The focus of MLB's off-season has been north of the border. Baseball coming back to Montréal? Vancouver will finally get a team?
No such luck: the major players have been fighting to see which team gets the carcass, er, services of one of baseball's best pitchers, Roy Halladay.
Halladay has pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays for his entire career. But given the potential for free agency, and how non-NY and non-Boston have limited potential to win in the American League East, Halladay wanted to pitch for a team that had a shot at winning the World Series.
Toronto almost traded him in the middle of the season, but that proved too distracting, setting up the hype in the off-season.
As you may have guessed, Toronto traded Halladay in a 4-team deal. Philadelphia acquired the right-hander, sending back three minor leaguers: pitcher Kyle Drabek (son of former major leaguer Doug Drabek), catcher Travis D'Arnaud, and outfielder Michael Taylor (Taylor was later traded to Oakland for corner infielder Brett
Wallace).
We could do an analysis on whether Toronto got enough back for Halladay (they didn't), but this isn't about that.
The current structure of baseball allows for very little chance of making the playoffs if you are a team in the AL East, unless you are the Yankees or the Red Sox. Yes, the Tampa Bay Rays went to the World Series in 2008, and Baltimore made the playoffs in 1996 and 1997, but they have been the exception, not the rule.
It's no mistake that Toronto's playoff record was much more active before the 1994 strike. Two of the hottest tickets in all of baseball in 1994 were in Toronto and Montréal (with the Expos). Baseball salaries exploded, and without a salary cap (and issues with the Canadian dollar), Canadian teams suffered even more than a lot of U.S. teams.
The Expos were forced out of the game, and Toronto, while remaining vital, has lost relevancy on and off the field. The vultures, the high salary teams, in the current system view good players on poor teams as targets, biding their time until they can pick one off for little or nothing in return. Adding insult to insult, Toronto didn't get enough back for Halladay, yet they still have to give Philadelphia $6 million in 2010 for part of Halladay's contract.
The media that covers baseball, ESPN in particular, sees the "lesser" teams as "why don't they trade their players to the good teams" instead of asking why the system isn't set up better so more teams can compete.
There is no coincidence that Toronto was in the playoffs 4 of the last 5 years before the 1994 strike and zero appearances since. Having what many considered the best starting pitcher in baseball wasn't enough. Now that the Blue Jays don't have Roy Halladay, they won't get any better. And as an added insult, their relevance is even reduced because they don't have the best pitcher in baseball.
With the World Baseball Classic, baseball seemingly wants to encompass the world with its sport. But the way they have treated Canada, MLB shows it could do a lot more at home first.