FANalytics Baseball Blog

I have been hearing and seeing a lot of speculation on what kind of package it would take and which teams have that package in order to land Halladay.

Jon Heyman suggest the Yankees should include Joba in a package, I think he’s nuts.  While the guy has had a up and down (and overall dissapointing year), he is 23 years old and in his first full season as a starter.  You don’t just give up on a guy with that kind of talent because of a dissapointing 1st half in his age 23 season.

If you can get a deal done without giving up Hughes and Joba (which I doubt), then i say go for it, but why would the Blue Jays deal Halladay to any team in their division unless they get a much better offer for them.

As usual the question is, does acquiring Halladay give you a signficantly greater chance of winning a world series this year.  The obvious answer is yes, adding one of the best pitchers in baseball has to help out.

But who’s spot in the rotation does he take?

Well first off, Halladays Yeart to Date (YTD) Wins Above Replacement (WAR) sits at 4.2, where CC leads the Yankees with 2.6 followed by Burnett at 1.4 then Pettitte at 1.0 and Joba at 0.9 and Aceves has 0.5 and Wang is basically a Replacement player.  So clearly Halladay (if he pitches to the same level) would be the best pitcher on the staff right now.

However, lets assume that Halladay replaces a replacement player in the rotation.  If he pitches to a 4.2  WAR we are essentially saying he would add 4 more wins to the Yanks then having a AAA fill in starter.

So the question is, is it worth trading the kind of package it would take (Hughes, Montero???) in order to get a great pitcher who essentially only adds 4-5 wins if you had a AAA player, and less than that in reality because your replacing a Joba or a Wang, who we have to assume will peroform better in the 2nd half then they have, so really your talking about a 2 win improvement, maybe slightly more with the added benefits of deepening the pen and being able to have a fresher pen because Halladay goes deep so often.

So overall, while Halladay would certainly improve the Yankees, I would rather use a combination of Joba, Hughes, Aceves, Wang and maybe even Mitre (having a good year in AAA) for the 4th and 5th spots, and not sacrifice a ton of talent for a guy who will improve the team by possibly 2-3 wins in the 2nd half.