As the sports world continues to be on hold with the current Covid-19 pandemic, fans are looking to the past. While everyone has nothing to do during this quarantined period, past major events come into play. On April 5th, 2010, it was a major day for the Philadelphia Phillies organization. The Phillies new ace pitcher Roy Halladay made his debut.
April 5th, 2010
After 12 years the legendary pitcher Roy Halladay who was with the Toronto Blue Jays decided to hit free agency for the first time. Right away, the Phillies were interested in signing the All-Star pitcher. The Phillies wound up inking Roy Halladay to a three year $60 million contract. Halladay pitched his first Phillies game in DC against the Washington Nationals. All Phillies fans were excited to see who their favorite team was spending the money on. Halladay went on to pitch seven innings with nine strikeouts in an 11-1 win. He was completely dominant in the outing and it was shown that this was going to be a good year.
The Rest of 2010
The first seven games of Halladays’ career with the Phillies were more than just impressive. The 32-year-old ace was showing no signs of slowing down quite yet. Halladay went 6-1 with a 1.45 ERA and 48 strikeouts through 56 innings. Every game he started he went at least seven innings. Three of those games were complete games and two of them were shutouts. It seemed like no team could stop the path that Roy Halladay was on. Throughout all of the season, Halladay continued to put up historic numbers. Halladay went on to win a league-leading 21 games. He had a 2.44 ERA and a 1.041 WHIP with 219 strikeouts with a league-leading 250 innings pitched.
But the most impressive stat to look at is his complete games and shutouts. He led the league in both of those categories with nine complete games and four shutouts. In 2010, Halladay was an All-Star along with winning the Cy Young Award. He also finished sixth in the MVP voting. There was one game that really made 2010 memorable for Roy Halladay which is even greater than winning the Cy Young.
The Perfectionist
On May 29th, 2010, Roy Halladay went perfect against the then Florida Marlins. It was the 20th perfect game in MLB history. Throughout the game, Halladay managed to punch out 11 of the 27 batters he faced in the game. This game definitely helped Halladay’s case to be the CY Young winner in 2010.
Final Years in Philadelphia and Baseball
Roy Halladay would play on the Phillies from 2010 to 2013 and is known as one of the best Phillies pitchers of all time. Halladay went 55-29 with the Phillies posting a 3.25 ERA. In those four years, he had 18 complete games and five shutouts. You could have probably thrown Halladay into a game two days after a complete game and he would throw another one.
Doc could just go deep into games and made it look easy. At the end of his career, he had 67 complete games and 20 shutouts. He also had a 203-105 record and a 3.38 ERA. Halladay is beloved by the city of Philadelphia and Toronto as well as the entire baseball community. He had a long 16-year career that we were able to witness and enjoy watching. Hopefully, he is in a better place now as we continue to pray for him and his family since the tragedy.
May you rest in peace Doc.
Main Photo: Embed from Getty Images
