lind and Brett Lawrie from the lineup but he never pulled his game together, butting heads with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer over the position of his hands in his swing, among other issues.

Everyone wanted to turn the page at season’s end.

“You know how it is, it’s all about what have you done for me lately,” said Rasmus. “They’d run me out there for close to 60 games and try to blame me for being tired, playing on the turf when I was running into walls and trying to do the best I could for the team, not getting some maybe needed breaks to where it could have given me a little bit of a rest to prolong myself. But I didn’t complain, I just kept going. Once I started getting a little bit hurt – that’s just the way baseball works. I’m not trying to give anything personal, but that’s just the way the game works. I started to teeter off and it wasn’t as comfortable, I guess you could say. But I wasn’t producing like I was, that’s just the way the game works.”

In Houston so far, which he picked over the Baltimore Orioles he said, things have been working better for him.

While Rasmus has struck out in nearly 38 per cent of his trips to the plate, he’s hit six homers with 13 RBIs while scoring 15 times. His OPS is .788, which is the third-best pace of his career.

There are no chicken dogs, which he so loved in Toronto, “but I found me a nice little Cuban-Mexican spot here that I’ve been enjoying; El Reys is pretty good. But no, I’m past it. I feel good where I’m at and I think this is a better place for me.”

Also helping Rasmus is a renewed emphasis on faith in his life, and more focus on his family. He and wife Megan welcomed a second daughter in the fall, Rylee, and that’s given him something to take his mind off baseball away from the field.

“It’s changed my life in a lot of ways,” Rasmus said of embracing religion. “It’s helped me on the field, too, as far as just enjoying the game, letting things go, I know we talked about at times I was having trouble letting things go, things ate me up because I wanted to do good and wanted to play good, so I wasn’t able to leave those things at the yard whenever it would have been useful to me mentally to do that. It’s definitely been good for me.

“I pay a lot of attention to my kids, my girls. After the game I’m going straight home and kissing my little baby on the cheek and I spend a lot of my time with them, just with my family, and not so much focused on baseball and racking my brain with trying to be the best I could be and going out there hitting .330 with all this. I just try to go home and enjoy family, love on them and come to the yard with a fresh frame of mind to play a new baseball game that day and not worry about what happened the day before. Even though it still happens, I’m human, I just try to play and have fun.”