Roy Halladay Deserves To Be A HOFer

I love stats. Followers of MLB, and MLB itself places more emphasis on the importance of statistics than any other sport. They're the reason why we love fantasy baseball so much. Why we can ignore the three and a half hour games, loooooong 162 game schedule, and lack of a salary cap. Pujols hit a homer? That made the last two and a half hours of six inning baseball bearable.
Statistics are so important that a Hall of Famer can't just be a Hall of Famer anymore. The "He's better than everybody else of his generation" argument doesn't work anymore. His stats have to stack up as well. As unfair as this is, we're all a victim of this way of thinking to some degree. We have to compare players somehow.
Interestingly enough, last weekend I was talking to a friend about Roy Halladay. We both agreed a week ago that he was the best pitcher in baseball. Then the conversation turned.
"Do you think he's a Hall of Famer?" I asked.
"How many wins does he have?" he countered.
"169." (Yes, I happened to know that number off the top of my head. I'm a nerd and I know it).
"Ooh," he said. "That's kinda low."
Low of course in the Hall of Fame sense. And he was right. 169 isn't that many wins for a Hall of Fame pitcher. Only eleven of the 59 pitchers currently in the HOF have less than 200 wins. Two of them were predominately relievers.
300 is the magic number of wins we've been taught, just as 500 was the number of home runs until the steroid allegations. But 300 is not the norm, it's more like a guarantee into the Hall.
The average number of wins for a HOF pitcher is 264. Halladay would have to win 19 games a year for the next five years to reach that number. He's reached 19 wins four times in his career, but is already 33 years old. However, I won't be the one to say he can't pitch effectively into his thirties. Halladay should easily eclipse 200 wins, but after that, who knows?
His career ERA is 3.32. This also seems kind of high by HOF standards. It's obviously a great ERA, but we've been taught that a truly elite ERA is below 3.00.
The Hall would seem to echo these sentiments. The average ERA of HOF pitchers is 3.01. Of course, Halladay is playing in more homer friendly parks and likely faced plenty of steroid users. Regardless, twelve HOF pitchers finished their career with an ERA above 3.32.
I love stats, but throw them out the window. Halladay is the best pitcher of the last decade. While names like Santana, Greinke, Sabathia, Lee, and Lincecum have fallen in and out of favor over the last few years, there's been no one more consistent than Halladay.
I don't care about the number of wins, he's played for mediocre teams in Toronto his entire career. I don't care about the ERA, 3.32 is great.
Here's the stat that I like. Halladay has 58 complete games in 320 career starts. He's went the distance in 18 percent of his starts! That's a guy I want as my number one. A guy who can save the bullpen and still win despite playing with an offensively challenged team.
Halladay's legacy as a player will always come back to Wednesday's Game 1 no hitter. It's hard to believe that was Halladay's first postseason game of his career, and what does he do? Only throws the second no hitter in postseason history in a must win game against a Reds team that finished the season in the Top 5 of every major offensive statistical category.
It's hard to believe what Halladay could have accomplished through out his career if he'd played in the postseason semi-regularly.
It doesn't matter if Halladay wins a World Series, if he reaches 200 wins, or finishes his career with above a 3.50 ERA. He's a Hall of Famer and the best pitcher of this generation.
Sometimes stats don't tell the entire story.