In Which We Celebrate the Awesomosity of Roy Halladay

Good morning.

I was going to write a post about Barry Zito.

Then, this happened.

Nothing too unusual for Doc, who breezed through 9 innings on 103 pitches, giving up 5 hits and 1 run without walking a batter. He faced 30 hitters — 3 more than the minimum — and 72 of his pitches were in the strike zone, in sharp contrast to the MLB-average 60-ish percent of pitches thrown for strikes. In case you’re wondering, he throws an average of 67% strikes, an advantage of being a contact pitcher who stays down in the strike zone rather than a power pitcher who simply tries to blow the hitters away.

You, over there, reading this post. Are you looking for your stoicism? Well that’s too bad, because Roy Halladay took it and it’s unlikely you’ll get it back.

Unlike some people, I wasn’t overly excited about the “teacher vs. mentor” aspect of last night’s game. I just wanted to see Halladay pitch well. And hey, let’s screencap the current standings for posterity:

Forget it, Yankees. (Memo to Mark “They Keep On Paying Me And I Keep On Sucking” Teixeira: We all know that striking out doesn’t help you score runs. But sometimes, you just can’t avoid it. Keep up the stellar, sub-Mendoza Line work.)

I once thought that wins were a good stat for measuring a pitcher’s success. That was a long time ago. But we can still take a look at this and smile, right? (And yes, Bronson Arroyo can go to hell or whatever. He doesn’t even have a high BAbip.)