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The horror shows against Stanford and Arizona were icing on a woeful season's cake.And to cap it all, at the Arizona game, only around three people were there to see (believe 85,000, you'll believe anything!).. TORONTO, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Toronto's main stock indexopened sharply lower on Wednesday after a six days of gains,pulled lower by oil and gold shares as commodity pricesdropped. Stocks Global Markets The S&P/TSX composite index .GSPTSE was down 204.36points, or 2.16 percent, at 9,267.73. George A. King III wrote a story on all the buzz surrounding the Yankees this offseason at the Winter Meetings early this morning And he’s very correct. He listed several hypothetical questions that needed answering, so I decided to weigh in Are they getting Roy HalladayI say yes.

There’s a reason why every non-Yankee fan in baseball calls the Yanks the evil empire. I think the Yankees would be stupid to miss another opportunity at acquiring one of the game’s best pitchers (see Johan Santana two years ago). The best part of a trade for Halladay His one year remaining on his contract allows the Yankees to be compensated with two draft picks next year if they let him go. The Yankees have a deep farm system filled with plenty of chips the Blue Jays are interested in It’s time to spill the beans for a true ace What about John LackeyI hope not. Lackey is a good pitcher that looks great in a terrible market He will get A.J. Burnett money when he is really worth Andy Pettitte money ($10MM). I doubt the Yankees will want to give Lackey that type of money, especially if they re-sign Pettitte and really are cutting their payroll, which leads us into our next question… Are they really cutting payroll Maybe a little, at most.

The Yankees said they were going to try and cut payroll last year too. And then they signed Mark Teixeira to an eight-year, $180 million deal. I’m not worried about the Yankees’ willingness to drop a couple extra dimes if it could win them No 28. Would they trade Phil Hughes and/or Joba Chamberlain They should trade Chamberlain, not Hughes. I don’t believe Chamberlain has a future in the rotation, which lowers his value in my eyes tremendously.

He could possibly become a good closer one day, but in my mind, that’s worth giving up for one year of Halladay. Hughes showed he could dominate the bullpen despite throwing below 95 MPH. I think with his pitching repertoire, he has a chance to become a solid starter in the show. Give him a couple more years in the rotation and you might see his name checked off on some writers’ Cy Young Award ballots. Are they going to start Hughes and ChamberlainAssuming they keep both, which I think is unlikely, I’d say to start Hughes and make Chamberlain the setup man.