Roy Halladay, 1977-2017

A few thoughts on the career of Roy Halladay, who died piloting his plane yesterday. (Halladay had just taken delivery of the ICON A5 amphibious plane a month ago. It is the second fatal crash for the "sports car with wings" this year).


First I wanted to note that Halladay had a well-deserved reputation as a good guy. He was heavily involved in charitable work in both his Blue Jays and Phillies years. He was a multiple finalist for the Roberto Clemente Award, given to players with exemplary records for humanitarianism.


As a pitcher, Roy had few equals in his era. He won 203 games, threw a no-hitter for the Phillies in the 2010 playoffs, and is rated the 42nd best starting pitcher of all-time by the JAWS metric.


The most similar pitcher to Roy by Similarity Score is Zach Greinke of Arizona, another pitcher who will likely end up in the Hall of Fame. (Interestingly enough, the most similar pitcher to Greinke is Roy Oswalt, who with Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Cliff Lee formed the historic "Four Aces" rotation of the 2011 Phillies, who won 102 games).


Halladay never won a World Series, having arrived in both Toronto and Philadelphia a little too late for either team's championship years. But in 38 innings of excellent post-season work, he bettered his regular season ERA by a full run.


RIP to a good man and a fine athlete.