A day following Toronto J.P. Ricciardi casually mentioning he’d listen to trade offers for 6-time AL All-Star SP Roy Halladay, the baseball universe is agog over the possibilities, though one observer isn’t celebrating. “The spin machine is on with full-on fucking force,” scoffs Drunk Jays Fans’ Stoeten. “Nobody wants to piss all over the story that everybody in just about major league city wants to talk about.”

Granted, we could have had this same kind of rampant speculation during the off-season, or last year”kind of did, to a much lesser extent, actually, thank you very much Dan Graziano”but it™s definitely a more ideal time to move him. The team acquiring him would get him at a great price for this year™s stretch drive, plus another a full season before his contract expires, so his value couldn™t be higher. And if the Jays don™t think that 2010 is their year, they don™t have to muddle through before starting to reload.

Plus”in the most disturbing quote of the day for those of you (OK, us) who shudder at the possibility of losing Halladay”Ricciardi told Joel Sherman of the New York Post, as I mentioned earlier, œWe have kept him from free agency twice and I don’t think we have the resources to keep him from free agency a third time.

But there is a whole lot of other, more sensible stuff being said, too. Starting with”seriously”Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star:

Here’s how trade rumours can get started in this era of instant blogification. “Hey fans, did you hear about the Giants’ Matt Cain and Noah Lowry, the Indians’ Cliff Lee, the Reds’ Aaron Harang, the D-backs’ Jon Garland, the Rockies’ Jeff Francis, or, how about the Jays’ Roy Halladay? Any or all might be available at the trade deadline.”

The similarity is they’re all due to be free agents after 2010, they play for small to mid-market teams, the economy’s not doing well and attendance around baseball is down. And Jimmy Hoffa’s still missing. Of course, none of those GMs actually said his man was available, but, hey, they also didn’t say they weren’t. Cue panic.

OK, so maybe it™s not entirely sensible. Blogging is the issue here? Really? Blogging?

But yeah, otherwise, that™s pretty much exactly it.