TenuredVulture wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

CrashburnAlley wrote:Awesome breakdown of a Roy Halladay trade at Beyond the Box Score.

Here's a quick and dirty estimate of what prospect packages would equal Halladay's trade value. Based on past trading history, some are more likely than others.

* One stud position player. (Win for Blue Jays.)
* One top 50 position player.
* Two top 100 position players.
* One top 10 pitching prospect and a grade B prospect.
* Two top 75 pitching prospects.
* Four grade B prospects.
* Twelve to twenty grade C prospects. (The Ricky Williams strategy?)

Phillies

While everybody's raving about the Phillies' pitching prospects, they only had one ranked in Baseball America's Top 100 before the season, Carlos Carrasco. Mid-season, however, Kyle Drabek has cracked the Top 25. Both of those guys would be woth $15M in excess value going forward, while B-prospects J.A. Happ and Jason Knapp are each about half as valuable. Just looking at pitchers, then, one from each group would make for a fair trade, while two of the studs or three of the four would tip things in the Jays favor. How Pedro Martinez looks over the next two weeks will go a long way towards determining how much of their future the Phillies are looking to sacrifice.

The Phillies do have some quality position player prospects, though, too, namely Dominic Brown and Michael Taylor, two outfielders who both made BA's mid-season top 25, plus Jason Donald (INF) who was a Top 75 pre-season pick. That's an expected value of $25M each for the two otufielders and $15M for Donald. Maybe the Jays strategy is to push for multiple pitchers, then "settle" for just one plus a blue-chip outfield prospect?

If Riccardi read that, he might be thinking he can get 30 players.

Take the 20 C's option. That'll redefine the term "selling the farm" as we won't be able to field one of the minor league teams

Surely we could find enough free agents. Aren't C guys mostly minor league roster filler anyway?

Organization now downplaying Halladay deal. Too little pitching; won't include Raz'

jays told AL East contenders they much prefer to trade halladay out of the division

CF Pagan (Reyes SS)
1B Murphy (Wells RF)
3B Wright
RF Sheffield (Beltran CF)
LF Wells (Delgado 1B)
SS Cora (Sheffield/Tatis/Fernando LF)
2B Castillo
C Schneider

Santana - Halladay - Pelfrey - Hernandez (Maine) - Nieve/Redding (Hernandez)

Brantt wrote:Believe it or not, I have an unbelievable source in the Cards organization

Brantt wrote:Believe it or not, I have an unbelievable source in the Cards organization through the company I work for. I would call this guy a major player in their organization, especially on the financial side.

Talked to him today and he said the Cardinals will not be involved at all with Halladay. His said from a pure money standpoint they cannot afford it because they have Lohse at escalating big money for the next four years, Carpenter at escalating big money for the next 3 or 4 years, an issue at closer with either having to sign one or resigning Franklin for big money after the season he is having, and they are deathly afraid of what Pujols is going to ask for in 2 years.

On another note, the guy told me they are also worried that Larussa is going to bolt at the end of the year and go to the Reds to be reunited with Walt Jocketty. He speculated if that happened the Reds plan to offer Pujols $30M+ after the 2011 season.

The big question for the Phillies as the second half of the baseball season gets underway seems to be whether to make an all-out push for Toronto ace Roy Halladay or not.

In the past few days, I've spoken with people familiar with the Phillies' front office, and they paint a picture of an organization in the midst of a philosophical debate. Some want to push hard for Halladay, seeing him as an opportunity to separate them from the rest of the league and make a run at a very rare World Series repeat.

But others wonder if the smarter move, in light of having reached the pinnacle in 2008, would be to pull back a little bit, hold onto the top prospects they'd need to send the Blue Jays in a Halladay deal and focus on keeping their farm system deep and stocked so they can remain competitive long into the future.