Your point: It's too early to give up on Minor, because Roy Halladay had similar struggles early in his career. Response: Well, judging from the other 61 examples of highly regarded players struggling early in their career, odds aren't good for Minor. But sure, misinterpreting, laughs, whatever makes you feel better about it. My point: You don't give up on a recent top prospect after 180 innings and you don't ignore trading a half season rental of a 35 year old pitcher who won't be on the team next year for him. Especially when that player will still be under team control for several years Roy Halladay was merely an example, not the reason. If you all sincerely think the latter, well then... okay. The last three pages of this thread were discussing 61 reasons you do kind of give up on a recent top prospect after 25 miserable starts. You pointing out Roy Halladay is just using the exception to try to prove your rule. But at this point you're trying to get as much value out of Dempster as you possibly can. He's expensive, even for a half year, so you'd have to eat a lot of contract. Would you prefer a guy with some MLB struggles in his first season's worth of starts who has a good track record and top prospect pedigree from one year ago who you could slot into your rotation if needed or, probably more appropriately for Minor, insert as a long reliever to help work out his kinks and bolster the bullpen? The underlying and driving theme in all this bickering is "How much is Dempster worth?" I happen to think getting Mike Minor (and a servicable cheap reliever in Medlen) in return, as per the suggested trade by Bowden (which was stupid to begin with) was a damn good deal and it would be foolish not to pull the trigger on that deal. To NOT want to trade 4 months of Ryan Dempster for 3 years of Kris Medlen and 5 years of Mike Minor? Sorry, I think that's a really dumb move, and that's kind of the whole point I was trying to make in general.