Red Sox GM Theo Epstein spoke at length on Thursday about the negotiations with the Blue Jays for starting pitcher Roy Halladay. "I never got the sense that we were close, but we were pretty aggressive," Epstein said. "We actually made (Toronto GM) J.P. (Ricciardi) several different offers, but our last offer-- our most aggressive attempt-- was, I think, the day before the deadline, and he said that it was a good offer-- it was probably the best offer that he had received-- but that he was looking to get blown away, and it didn't blow him away. "I thought it was really aggressive, but it just didn't work out. It would have been hard to make that trade in the division for J.P., and he was upfront about that. We certainly did all we could, as we did, on a few other front-line pitchers. I won't mention them but you probably already know (perhaps referring to the likes of Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee, and Jarrod Washburn) at least a few of who they are, but it just didn't happen. "In an ideal world, we would have loved to add a bat and a starting pitcher, and it didn't happen that way."