Major League Baseball

These five places are where Halladay fits best

Published Jul. 21, 2009 9:45 a.m. ET

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If Toronto general manager J.P Ricciardi can't figure out a way to make Roy Halladay fit into his long-term plans, the best solution in Toronto would be to keep Halladay and get rid of Ricciardi.




The franchise would be in better shape.

And nobody should understand that better than acting Blue Jays President Paul Beeston, who knows what it takes to build a championship team in Toronto, which is something that has escaped Ricciardi in his eight seasons on the job.

It was, after all, Beeston who stepped in when it came time to make a managerial change last summer. Anyone who doesn't believe that Beeston's fingerprints were all over the return of Cito Gaston, the man who managed the Jays to back-to-back world championships, ought to check out that oceanfront property in Arizona.

Ricciardi used to hide behind the excuse that it was tough to compete with the financial wherewithal of the Red Sox and Yankees, but then along came the Tampa Bay Rays, with the lowest payroll in baseball, to win the AL East last year, finishing ahead of the Red Sox and Yankees, in addition to the Blue Jays, and advancing all the way to the World Series.

So now the talk is about next year being the year for the Jays. Even Gaston was singing that tune as long ago as spring training. Well, if the Jays think they are close enough that next year is their year, it makes absolutely no sense to think they would benefit from trading the best pitcher in the game, a pitcher who has acclimated quite well to life in Canada.

So the budget is going to be tight next year if Halladay is still around? Just exactly who is the guy who oversaw the multi-year deals that have eight players guaranteed $81.668 million for 2010? And why would the best solution to dealing with that problem be getting rid of the best player on the team, who is far from the end of his career? And if the decision is made to move Halladay, why would the man who has created the mess be deemed capable of extracting a quality package in return for the greatest player ever developed in that organization?

Heck, if it wasn't for the $36.77 million in contracts the Jays have eaten in recent years — including $15 million earlier this month for B.J. Ryan, which incorporates $10 million of the money guaranteed for 2010 — the guy who handed out those contracts wouldn't be suggesting that to eliminate the financial pain he has created, the Jays should be eliminating the contract of the one guy under contract who is worth every penny he is being paid.

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