Looking for High Quality CanCon (Celine and Nickelback need not apply)

Let us begin by acknowledging two things:

• That the Celine/Nickelback joke was way too easy.
• That we are about to do that Canadian media thing that we hate.

And yet, heading into the Winter Meetings in Nashville, there are rumblings that both Erik Bedard and Jason Bay may be available for the right price. So would either of them be a fit for the Jays?

The O's are apparently looking for two young Major League ready players and a prospect for Bedard, which might be a bit too much to hand over to a division rival, while the Bucs might be ready to unload Bay and build around some of their own young prospects.

With so much emphasis being placed on teams pursuing Johan Santana this winter, Bedard's price might go up when teams fall out of that race. Still, we're guessing that it wouldn't take as much to pry him out of Baltimore, nor will he cost anything near the $25 million over five years that Santana is seeking. A quick look at their numbers, and it is hard to find why the gap between the two would be so great. (Bedard: 3.16 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 221 Ks versus 57 BBs; Santana: 3.33 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 235 Ks versus 52 BBs.)

Bay might come cheap, but he's 29 and coming off an awful 2007 season that was eerily similar to Vernon's (.746 OPS, 21 HRs, 84 RsBI, 4 SBs). The question with Bay is whether if that was a harbinger of things to come, or if his knee injuries held him back that much.

Maybe the most important question is whether if we'd give a flying fadoo about either of these guys if they didn't have a maple leaf on their passport.

Where's Corey Koskie these days?