Much like Oswalt, Halladay dropped out of elite territory because of a declining K rate the past few years. But unlike Oswalt, Halladay is having arguably the best season of his career thanks to a career best K/9. He is now the #2 rated pitcher. What changed his trajectory? Is it sustainable?
"Steal a little and they'll throw you in jail, steal a lot and they'll make you a king." - Bob Dylan
It was odd to see him declining at the age of 29 and 30, and because of that I was always of the belief that he'd been pitching hurt for the past few years. It appears that may have been the case, especially when you go back and notice that he had "forearm" problems in late 2006 that caused him to miss the last few weeks.
Roy is throwing considerably harder this season (92.7 MPH fastball to 91.1 MPH in '07), and his curve ball has much more break than I've ever seen it. If a hitter even manages to make contact with his curve ball, they usually just hit it right into the ground. Everything he throws just seems to be tighter with more "bite." He looks very much like he did in '05 when he was the best pitcher in the majors for the first half.
I'm not sure he can keep up the same K/9 (7.60) because he never posted anything like that even when he won the Cy Young, but I also see no reason why he can't continue striking out guys either. He's still only 31, so as long as he stays healthy, I think he'll be just fine going into the future.
I don't have the numbers to back it up but i bet if you tracked his pitches over the last 2 seasons you'd see that he's throwing a lot more curve balls this year.
I don't know if I would call him "elite", as I reserve that for just a few pitchers. I would say that I'd feel ok if he were my fantasy ace right now. Absolutely have no problems with that.
If fantasy ace is your definition of elite then yes, he is a fantasy ace IMO.
mweir145 wrote:It was odd to see him declining at the age of 29 and 30, and because of that I was always of the belief that he'd been pitching hurt for the past few years. It appears that may have been the case, especially when you go back and notice that he had "forearm" problems in late 2006 that caused him to miss the last few weeks.
Don't forget to add in the Blue Jays' history of not exactly being forthcoming about, or brilliant in handling, injured players.
I'm gonna say that all of his success is do to him striking out guys again. I mean, looking over all his other indicators, he's been rather level (not flat, but not crazy) in every respect. But his Ks... Wow. What a diff a year makes:
K's are generally one of those things that guys don't fake. I'd say he's back until this number drops again.
It's my belief that Halladay's K ratio dropped because he wanted to pitch longer into games by just inducing ground balls. I think he worried that if he tried to strike out pitchers, each batter would take more pitches and he wouldn't be able to go longer into games.
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by bleach168 » Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:35 pm 
