Photo courtesy of Tom Hagerty.
Roy Halladay is all over the place. Literally, if you saw his first start of the season against the Braves, the guy was all over the place.
Before that start, if I told you that Roy Halladay would throw 95 pitches, strike out 9 batters, walked 3, while giving up 6 hits, you might assume that his ERA ended up around 5.87 and his WHIP was around 1.17 assuming maybe he went 7 2/3 innings or so. Well, you would be wrong. Halladay only lasted 3 1/3 innings giving him a 13.5 ERA and 2.7 WHIP. He did own the outs, recording 9 of 10 with a strikeout.
The real question here is what Doc Halladay to expect the rest of the season.
You might be picturing Roy much like how Doc Holliday was portrayed in the Movie Tombstone by Val Kilmer. Barely able to get around on his own in the closing scenes, but was able to muster the strength for the final showdown with his personal rival Johnny Ringo. Well, I do not think that the coaches had to drag Roy Halladay out to the mound on Wednesday, or that he had tuberculosis
However that does not dismiss the fact that there were two very different pitchers on the mound. I noted in the preseason to wait on Halladay as he was going as high as the 4th round. Well for those of you who drafted him that high,
I told you so.” You were not drafting THE ROY HALLADAY! You are drafting the much more human form of the once elite pitcher.
Sorry.
This is not to say that he cannot right the ship. The guy still made a lot of bats miss. If he can work on his location and stay away from throwing a lot of pitches in such few innings, he’ll be fine. We also need to address that he was going against one of the more loaded lineups in baseball this season. The Braves have some serious bats with the Justin Upton, B.J. Upton, Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman (now on the DL, but he was in the lineup), and Dan Uggla. I still haven’t mentioned an impressive debut from Evan Gattis. So for a pitcher like Roy, when the ball was hit, it was hit long and hard by these fellas.
I think that Roy Halladay’s body of work has to gain him some bad game equity. Surely owners should not be dropping Roy at the first sign of trouble. As it stands even in a bad start, Doc showed he still has to bullets in the chamber, pun fully intended.
Unfortunately for Halladay owners you will need to temper your expectations and maybe be a bit selective on when you start him until you have a better idea of which Roy Halladay you will be getting. Tonight will be a nice indicator, as he toes the rubber against the Mets.