RealGM

Trading the ace of your pitching staff can be an imposing task for any general manager in Major League Baseball, let alone one who had taken the reins just weeks earlier.

And it doesn't get more imposing than the ace in question, Roy Halladay, a Cy Young-winning local hero beloved by baseball fans across the city and country.

Thus was the lot inherited by Alex Anthopoulos when he was name general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays in October 2009.

The Jays were an underperforming club that had been consistently finishing behind the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, and later the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East.

And with Halladay requesting to be moved out of town, it appeared that a rocky start was destined for Anthopoulos.

But Anthopoulos wasn't shaken, trading Halladay in December 2009 for three prospects that would be used to build the foundation of an Anthopoulos-era youth movement.

"You can sit and analyze and say, ‘it's Roy Halladay,' and think about how good he is and what he has meant to the organization and the city and country. But the reality is six months from the time that we traded him he was going to be a free agent," Anthopoulos told ctvtoronto.ca in a recent interview.

"Rather than get caught up in the emotion of it, it was important to look from an objective standpoint at what was best for the organization and what makes the most sense."

Anthopoulos, a Montreal native, got his start in baseball with the Montreal Expos in 2000 before making the jump to scouting coordinator with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2003 and eventually moving up to Assistant General Manager.

Anthopoulos was picked to replace J.P. Ricciardi when he was fired in 2009, after several attempts to build a contender failed to earn the Jays a spot in the post-season.

"We had some nice pieces in place but we needed to add on that and supplement that and I think we've done a fairly good job of doing that," he said. "We're certainly not where we want to be just yet, but I think we are further along in the process than we were a year ago."

Despite moving Halladay, who had won 17 games the previous season, and a career-high 22 wins during his 2002 Cy Young-winning season, the Blue Jays improved during the 2010 season.

They won 10 more games than the previous year, finishing with a record of 85-77. But they still couldn't leapfrog the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays.