Roy Halladay is going everywhere and nowhere

It's a hell of a thing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's been more than four months since we committed ourselves to "let go lightly" of Roy Halladay, and yet, he's still here, and we're still waiting to move on.

Somewhere, in the dark recesses in the back of our mind, we've actually started to resent Halladay. Maybe that resentment is misdirected, but it is there, and we can't help wanting to toss him - the greatest pitcher in the history of the franchise - overboard so that we can lighten our load and start moving things into something resembling a direction.

Oddly, it is precisely because Halladay is such an exceptional talent that moving him is going to be a significant challenge for the new Anthopoulosian regime. For the new GM, it's not simply a matter of figuring out who wants Halladay, because that would basically be all 30 teams.

In spite of the daily dozen rumours that have Halladay headed hither and yon, it doesn't take long to figure out why he's not headed anywhere anytime soon. If you start to work out the Venn diagram of who could be in the race for Halladay, you have to start by assessing who has money, who has money that is available, who has aspirations of competing now and who has aspirations for competing in the longer term. By the time that you intersect those four circles, you're pretty much left with two teams, and we probably don't need to remind you who they are.

The point - which we made much more succinctly in a Twitter post this weekend - is that even if everyone wants him, not many teams are going to have the resources to get him and hold on to him, and not many are going to be willing to part with much more than a nominal package in return.

Think of teams that should be in the mix like the Mets (might have money, don't have trade chips, might not be competitive), the Cubs (uncertain money), the Dodgers (money is an issue for the divorce courts), or the Cardinals (probably not enough money to keep Halladay). The Angels (without John Lackey) could be a destination, but will they have the resources to continue to compete over the next five years? Would Halladay allow such a trade to take place, given that he still holds the hammer of a no-trade clause?

There's an expectation amongst the fanbase and the media that the Jays' side of the Roy Halladay Trade should be generous and should replenish all of the franchise's needs. But taking a look at what real possibilities lie out there, we should probably brace ourselves for a move that will return less than we'd hoped, and send Doc somewhere that we wish he weren't.