Roy Halladay: Is It Worth It?

If you like fights and arguments about sports, now is the perfect time to be in JFein's house. Both my brother and I are Phillies fans and we could not be farther apart on this issue. I am on the side of yes, the Phils need to get Roy Halladay, even if the asking price is high (although I'm hesitant about giving away both J.A. Happ and our top-pitching prospect, Kyle Drabek). My brother, on the other hand, believes that we are find and that we won the World Series last year with these pitchers and we don't need a new one; we should have no problem winning this year, after all, we've only gotten better by replacing Pat Burrell with Raul Ibanez.

I feel as if that Halladay can put the Phillies over the top right now. They need another ace and better yet, they need someone who has the desire to win a World Series for complacency may be setting in real fast. Yesterday's On The DL podcast brought up a good point that you almost wish that the Phillies were in a tighter division race so they don't get complacent because let's face facts here. The Phillies won the World Series last year and may all but have a stranglehold on the NL East this year. They are 5.5 games in first place with the Marlins and the Braves behind them, both of whom have been inconsistent this year and at this point, in my view, do not pose a real threat to making a run and taking this division. The team that on most occasions would be in that position, the New York Mets, have become as 49er16 likes to point out the Triple-A Mets and are currently 10.5 games out of first place with no light at the end of the tunnel even close to being in sight.

The worry that I have, and what really has my brother over the top on this aside from the fact that we don't need him and I don't know what I'm talking about because I have not watched every Phillies game this year like he has (except for when we were on vacastion last week) and that because of such I'm a "bandwagon fan" is that the asking price is way too high. The Toronto Blue Jays, as mentioned above, along with possibly our top outfielding prospect, Dominic Brown, want current rookie sensation J.A. Happ and our top pitching prospect, Kyle Drabek. The question essentially becomes is that too high? Naturally, one would think that 2 top prospects and a rookie sensation would be too high a price for anyone, even for Doc Halladay. But All Things Philly Sports makes a great point about J.A. Happ

So, why the cautionary tale about J.A. Happ? Let's take a closer look at his numbers. In three starts this season against what I would call "good" teams, the Cardinals, Red Sox and Yankees, Happ has been pretty bad, going 17 and 2/3rds innings and giving up 12 earned runs on 21 hits and 6 walks. That's an ERA of 6.11, and a record of 0-1. It's safe to say that Happ hasn't performed well against good competition. Then, when you look at the rest of his starts and notice that he has faced the Marlins, Pirates, Reds, Braves, Blue Jays, Orioles, Mets, Padres and Nationals, and you can begin to see that Happ was able to pad his stats against weaker competition. Of those teams, I would classify 5 as terrible and 4 as mediocre. It's pretty easy to look good against that kind of competition.

Right he is. ATPS also mentions brings up the question of the Happ being the next Kyle Kendrick. For those that don't remember, Kendrick was essentially a rookie sensation like Happ currently is, going 10-4 with a 3.87 ERA in 2007. But look at where Kendrick is now. He is in the Phillies farm system, having only been brought up for one relief appearance where he stunk up the joint. Hell, when Chad Durbin and J.C. Romero were placed on the DL a few days ago, the Phillies brought up Andrew Carpenter and Tyler Walker, and not Kendrick. Tyler Freakin' Walker!

But back to Doc Halladay. According to Jayson Stark at ESPN, the Phillies are highly against giving up both Happ and Drabek, but just yesterday, the Blue Jays scouted another Phillies farm pitcher, Carlos Carrasca, who a year or 2 ago was being looked at as Kyle Drabek is now, however, he has struggled a bit this year in the minors. If the Phillies and can somehow convince the Jays to take Carrasca instead of Happ or Drabek, by all means, go for it! It is true that Carrasca has yet to fully mature, but I would feel a lot better and I'm sure the Phillies would about being wrong about Carrasca and giving him away than being right about Drabek and giving him away.

My brother still says that we do not need another pitcher and that we are fine with the guys we got. After all, we just signed Pedro Martinez who is due to make his first minor league start today. ATPS is failry adament that Pedro can only be a 5-inning starter, which is the last thing that our struggling and injured bullpen needs. For me, the jury is still out on him. They say he's better than he was last year with the Mets and my brother feels he can still go 7-8 innings. In the live blog of the Phillies-Cubs game the other day where the World Series was spoiled for everyone (yeah, um, what is all this talk about whether Halladay will or will not win the Series this year, we already know the Sawx are gonna take it this year), that Martinez, if he is up for it (and it is highly doubtful that this would ever happen), may be best-suited for the bullpen and that Halladay or another pitcher the Phils trade for would be the one to take Rodrigo Lopez's spot in the rotation (or Happ's spot if he is traded and Martinez ends up in the pen).

So what do you think? Should the Phillies trade for Roy Halladay, regardless of the asking price, should they only make the move for Doc only if they can lower the asking price so as not to include both Happ and Drabek, or are you like my brother and do you feel that the Phils don't need anyone and they can it this year with essentially they had last year (even though Jamie Moyer is not getting any younger and Brad Lidge seems to be back to his old Houston Astro self)? I'm curious and intersted to hear others' thoughts on this.