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Why does Felix need to be a bargain?  Is paying him what he's worth some huge problem?  The only teams that live on having every talent be paid less than they are worth are basement-level teams, because they sell off their good players rather than be bothered to pay them market value.
The Rockies do well now - and they are starting to pay their players.  They decided not to pay Holliday, but turned around and gave money to Tulowitzki just to avoid arb talks ever (which was smart) and are paying Helton a ton of cash to finish his career in Colorado.
I guess for me it's a tough thing to trade Felix for a combination of arms and bats and hope at least two of those guys turn into stars (because Felix is worth a couple of stars as a frontline starter who was #2 in the Cy Young last year).
You talk about how we won't contend next year either if we don't blow it up.  Well, we won't contend if we DO either.  How many Gil Meche/Ryan Anderson stories do we need to have on this team before it's clear that getting a durable, top-flight pitcher is one of the hardest things to do in sports?  Young pitchers are not guaranteed to make it.  Young batting prospects aren't guaranteed to be impact players.  We could add a dozen of the best prospects around and still never contend.  We had 4 HOF players in a half-dozen year span with Randy, Griffey, Edgar and A-Rod, and still only made the playoffs twice.
Talent alone won't do it if your team is built incorrectly.  Trading an ace for a couple of good players (Freddy and Guillen) didn't sound too bad, but we still didn't win anything even with importing a couple of other great players.
Our bullpen is erratic but has good arms.  I want to get that mix right.  Our pitching staff is helped both by the park and the defense, but in the playoffs aces count.  Felix will count when the lights are bright - if we ever get there - but Pineda has already had more health scares than Felix ever has.  You want to rely on him as your horse?  The lineup is a mess.  How will moving Felix out to bring in bats help us?  Have you not watched Snell and RRS out there this year?  Great park and defense or not, I would hate to find a decent offense and have no starters in front of it.
The trick is to keep your strengths and fix your weaknesses, not move your weakness from the offense to the rotation.  We'll never have a better offense than the 90s one, and we had Randy, Jamie, and Fassero in that rotation.  Still couldn't pull it off due to terrible bullpen construction.
Should we have traded Buhner for a real bullpen?  Maybe.
Do he have such a largess at any position that we can afford to significantly weaken what we have to fix what we need?  I dunno.  Trading Felix, Lee and Ichiro would give you one bat (Franklin) above 120 OPS and Doug Fister headlining the rotation.  You get parts back, but most of them will be AAA and AA players who have growth ahead of them.  We'd have money to spend on the FA market, but would have to convince someone to sign on for the rebuild.  We'd promote Pineda and Ackley and French and see what happens...
But I don't see a faster or more sure way through the growing pains doing it that way.  It's a different way, but nothing about it is assured of being better.
~G