Jays Will Allow Teams To Negotiate Extension With Halladay

I guess that because the good doctor picked up a few third place Cy Young votes today, Jordan Bastian of MLB.com couldn’t exactly actually make the most interesting thing he learned today central to his story, but I’m pretty sure that this was the real money quote from his Cy voting piece:

One way for the Blue Jays to potentially get more in a Halladay trade would be to give another team a window in which to discuss a contract extension with the pitcher. Anthopoulos declined comment on such a scenario, but MLB.com has learned that the Jays will consider granting such a window in trade talks if it means the return is significantly greater.

Now, my first thought is that it would be pretty difficult to not get significantly more in return for him if they allowed their trade partner to negotiate an extension, except… if this summer was any indication, the Jays may be asking for so much to begin with that nobody will be willing to go even farther to lock him up long-term.

Still… what’s it to the Jays? Even if the return is just greater and not significantly greater, what exactly are they protecting?

It’s basically in everybody’s interest to do it this way, except for maybe the odd team who really would only want Halladay for one relatively cheap year at $15.75-million, so they can go for it next year. I have nothing to back it up, but I’d assume that for all the teams that would be discouraged by having to sign him long term, there’d be several more who would only start forking over prospects if they had the opportunity to lock him up.

So… in a way, the Jays willingness to let a team negotiate should make it pretty clear that we’ve seen the last of Halladay in a Jays uniform—as if that shouldn’t have been clear already. I just can’t envision the Jays getting more at the trade deadline for him than they would by letting a team extend him, nor can I imagine them tossing long-term contract negotiations into next summer’s trade deadline shit vortex. And quite obviously the Jays’ threat to keep him and take the draft picks is emptier than the Rogers Centre will be for most of next summer. They don’t want to open their Ricciardis too much on this, but it’s happening. Soon.

Er... probably.

Meanwhile…

Apparently it’s somehow news that Marco Scutaro is open to returning to Toronto, as was first reported by Kenny Ken Ken and JP Morosi at Fox Sports.

I like Scutaro just fine, but I have a hard time seeing how this would be any better than just letting him walk and taking the picks, unless he becomes so discounted by the fact that teams don’t want to give up a high pick for him that it actually makes sense to pay him something for a couple years. Given the timeline the new front office seems to be operating on, though, it the picks might be better regardless.