The End of Roy Halladay?

            I’ve played baseball for over 15 years; softball and baseball both.  Growing up I became more and more acquainted with players that as a boy I never even thought about.  I went from knowing just the Angels and Astros, my favorite team, to knowing the entire minor league system of the Astros till I finally started memorizing players on every team not just my favorites.  In all those years there was a name that I knew and watched him grow from a prospect to the most dominate pitcher, arguably, in the game today.  Roy Halladay was always a workhorse averaging 230 innings pitched from 2006-2011 and his career K/9 ratio of 6.95 is amazing; combine that with a BB/9 of 1.89 means he has a career K/BB ratio of 3.67.  The man averaged almost 4 strikeouts before he gave a walk up; these are some monster numbers for the pitcher.  So it comes with a heavy heart to say this but we’ve seen the last of the dominant Roy Halladay and it went just as fast as his fastball.

            Baseball, much like every sport, has the “peak years” where the player is going to be the best he ever can be.  These in baseball are considered 26-31; these are the peak years for most batters.  Now the peak years for pitchers are different since there aren’t any.  If we’ve learned anything from pitchers like Pettitte and Lincecum is that age doesn’t determine when skills start to decline and the same goes with Halladay who has pitched his best years in his early to mid 30’s.  So when we start looking at stats remember that this isn’t an age thing to explain a sudden decline, though that is certainly a factor, the stats show us that there’s more to it than just natural decline.

            As I stated in the opening of this report Halladay’s stats are amazing, but lets start looking at some of the sabermetric stats and get a better look.  Halladay owns a career 3.37 ERA that is very good and he also owns a career 3.37 FIP, this does tend to be higher than a persons ERA so its impressive he sits on an even scale.  A strand rate (LOB%) of 73% and if you look at his Ground Ball rate, 54.3%, (GB%) it looks like a good reason to have such a LOB%.  So is there a reason I’m brining this all up?  Just to emphasis how BAD he’s been the last 2 seasons.  First thing ill bring up is the reports of the change in arm slot, and look at tape of his early days to now there is a change, he’s opened his arm slightly and that can affect his pitches.  Also today it was announced that he has bone spurs and some other issues in his throwing shoulder that includes his labrum.  Personally I’m not high on the outcome of the surgery Halladay’s going to be having because of his age.

            Lets turn our attention at his stats and see what they tell us.  Lets look at pitchers BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) first yes pitchers have a BABIP against them.  Halladay’s career BABIP is .296 which seems high but its not terrible, remember this is a luck factor and things like fielder errors have an effect.  Given the struggles of Halladay one would expect that he may be getting unlucky but in fact he’s got very little difference, the last 2 seasons have a .301 in 2012 and a .267 so far in 2013.  This means last year he was a bit unlucky but not to drastically and this year Halladay’s been “lucky” so far.  A career .250 AVG and a .256 2012 and .246 2013 means he’s actually doing well in keeping the batters off the bases but here’s the kicker.  The last 2 seasons his LOB% has been 69.1% in 2012 and 50% this year, a 20% drop.  He’s keeping them off but when they get on he’s letting them come around at a lot higher rate then normal.

The biggest difference in Halladay’s pitching’s is the rate of which he gives up fly balls, this doesn’t sound important but what this means is that batters are getting the ball into the air.  Balls in the air lead to Homeruns and when your career HR/FB rate (homerun to Fly Ball rate) is 10% and the last 2 seasons have yielded a 12% in 2012 not bad but a 28% so far in 2013!  Wow that’s just terrible, with the lack of velocity on the fastball, his most thrown pitch, he’s getting hit harder then normal.  Halladay also isn’t getting batters to swing as much as normal; this year he’s only got a swing rate of 22% outside the zone and 65% in the zone.  If he cant fool batters he’s going to have a hard time to get outs.

In the end this really doesn’t look good for Halladay and I personally think its over for him.  The stats don’t lie but he’s trending down, I have nothing but glowing praises for the man but his career is most likely over.