It's the Halladay Season

Roy Halladay to the Cardinals sounds good. Really good. But are we getting our hopes up too early?

First off, I still have a few tickets available for FanFest. E-mail me as soon as possible if you'd like to go. Once they're gone, they're gone.

Is it time to show Todd Wellemeyer the door? All I can say is Kyle Lohse will be a welcome addition to the starting rotation, a rotation that has turned into a continuum of the really, really good and the really, really bad. Imagine a line with Swiss Cake Rolls on the far left and an autographed picture of Sanjaya, complete with XOXO's, of the far right. Now fit the rotation in the middle. You figure out where everyone goes.

Much ado has been made about the Roy Halladay rumor, the one where we acquire one of the greatest pitchers in modern baseball, one of th- stop. Do I need to go any further? When has current management ever made a trade for a player of Roy's quality? Scott Rolen? That trade came out of a nasty situation in Philly and an inept worldview of stats and potential on the Phillies behalf.

Not only is Roy happy in Toronto, not only does he have another year left on his contract, not only is he one of the best pitchers in baseball, hotly pursued by other big-market clubs, not only is this J.P. Ricciardi we're talking about, the protege of Billy Beane and fairly knowledgeable GM of the Blue Jays, not only is this Roy freakin' Halladay, who could probably kill a bear with his bare hands, but this is the Cardinals we're talking about. We simply don't do deals like this. Ever.

I'm all for thinking outside the box, dreaming big, looking to the sky for salvation, and constructing epic trade rumors like this, but, I gotta say, if this trade goes down, it'll go down in my book as the one I didn't see coming in a million years. I really do keep a book like that. I use one of those glitter pens to write in it.

For now, I will advise you to use some caution when getting caught up in Holliday/Halladay-mania. Not only have we given up one of our most promising young pitchers - Chris Perez - but the forecast looks like we'll have to give up a second one in that deal as well. Parting with Brett Wallace, Darryl Jones, Bryan Anderson, and any number of our blue-chippers will be a sturdy price to pay in addition to the other things factoring into such a deal.

The Cards might be better suited to stop playing Chris Duncan and Rick Ankiel so freakin' much and making sure Colby Rasmus plays EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. Simple solutions, simple answers. It's the small things in life that make me smile.