Serious question. At least, sort of.

I mean, there are a lot of full-time baseball writers out there, even your real hard-core old-school journalist types, who I admire and think do really excellent work. But then we get into the winter and early-spring months, and there's not always all that much to report on, and one of those writers I admire, like, oh, say, Buster Olney, comes out and says something so completely devoid of thought, reason and any connection to reality at all that I get to wondering...

It's the sort of thing that is much more likely to happen in fantasy baseball than in real life, but according to sources, an idea has been kicked around the Phillies' organization internally, with discussions about proposing a swap of slugger Ryan Howard for St. Louis superstar Albert Pujols.

Well, of course that's been kicked around the Phillies organization. I'm sure that the Twins organization is all aflutter with talk of trading Nick Punto for Evan Longoria or Ryan Zimmerman. But the question is, why are we reporting on the Phillies staff's wildest and most impossible dreams?

I mean, let's understand how wildly, hilariously crazy this really is.We're talking about trading Ryan Howard, a very good (but highly overrated) hitter who is probably one of the 25 or so best position players in the big leagues right now, and getting back Albert Pujols, who appears solidly on track to become one of the 25 or so best ballplayers of all time (or better). Not only that, but Pujols is actually a couple months younger than Howard. Not only that, but both players can become free agents after the 2011 season, and Howard is actually owed more money over these final two years of their respective contracts (Pujols will get $32 million for '10 and '11, Howard $39 million).

So Buster's (and, if Buster is to be believed, the Phillies') grand scheme is to get the Cardinals to agree to swap thirty year old first basemen, both signed for the next two seasons, with the Phillies getting the much, much, much better player out of the deal, and the Cardinals getting the privilege of paying their inferior player significantly more money. You're the Cardinals: sound good to you?

In Buster's own words: "It's the sort of thing that is much more likely to happen in fantasy baseball than in real life." In fantasy baseball, if you had Pujols and traded him straight up for Howard, the other owners would hate you for giving the other guy a gift and/or not taking the league seriously.

He later compares it to the time when "[e]xecutives of the Red Sox and Yankees once famously discussed a trade of Ted Williams for Joe DiMaggio." But of course, aside from the fact that that deal didn't actually happen (and, from reports, doesn't seem to ever have been all that seriously close to happening), this is nothing like swapping Williams and DiMaggio, two elite, legendary players; there's only one of those types in this deal. This would be much more like trading DiMaggio for Johnny Pesky, or Williams for Tommy Henrich.

The other comparison: "Pat Gillick, who preceded Amaro as general manager and is currently serving as an adviser, knows something about making out-of-the-box blockbusters. Twenty years ago, as general manager of the Blue Jays, he stunned the baseball world by trading stars Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff to the San Diego Padres for Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar." Well, okay. But I don't think it's the Phillies' willingness to accept "out-of-the-box blockbusters" (or anything at all having to do with the Phillies) that's going to be the sticking point in this deal. And it's hard to say this about a deal where you get a 23 year old future Hall of Famer coming back, but I'm not entirely convinced Gillick got the better of that deal; Alomar and McGriff were both superstar-quality players in their primes (you certainly understand why Gillick did that, with John Olerud waiting to take over at first), but Tony Fernandez was a better player than Carter. In any case, Gillick's presence on the deal really doesn't help unless Gillick starts working for the Cardinals.

Anyway, no matter how you look at it, this is just an obvious non-starter. It fails the straight-face test. There is absolutely no reason for the Cardinals to be remotely enticed by a "trade" like this (Olney's one half-assed reason, that Howard "is regarded as a hometown kid" in St. Louis, falls flat when the guy he'd be replacing is regarded as a demigod in St. Louis, and everywhere else). It's ridiculous, and as Tony LaRussa said (before realizing it was Olney who started it, probably figuring it was one of those consarned bloggers in their moms' basements), Olney has to have lost at least a little credibility just for suggesting that those kinds of discussions are seriously going on.

So, back to my question. Do we really need writers like Olney to write about baseball full time?

Understand what I'm saying. I think Olney is an excellent writer and generally does a good job, and I'm not saying he (or anyone like him) should be out of work. Nor am I slighting folks like those over at Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Talk, and so forth, who may have full-time jobs as baseball writers of a sort, but who have the creative license and research chops to come up with something new and thoughtful every time they put a piece up (more or less). I'm talking about beat writers, baseball-only columnists, and anyone else who considers him- or herself a baseball "journalist" in a quasi-traditional sense. People who have hard-and-fast (and regular and frequent) deadlines, whose jobs are more about relationships and language than history or analysis, whose jobs are essentially to report on everything about the game that they see, hear, think they hear, or kind of suspect, and report it before anybody else beats them to it. The thing is, I'm just not sure there's actually enough news in baseball for all these people. And if nothing's going on and you're not one to take the time to (or whose audience would not allow you to) research and write up some great bit of historical perspective or statistical research or something when things are slow, well, then sooner or later you're going to come up with an absolute clunker, like Olney did yesterday.

So consider: especially in this age of dying cash-strapped news organizations, are journalists too specialized? Wouldn't we all benefit a bit if, rather than floating up a bit of refuse like this when he's run out of things to say, Olney were able to write about tennis, or UFC, or the stock markets?

Just a thought.