A new year, a new day and a new feeling of possibility for every man, woman, child and baseball team out there. Perhaps a true centerfielder for a certain club on the South Side of Chicago. Perhaps a proven arm to stabilize the starting rotation. Perhaps even a bit more speed to cancel out the all-or-nothing offense of the past three season.

Or, altrenately, a seemingly stupid swap of a pitcher in the ascendant for an infielder in his walk year.

It’s no secret that Brian Roberts would be a nice addition to the Sox lineup; a lefty bat with speed, slick fielding at second and can bat leadoff. True, he’s entering the final year of his contract with Baltimore but the cynical and informed among us might speculate the Sox could lock Roberts up on the cheap thanks to today’s allegedly horrid economic baseball climate.

The bigger question enters with the entirety of the deal: Gavin Floyd for Brian Roberts? Is the organization that went out of its way to develop and prove the skills of Floyd really going to trade him for another bat? You could theoretically call Roberts a one-year rental, but that implies the Sox are automatically in contention next season; perhaps they are, considering the sad state of the AL Central, but with a rotation effectively reduced to two starters this team will need more fireworks than even the mighty New and Improved I Guess Sox could produce.

So you have to ask, are the Sox stupid or just hypocritical? Do pitching and defense really win championships, or were the Sox just saying that because that’s all they had (or could afford)? Is there something we the public don’t know about Gavin Floyd? Is this just a case of selling high on a pitcher who took his time in living up to the hype?

Or, more simply, was this ridiculous proposal actually the Orioles’ idea? Remember, talking isn’t the same as executing or even being open to the idea, and the Orioles’ history of trade proposals is less than sensible. No one’s saying Gavin Floyd is the greatest pitcher in the world, but you have to think he’s earned a little more value than O-Cab/Johnny SoCal Part II.