[I'm still working on the Follow Up post, but I prefer to tackle it when I'm healthy--which is not yet =( ]

The baseball off season and the trade deadline both come with one very important thing in common: ridiculous trade proposals by fans.

With that in mind, I have here a handy, short guide to deciding whether or not your trade proposal is realistic or ridiculous.

1) You have to give to get. You can’t get Roy Halladay (or even Curtis Granderson) for just Gardbrera and McAllister, there has to be real pain involved. For Halladay–who’s a free agent at the end of next year, anyway–such pain likely starts with Jesus Montero, and you can work your way up from there.

2) Quantity does not equal quality. No amount of B prospects will ever equal an A prospect, and if the player you want your team to acquire is an A list player, then you will be parting with an A list prospect. Let’s face it–awesome though Swisher is, when the Yankees acquired him, he was coming off of an extremely down year, your classic buy-low, sell-high argument.

3) Stop talking about trading Robinson Canó. Just stop it. Don’t let the fact that he’s the Yankees 7th hitter get to you–getting that kind of production from a 2B is incredibly rare, especially one as young as Canó, who is just entering his prime. If you did trade Canó, who the heck are you going to have to play second? This is an AL lineup, remember, a year of Ramiro Peña is not going to cut it.

4) More often then you think, it’s the little moves that make the big difference–ask the Yanks about Hairston and Guzman and Gaudin.

5) Trading for a player in the last year of his contract makes little sense unless it’s a cheap, c-level prospect costing deal designed to win a World Series in the next three months. Why did the Yankees stay away from Santana? Santana would have cost money AND A-List prospects; Sabathia just costs money and compensation picks.

6) This is the one I can’t stress enough–just because a player is available to trade does NOT mean that the Yankees should attempt to trade for this player. Seriously, there were people complaining that the Yankees did not trade for JJ Hardy and let Minnesota get him for cheap. Buh? Where, exactly, did the Yankees have a need for Hardy? In case you forgot, we got a dude named Derek Jeter playing short, maybe you haven’t heard, but he’s kinda good.

Teams part with players for two reasons: to fill a hole, or to save money. The Yankees at the moment do not have a pressing need to do either with their infield (whose production in 2009 is arguably worth their payroll), so trading for Hardy would have made absolutely no sense.

Stick to these basic guidelines–you have to give to get, you trade to fill a hole, quantity does not equal quality–and watch as your trade proposals suddenly get just that little more credible, and maybe we all stop pointing and laughing…