Trading Roy Halliday

So the jays claim they are listening to offers for Roy Halladay. I'm sure that this is causing all kinds of consternation in all quarters, it seemed to be one of the hot topics of the all star coverage I caught, and there's stories about it at bluejays.com and other places.

I hope Roy stays and is successful as much as the next fan. The issue that keeps coming up for me though is he'll turn 34 in May of the first year of his new 2011 contract. I'm seriously doubting that contract is going to be for 3 years with some kind of team option for more. Do you really want to be the team that owes a pitcher $20+ million a year for a couple more years when he's pushing 40, or older than 40?

I'm sure if any guy is going to be making 34 starts a year at 38 and winning 18+ games with a sub 3.00 ERA it would be Roy, but how likely is it even he's going to be doing that? How likely is he to be struggling to make 25 starts with an ERA somewhere between 4 and 5.

I think I know which is more likely.

And I don't think the Jays are a team that can afford to find out.