Alex the Builder

I suppose I would quibble with the semantics of it all.

"....Anthopoulos characterizes the Blue Jays as a team that's building, rather than rebuilding.

"I think when people talk about a rebuild, it would be tearing down a team and trading away numbers of players. I don't know that we have that necessarily," he said. "I think we have a lot of good young players, I just don't think we have enough. I think we need to continue to add to those players."

If you can't extend your franchise cornerstone (Halladay), and are looking to trade away key veteran offensive pieces (Overbay), while building around the young controllable players currently on your roster (Lind, Snider, Hill)....well my friends, that right there is a rebuild.

And what did we expect, really?

A magic bullet enabling the club to extend Doc for 3/$75 and gain a commitment from Rogers to pursue top flight free agents? That was never, ever going to happen, even if we had coaxed ourselves into maybe believing something of the sort could happen. And by "coaxed ourselves", I of course mean "bought into the Beest's hype". That's our bad.

And so it begins. I've often used the "I don't know what I'm gonna do if the Jays trade Doc" tag, but I suppose I'm about to find out. And really, that's the franchise's only play. My guess is the team approached Halladay and tip-toed around the idea of an extension, and were flatly denied. Pure speculation on my part (what am I, a journalist?), but it would seem to make sense in the context of this quote:

As for Halladay specifically, while Anthopoulos said the 2003 American League Cy Young award winner is one of a handful of players he would be reluctant to trade, he said the 32-year-old has made it clear he is not interested in tying himself to Toronto after his contract ends following the 2010 season.

"He's probably one of the greatest if not the greatest Blue Jay to ever put on the uniform," the GM said. "But he wants to win and really, at this time, we were a 75-win team last year.

"I think he's stated that his timeline for winning and ours may not mesh and may not match and for us right now," he added. "Roy's position is to wait and see what kind of a club we have in 2010, see what we can do from a win/loss standpoint. We respect that and we understand that."

So that's that. That's where we stand. We wanted to know, and now - mercifully - we do. The team is going to sell off any and all expendable parts that don't fit into the plan of building a winner down the line, and the Jays are going to go young.

It's a step up from where we were last season, when we slugged through 162 games of, uh, whatever the hell that was.

There's a lot to be excited about when you listen to AA's vision for the team. He speaks of building a model organization. He talks of Toronto becoming a preferred destination for scouts and front office types. He talks of becoming an organization that can be up there with the "Anaheims, the Chicagos, and the Bostons" (read between the lines - fuck the Yankees). He wants to build a franchise that develops championship talent and supplements it with key free agent pieces.

That's all good stuff. That's vision. It's a remarkable turnaround from where the organization currently stands.

The proof will be in the proverbial pudding, of course, but if that's what it takes - rather than chasing and throwing ridiculous contracts at the Jason Bays and John Lackeys of this year's FA class - then I can get on board. So bring it on.

Still, I don't know what I'm gonna do when the Jays trade Doc.