ESPN and Ken Rosenthal reporting that Matt Holliday to Cardinals for Brett Wallace, Clayton Mortensen, and Shane Peterson is imminent.

Ugh.

Huh... that'd be interesting. I don't know anything about who the Cards are sending over, though.

None of their stats look great in the minors, but there's two former 1st rounders and a former 2nd rounder in there, so I guess they're bigger prospects.

Brett Wallace is a great bat prospect, iffy at 3rd. Could be a DH going forward but the guy can hit. 21 on BP's midseason Top 25. Mortensen was 6 in the St. Louis system in February.

Wallace is the key - he's a big league hitter. Unfortunately, he's not likely to stick at 3B, and therefore didn't really have a position with the Cards.

Wallace for Holliday straight up I could've gotten behind a bit more, adding Mortensen confounds me.

Apparently a done deal, Holliday in the lineup for STL tonight.

Baseball America rated Wallace (.293/5/16/.769 OPS in 62g at AAA Memphis this year) in as the #2 prospect in the Cards organization going into the season as the heir apparent to Scott Rolen. Mortensen (7-6, 4.37 at AAA Memphis this year) was their #5 prospect and a 2007 1st round pick and was projected as their #3 starter by 2012.

Interesting. I was reading that Wallace will probably end up being a DH, as his defense at 3B isn't that great, and 1B is already full for the foreseeable future.

Adding others seems interesting on the Cards part.

Beane robbing the Cardinals again IMO; this is the LaRussa effect. No way the Giants should have beaten this offer.

Gotta like Holliday + Pujols, though. Maybe make it so Albert actually gets some pitches to hit. Certainly improves the Card's chances for the post-season.

And if they can sign him long term, it's not bad for the Cards.

Holliday + Boras = hitting the market

Glad the Giants didn't pony up.

The cardinals apparently decided to go all in this season. Wallace really looks like a nice player, but he'll end up at 1B from everything I've ever read on him (BP has him listed at 245 and he doesn't have any range at 3rd). Peterson has great on base skills, but needs to develop power or he'll be a handy 4th OFer. Mortensen is a sinkerballer that had some problems before putting things together a bit this year.

Not a bad haul for the A's. All 3 are close to the majors and Mortensen was already there earlier this season. Definitely more value than 2 draft picks. The Cardinals got a solid, but not great corner OFer that should help their lineup quite a bit. I like the deal on both sides, although I'm actually a bit surprised the A's got this much for Holliday.

Yeah, the two draft picks wasn't much of an option anyway IMO. I just doubt the A's would offer arbitration. Too much risk he would accept.

Beane had to move Holliday. He got a pretty nice haul.

MLB Network saying that Phillies and Toronto are close on a deal for Halladay.

:( I don't want to see Halladay leave. About one of the only things I like about the Jays right now.

Anyone have a list of top Phillies' prospects? I'm curious what could possibly come back.

no, No, NO!

Screw you JP.

Sounds like Kyle Drabek is the key. No Drabek, no deal. As to the rest of it...dunno. MLB Trade Rumors was talking about J.A. Happ earlier. Those are the only names I've seen.

Kyle Drabek, Dominic Brown, JA Happ, and others were rumored.

The Phillies have gotta make this trade. You have a real chance to win 2 in a row with Halladay, the time is now.

If you can get Happ & Drabek, you'd be silly NOT to make the deal.

At least the Jays will still have the franchise outfield of Rios and Wells locked up long term. Those guys won't be getting away from the fans.

Kyle Drabek is the big one the blue jays want. He's the guy that's been holding up the deal from what I've been reading.

I haven't seen any other names that the Jays are interested in, but OF Michael Taylor, C Travis D'Arnaud, and P Carlos Carrasco were the other's in BP's top 5 entering the season. Drabek was rated 3rd heading into the season, but has made as big of a jump as any prospect has this season.

The other names from their top 10 are Happ, OF Dominic Brown, OF Zach Collier, SS Jason Donald, and C Lou Marson. I've heard Happ involved in some versions of the deal, but I don't know if the Jays were interested in him or if the Phillies were trying to substitute him for Drabek.

From January 09 FWIW
BaseballAmerica.com: Prospects: Rankings: Organization Top 10 Prospects: Philadelphia Phillies Top 10 Prospects

I'd think Drabek is a must, along with one of the young OF's, some bullpen depth and just for fun a throw-in of John Mayberry, Jr.

edit to add: As Atocep mentioned, I think Happ is possibility but I had trouble thinking if he was a component that the deal might have already been done. The Jays look to be heavy on lefty starters at the moment as is.

Pat Gillick was on a radio sports talk show that I watch (as stupid as that sounds) a couple days ago, and he wouldn't say what he recommended explicitly, but he made it clear his motto is the same as you have said... if you have the chance to win now, you do it.

The host (Bob McCown) said the Jays can't trade Halladay right now and expect anything but lost fans for the next while (about 20% is what he guessed), unless they get same crazy awesome package... and I agree with that.

FWIW the MLBTradeRumors twitter (where I got the report) has pulled that tweet and replaced it with something saying they're not close.

If I were the Jays, I'd give on Drabek and get more:

A package such as Carrasco (who I think is a good underrated prospect), Jason Knapp, Dominic Brown, Jason Donald, and Travis Arnaud (who the Jays apparently loved, per Keith Law, and were beaten to by the Phillies).

Plus Halladay has already told him he WILL enter free agency.

Mike Hampton. Seriously Johan?

Well that is the 16th time he does that, so much as I hate to cut a Met any slack it's probably not quite so bad.

It's essentially Wallace for Holliday with some low upside, closer to the majors prospects to the A's for the higher-risk prospects the Cards will get with the draft picks. Wallace was a good hitter, but he's not sticking at 3B or moving Pujols away from 1B, and speaking of Pujols the Cards desperately need to make a push to convince him they're serious about competing for World Series so he doesn't test the market in 2? years.

Yay!!!

Tigers sweep the Sox in the Doubleheader!!!

So, Vicente Padilla of the Rangers tested positive for Swine Flu, but they said he still is going to start on Tuesday.

Might as well I guess, half a dozen or so teammates already have the flu anyway. I'm just glad the spitball isn't legal.

In Red Sox news, who would have thought the Varitek would have been decent with the bat and a black hole defensively this season? .231/.339/.457 but 73 of 86 runners have stolen on him.

Brad Penny looked good again Milwaukee....

I hope the Cardinal fans can convince Holiday to sign long term with the Cards. A long term OF of Holiday, Rasmus and Ludwick would be outstanding.

This also ends the experiment of Troy Glaus playing LF.....whew.

It's depressing to read what the Blue Jays can expect to get for Halladay and then look at what Bill Smith got when he gave away Santana. :(

Garrett f'n Jones with a 2 run shot!

This is getting to be Roy Hobbs like.

The guy is unbelievable. If he played in a major market the whole country would be talking about him.

Fixed that for you.

I'm not sure why you'd assume he's on steroids.

I think it's more like he's saying if a player with his performance was lighting it up in a major market, that's the drumbeat that would start up.

I mean, if Pujols gets that scrutiny, somebody most of the country has never heard of would have no chance of avoiding it.

That's true but if everyone is being tested than we know the system works; Manny is proof of that.

Ding ding ding.

You've got the seeming oddity of a guy who has been stuck in the minors for a decade, his power numbers trailing off from a peak of 31 homers in 563 PA in 2004 down to 13 in 446 by 2007. Suddenly he's playing like Roy Hobbs in the majors? Pretty damned fishy to the naked eye, somebody might want to look into that.

If he was in the spotlight in a big way, it wouldn't be without a great deal of questions about those things.

Sure the questions will be there but is there any point at which fans can simply enjoy something without worrying about steroids? I hate that the era took place but now, with all the testing in place, I generally assume players are clean unless testing proves otherwise. I'm not suggesting you don't also do this but at what point can the fans just enjoy something like a hot streak like this for what it is? Do you think we'll ever reach that point?

TARGET FIELD
 

No, I really don't. I think that genie is out of the bottle & it won't be going away any time soon, at least not in my lifetime.

Eat 'em up Tigers, eat 'em up!! Detroit took two out of the first four from the white sox, hope they can keep this up.

Love the Holliday trade!!!

I am betting you are in the minority here at least in today's time. I would guess that most baseball fans assume the opposite with the possible exception of when it comes to home town players.

When David Ortiz had a bad start, people commonly said it was coming off of steroid. Ibanez's performance earlier this season was all around steroid discussion, etc.

I think now that we have players just now being mentioned that they tested positive years ago combined with many others never having been named that were on the list, it leads to everyone speculating about almost everyone.

Now any major superstar that does exceptionally well it seems causes the majority of people to have in the back of their mind, "I wonder if they are using". Perhaps the only "superstar" that is around where I honestly haven't heard that talk about is Griffey Jr.

I think it is just the end result of the last 10+ seasons of events coming back and biting the MLB in the butt. The only way that ever goes away is to have a system in place that is open enough and foolproof enough that the majority of fans actually believe that it is 99.9% effective. Since that does not even happen for the Olympics today, I don't see in the near future steroids leaving the back of minds of conversations such as this.

espn.com reporting that it looks like the Halladay to the Phillies deal may be dying. Blue Jays reportedly wanted Happ, Drabek, and OF prospect Dominic Brown. Phillies wanted to sub Carlos Carrasco for one pitcher (or two other position prospects for one pitcher) preferrably Drabek, Jays don't sound ready to bite.

What do you do if you're Toronto? You know Halladay won't re-sign so isn't it best to get what you can for him now? Obviously we don't know what other teams are offering for Halladay but I'm betting the Phillies are offering the best package, even without including Drabek.

As an Indians fan, I wonder if things change for Cliff Lee and the Tribe if Halladay stays in Toronto. Teams looking to add a top of the rotation arm now would be down to Lee as their only option (not a bad option but not Halladay) and that could potentially force them to give up more in a bidding war for Lee. At least that's what I hope for.

Really don't get the Phils infatuation with prospects. Halladay is the best pitcher in the MLB and I have no doubt would resign in Philly. Are any of those guys going to top the production he'd give them?

The Jays shouldn't be in any rush to trade him before the deadline. What they can get for him in the offseason couldn't be that much worse. Just don't do what my Twins did and accept a trade that revolves around Carlos Fucking Gomez.

Well, at the bare minimum any trade for Halladay has to include value that is perceived to be higher than the 2 draft picks the Jays will get as compensation if Halladay leaves in free agency. Clearly the Jays want more than that given Halladay is one of the best pitchers in the game, but they will get some compensation for him leaving, so any offer has to beat that.

Everyone is aware that Halladay isn't a free agent until after 2010, right?

3 names are creeping up with Detroit:

Josh Willingham, Adam Dunn and Milton Bradley.

I'd prefer Dunn to DH, but Bradley is a + Defender when he wants to be. That said he's a headcase, but if Chicago would absorb a good chunk of salary, or take back Dontrelle or Nate, you have to do it.

Saw this elsewhere, c/p word for word:

according to Dave Cameron who has solid connections:

I’ve been hearing for a few days that the M’s were involved as a third team in a Cliff Lee to Tampa Bay deal. The Indians want more pitching than the Rays want to give up and don’t have a use for Brignac (because we already gave them an awesome LH hitting SS…), so the M’s would get Brignac and send additional pitching to the Rays.

What that looks like is up in the air. I’ve heard Morrow/Clement to Cleveland in a huge deal that also sends Victor Martinez to Tampa. I’ve heard that we’d absorb Kazmir’s contract too in order to make TB be able to fit Lee into their budget. I’ve heard smaller deals where it’s just Morrow.

Guess we’ll see.

Good point - any return for the Jays has to beat not just the 2 draft picks they'll get, but also account for the value he'll provide next season in addition to the remainder of this season. It's a big reason why Toronto is exploring trade options now.

FWIW I highly doubt that report but who knows.

Rays just came back from a 9-1 deficit and beat the Jays in the 12th.

Woot!

There might be something wrong with bobby Jenks.

Watching the Phillies take on the Cardinals. Two teams I rarely see play, this game seems fairly unbalanced.

/tk

You're right. A person just can't be that ugly.

Julian Tavarez can.

LOL, Lugo is 4 for 5 today with a double and a triple. Apparently wasn't too bad yesterday either.

No, he's been quite good in two games. LaRussa will probably sit him tomorrow. :D

Not much in the way of pitching today for Lohse and the boys.. although I believe each team had 14 hits.. :(

Better offers were there. He turned down a combination of Lester, Lowrie, Masterson and Crisp to go with the Mets platter of borderline prospects, and many people here were saying the Sox players/prospects were worse at the time.Was it Marcus Thames who came out and hit like 12 home runs the first 2 weeks a season or two ago, and then ended up with less than 20 on the season? Hot streaks happen. If he keeps it up the rest of the season, maybe I could see rumors starting, but it's way too small a sample size for that.

Chris Shelton. 9 HR in the first 13 games, then by August he was in AAA.

Sure seems that the D-Backs run into a very high amount of outs

Jon Heyman reports that the Yankees called to see what it would take to get Halladay and JP told him Joba, Hughes, and 2 more prospects.

From the Angels he wanted Joe Saunders, Sean O'Sullivan, Aybar, and Brandon Wood.

My guess is if the Rays called he'd just ask to swap 40 man rosters.

Yeah, read this, too. Ricciardi's nuts. Not so much about the talent requested but the positions asked for. Yeah, hey, Tony, to get Halladay, we want you to send us one of your clearcut top four SPs, and the top candidate for your fifth SP spot as well. That way, you'll still need a SP from somewhere else after you're done dealing with us. Oh, yeah, and for the position prospects, we want to take BOTH of your young SS's, instead of just one, and looking at another position for the second position prospect.

I can do Saunders and Wood OR Aybar. But if Saunders goes, candidates for the remaining rotation spots have to stay. If Toronto wants Reckling or Bell or Walden for that second pitcher, okay, we'll talk, but the Angels still have to field a five man rotation (dumbass). I'm not even going to talk about how silly the Wood/Aybar thing is (why on Earth would the Jays think the Angels would move both of their SSs in one deal? To give Izturis a chance?).

I am thinking Doc's gonna stay in Toronto after all. If JP keeps asking for deals like this, and the one from Philly which includes both Happ and Drabek, he's not really trying to move Halladay at all.

It does seem like Ricciardi wants to pull the wool over team's eyes. Like "Hey Guyzzzz... Roy can pitch every game 4 u, so give me all yer pitchers!"

Pretty clear he doesn't want to trade him to an AL team.

I don't blame Ricciardi one bit. If you're going to give up your best by a wide margin then you make sure you get a ton back in return, or else you don't do the deal at this point in the scenario. He can get the same single uber prospect deals down the road.

Delgado hit 8 in his first 13 of 2004. Went 1 month and 11 days before hitting his 9th and was sent down.

Exactly. The Jays still have him under contract for next year so there's no good reason to settle for less than an ideal package at this point.

Hochevar continues his great run of late and breaks the long Royals losing streak. 7 innings, 13 strikeouts, 5 hits, 2 runs and 0 walks. Really happy to see him finally panning out as the prospect the franchise saw when they selected him.

Nick Cafardo is reporting that it was the Indians that turned down Clay Bucholz for Victor Martinez, not the other way around as was previously reported. The Sox countered with Masterson, Bowden and an outfield prospect for Martinez and were also turned down.

good...i'm glad they were turned down. That's far too much for a 30+ year old catcher who realistically is probably better suited to 1B/DH when those are not the positions you're trying to fill

Phils are now talking to the Pirates about Zack Duke.

Vent:

How many fcking times do you have to throw Wellemeyer out there to know HE SUCKS!!!!!!!!!???????????

.340 ave against LH hitting and the Phils put out 7 LH today in the lineup. Ouch.

Wow I know V-Mart's defense leaves a lot to be desired but I think most teams would ask for Bucholz and more in a package for a player of Martinez's caliber.

right. but i don't think Martinez is a player that the Sox ought to be chasing after if that's the price. he doesn't necessarily fill a need that they need that much.

Are we talking about the same 30 year old 1B/DH with a career 118 OPS+? He's a good player, and I'd love to have him, but he's not in the upper echelon of hitters. Regardless of who turned down Buchholz for Martinez I'm glad it was turned down.

+1

His bat is probably the best available in the market, poor defense or otherwise. He's a massive offensive upgrade over Varitek and would be great in that Sox lineup. Yes 1B/DH is crowded in Boston but that's a luxury to have when you're as talented as the Red Sox.

dola-

Martinez is a career .297 hitter who averages 20 HR and 102 RBIs each season over an 8 year career. That is very good production from a weak position no matter how bad his defense may be.

Agreed.

But if you're seriously trying to craft a deal, you don't make stupid offers that take both of a team's SSs or take too many form one area. Ask for the same talent but spread it around. Ask for a SS and a CF. Or a C and a 3B. Etc. Etc.

My issue with his Angels' proposal had nothing to do with the talent requested but the lack of thought put into the likelihood the Angels would accept a deal that, because of the way it was constituted, would cripple them too much in one or two specific area. It's a deal designed to be turned down, which tells me that Ricciardi isn't interested in dealing Halladay at all. This is all just some farce he's running.

Is Ricciardi gone at the end of the season regardless of whether or not he deals Halladay?

i agree

He's going to get considerably better offers right now than this time next year. A team that trades for him now gets him for a playoff run this year plus all of next year. Next year the only thing the teams really have to do is beat the value of 2 draft picks.

He doesn't have to move him right now, but considering the team is destined for another 4th place finish next year I don't see why you wouldn't take the maximum value you could get from him.

Because you're probably going to run off a big chunk of your fan base this season as well as season ticket sales next year once you deal him.

That is, of course, IF what we're hearing about the deal is even accurate.

They could probably offset those losses by firing JP. ;)


I get that and I completely understand why a team would think that way, but a team taking that approach in the AL East will NEVER finish better than 3rd.

Doesn't matter. That is what we're specifically discussing. If you want to introduce other hypotheticals, go for it.

Okay fine.

If that's what you want from somebody then you ask for it. If they don't like it then they don't have to do the deal. The likelihood of whether the Angels would go along has zero bearing on what you want from them in return unless they're both your only potential trade partner and you actually want the deal.

The Angels have nothing resembling any sort of divine right to get a deal that suits them to a T -- which is precisely what you sound like you expect in your post -- and it's downright absurd to suggest otherwise.

edit to add: Given the situation, I find it highly doubtful that the call was placed from Toronto to Anaheim, err Los Angeles, err wherever saying "Hey, we'd love to send you Halladay if you'll just give us X,Y, and Z". Far more likely that the call was placed from the west coast asking what it would take and the Blue Jays answered the question. If the Angels or anyone else doesn't like the answer that's really not Toronto's problem.

And that's why I said Toronto doesn't want to make a deal, and called it a farce.


You're as usual reading into it what you want, and not what's being said. I never say the Angels have some divine right to a deal. That's a ridiculous poor misread on your part. I am saying if Toronto wants to do a deal, they should offer one they think has a chance to be accepted. Since they did not, I propose they didn't want to do a deal at all.