Wednesday, July 29, 2009

No Doc in the House?

Rumours are swirling that Roy Halladay will soon be an ex-Jay. Rogers executives have made Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi's life a living hell by publicly stating that they want to control costs on the baseball operations budget, and as Philly-area blogger Riggs has mentioned, it looks as if his Phillies have gone in another direction (towards acquiring the Tribe's fine starter, Cliff Lee).

What does this mean? The unthinkable might happen: Roy Halladay might be traded to Boston.

I predict that if this happens, the Red Sox will become, by far, the favourite to win the World Series. And the Phillies will be left wondering what might have been because they wouldn't pay the freight for the best starting pitcher on the market.

Edit: Phillies did in fact trade for Lee. Notably they did not give up any of their three highest-rated prospects, but did give up four of their top ten. I do in fact think this was a good deal for both Philly & Cleveland. Only time will tell if the Phillies succeed in playoffs ... in their situation they absolutely had to trade for a veteran starter, and they got one.

5 comments:

1Queens Up1 said...

If they let him go to a division Rival PL, I'd fire your GM ASAP.

Memphis MOJO said...

I think the Blue Jay GM is doing a good job driving up the price. The worst that can happen is he keeps him!

Hammer Player a.k.a Hoyazo said...

I have to disagree with Memphis -- I thikn Ricciardi has blown his opportunity with the Halladay trade. The Sox's latest offer as of Weds. morning -- Clay Buchholz and the Sox's top position prospect -- is so far worse than what the Phils' were already offering earlier in the week that I don't see how he could possibly accept it, especially to a division rival.

Unless the Sox come out and up their offer significantly, I would say that Ricciardi did a good job last week of driving up the alleged price for Halladay, but then missed the boat to deal with the Phillies earlier this week when the price was the highest.

I actually think Ricciardi is likely to be called on the carpet for his handling of the whole Halladay situation sometime soon. Ricciardi may be a lot of things and he may be a very talented GM, but with Halladay he's been trying to do his best Billy Beane impression. And he is no Billy Beane.

lightning36 said...

It's interesting -- in Chicagoland people think that Kenny Williams might make a good offer from the White Sox. However, the Sox never appear to have made the radar in any other news I've seen.

I agree with Hoy -- looks like the big opportunity was lost.

lightning36 said...

Yes -- the White Sox got Jake Peavy. Yowsa!