This is the season of rumors. They’re flying at me from all directions. For all I know, Hungry Jim Hendry is in negotiation with the Yankees, offering them Aaron Miles and Mike Fontenot for Mickey Mantle’s bas relief from the Hall of Monuments.
Read the fan blogs and anything seems possible. But I just got this one from the official Cubs site where in-house reporter Carrie Muskat writes that the Blue Jays have contacted the Cubs and are dangling Roy Halladay. That’s the same Roy Halladay who has been headed to either the Yankees or Red Sox for the last year and a half.
Roy Halladay, who copped the Cy Young Award back in 2003 and has finished in the top five in voting for that trophy (is it a trophy?) four times since. Roy Halladay, whom the Bombers and the Bosox are reputed to be ready to ship out the cream of their farm systems for.
That Roy Halladay.
Funny thing is, I’m not all that excited about the prospect of Roy Halladay donning the blue pinstripes. What got me hot while reading Muskat’s post was that Toronto’s new GM Alex Anthopoulos wants the Cubs’ sensational shortstop phenom Starlin Castro.
And he’s willing to part with Roy Halladay to get him.
AJ, you know my feelings about ace pitchers. They’re great to have but if you spend too much time trying to get one through the trade or free agent markets, you’re likely to find yourself out a few hundred million dollars while the savior you thought you’d bought is either making rehab starts in the minors (see Johan Santana) or getting slugged all over the lot (see Barry Zito).
So even if the Cubs do acquire Roy Halladay (which they won’t) I wouldn’t be writing them in for a World Series appearance next fall. I don’t want Roy Halladay.
I want Starlin Castro.
Wrigley phenoms traditionally are viewed in Cubworld as the second coming of Willie Mays. In fact, when Leo Durocher was manager, back when I first became a fan, he anointed within five years years Adolfo Phillips, Jimmy Lee McMath and Cleo James each as “another Willie Mays.” If you recognize any of these three, you either really, really, really know your baseball trivia or you’re related to him.
As time went by, the roster of future Cubs greats included Gene Hiser, Brian Rosinski, Ty Griffin, Earl Cunningham, Kevin Orie, Brooks Kieschnick, Luis Montanez and Ryan Harvey. Recognize any of them? You probably wouldn’t even if you were related to one of them.
I eventually surmised that the Cubs strategy was to pump up these guys to the press in hopes that other GMs would think they were actually capable of playing the game. Maybe they figured they could palm them off on some suckers if the kids couldn’t cut it on the North Side. Sadly, few other GMs were as dumb as Cubs’ GMs.
Corey Patterson and Felix Pie are recent Cubs kids for whom the Hall of Fame was carving a plaque before either played a single inning in the bigs. Each year we’d hear that every GM in the game was salivating over them during the hot stove season, but the Cubs, by good god, weren’t gonna let either go, not for all the Roy Halladays in the world. When they finally did deal them, long after they’d proved that the only way they’d get into the Hall of Fame was by buying a ticket, the Cubs got back the likes of Nate Spears and Hank Williamson, each of whom, unlikely as it seems, is more unknown to baseball fans than even Brian Rosinski.
The key thing is, it was always the Cubs who whispered in reporters’ ears that every GM wanted to get his hands on Kevin Orie or Luis Montanez. Invariably, when reporters would check with other GMs about their purported burning desire for one or another Cubs prospect, they’d scratch their heads and respond, “Now, what was that kid’s name again?”
But now it’s an opposing GM who’s saying he wants a Cubs phenom and he’s willing to swap his ace for him.
Starlin Castro is a 19-year-old shortstop who carries a spectacular glove and has hit .300 in the low minors. He mashed Arizona Fall League pitching at a .376 clip in the season just concluded. His appearance is deceiving. He still looks like a Little Leaguer in an oversized batting helmet even though he weighs 190 pounds. The Cubs are fence-sitting when it comes to projecting how soon he’ll push the barely adequate Ryan Theriot over to second base. Cub officials won’t even say publicly he’ll be the starting shortstop for the Double A Tennessee Smokies in 2010. Muskat writes that player development boss Oneri Fleita says Castro’s “really on some kind of fast track…. We know we have a diamond in the rough and we need to take our time, be patient. At the same time, we don’t need to hold the reins on him.”
It almost sounds as if the Cubs are downplaying the kid. But when Alex Anthopoulos calls and says we can have Roy Halladay in exchange for a package headed by Starlin Castro, I’ve got to think this kid may be capable of playing the game.
