Dave and Doc: Better Days
Wednesday, December 23 2009 @ 01:15 AM EST
Contributed by: Magpie
For now is certainly the winter of my discontent.
Anyway - Roy Halladay finishes his Blue Jay career (not that I've actually
reconciled myself to this!) a solid second (sometimes third) in pretty
well every significant career pitching category. And that, assuming I eventually get
over what's happened this month and am able to look at all of this with a clear eye and a cold heart, is
probably just about right where he stands in the overall picture.
Dave Stieb's spot atop most of these leader boards survives for at least another generation, one would think. Halladay's generally the second best starter in team history: wins,
strikeouts, ERA (third actually), complete games (third again),
shutouts, and so on. Sometimes he's very close to the leader (his 3.43
ERA is a Jay is 0.01 behind Stieb and Key), sometimes he's well back
(shutouts, complete games, hitting guys with pitches. Stieb normally
laps the field here.) If we set the bar at 1000 innings as a Blue Jay, Halladay leads in three career categories: ERA+, K/W ratio, and BB per 9 innings.
Anyway, you know you want it. Let's make a Data Table:
Category 1. 2. 3.
ERA Stieb 3.42 Key 3.42 Halladay 3.43
Wins Stieb 175 Halladay 148 Clancy 128
Games Ward 452 Henke 446 Stieb 439
IP Stieb 2873 Clancy 2204.2 Halladay 2046.2
Ks Stieb 1658 Halladay 1495 Clancy 1237
Starts Stieb 408 Clancy 345 Halladay 287
CGs Stieb 103 Clancy 73 Halladay 49
SHO Stieb 30 Halladay 15 Clancy 11
K/W Halladay 3.29 Wells 2.667 Key 2.337
HR/9 Stieb 0.702 Halladay 0.756 Guzman 0.851
WHIP Key 1.196 Halladay 1.198 Stieb 1.241
Hits/9 Stieb 7.97 Guzman 8.14 Key 8.62
BB/9 Halladay 2.001 Key 2.144 Wells 2.304
K/9 Guzman 7.625 Halladay 6.574 Wells 6.143
ERA+ Halladay 133 Stieb 123 Key 121
If the bar is lowered to 500 Toronto IP, those last seven categories all change dramatically, as you would expect, and some strange names show up:
K/W Henke 3.880 Halladay 3.286 Towers 3.129
HR/9 Ward 0.415 Stieb 0.702 Halladay 0.756
WHIP Henke 1.025 Key 1.196 Halladay 1.198
Hits/9 Henke 6.57 Ward 7.32 Stieb 7.97
BB/9 Towers 1.628 Halladay 2.001 Alexander 2.064
K/9 Henke 10.295 Ward 9.281 Burnett 9.040
ERA+ Henke 167 Halladay 133 Quantrill 131
I do think it's fun sometimes to limit these team leader boards to guys who never played anywhere else. No one will be too surprised to learn that Luke Appling has the most hits of anyone who only wore a White Sox uniform. Appling has the most hits of anyone who wore a White Sox uniform. But do you know who has the most home runs of anyone who only wore a White Sox uniform? After you eliminate, as you must, Thomas and Baines and Konerko and so on and so forth.
Of course you don't.
It was Ron Karkovice. Ron Karkovice himself probably doesn't know that.
Who has the most wins for a Toronto pitcher who never pitched anywhere else? For now, it's Halladay. But in a few months, it will be Luis Leal. Leal will hold the same distinction for pretty much every other pitching category as well, with the exceptions of things like Games and Saves, where Jason Frasor will stand atop the rubble of our history.
Dave Stieb and Roy Halladay each made their Blue Jays debut at age 21.
Halladay was a September callup, who spent his first full season as a
swing man, his second as a punching bag, and his third going back to A
ball and reinventing himself. When he returned, in June 2001, he... arrived. More on that anon.
Stieb
was added to the rotation in mid-season 1979 and hardly ever missed a
turn for the next twelve years. His first career appearance on a
disabled list came when he suffered the shoulder injury that destroyed his career in May 1991. It seems odd, but in retrospect one of the key
distinctions between Stieb and Halladay is this: from the day he
arrived, Stieb was far more durable. Stieb was even more of a
workhorse. Hard as it is to imagine anyone being more of a workhorse than Doc, who led the league in IP three times (Stieb himself led the league twice.)
Halladay
stayed here through his age 32 season, and Stieb's last full year as
himself was likewise his age 32 season (1990). At that point in his
career, Stieb was 166-123, 3.34 with an ERA+ of 126. He got in another
9 starts early in 1991 before the injury.
Roger Clemens, of
course, owns the best single season by any Toronto starter. Halladay
was having his best year in 2005, but Kevin Mench put an end to that
before the All Star Break. As it stands, Doc's best single season is
probably 2002, the year before his Cy Young. But you could make a case
for 2008, or the Cy Young year itself. (2003).
Stieb should have
won a Cy Young in a season (1982) that certainly wasn't his personal
best. He had an excellent case for the award in 1983 and 1984 as well. But Stieb
never actually pitched better than he did in 1985. He led the
league in ERA (2.48) and ERA+ (172, second time he led the league) -
but somehow managed to go just 14-13 for a team that won 99 games. (Well, I can tell you exactly how it happened - Stieb lost three games
by a 2-1 score, another one by a 2-0 score. Plus his bullpen blew no
less than seven leads he had entrusted to them.)
I was in the house for the Roberto Kelly game in 1989 (the best live
baseball experience of my life - better than Mitch pitching to Joe in
October 1993) and the Bobby Higginson game in 1998 (Stieb was there
too, in the bullpen, expecting to make one last appearance in the
season finale, but the kid on the mound had other ideas.) But the games
I'm remembering most vividly right now... were very different.
One was
that May 1991 game. Stieb was locked up in a pitcher's duel with Mike Moore
of the A's. A night game in Oakland, the A's ahead 2-1 in the seventh,
McGwire on first with one out. Walt Weiss hit a grounder to the hole
on the right side, but Alomar got to it and threw to second for the
force. Gonzales relayed it to Stieb covering first - he made the catch
but stumbled over the base in the process and landed on his shoulder.
It seemed like nothing at the time, nothing at all...
But that was all she wrote. He faced two more batters, came out of the
game, and didn't return until twelve months later. And he was just a faint shadow of what he
had been...
Youneverknow.
On June 22, 2001, Roy Halladay completed his return from the land of the
lost. He began the year in the Dunedin bullpen, moved up to make 5
starts in Knoxville and 2 in Syracuse before returning to Toronto. Lord
Voldemort was the Blue Jay starter, and his evil was unspeakable. He
faced seven batters and didn't retire any (the only out recorded was on
a caught stealing.) Manny Ramirez hit a three-run homer, Brian Daubach
a two-run double, and Halladay was summoned from the pen.
And it all began.
Two groundouts to end that first inning. Two more groundouts and
a strikeout the next inning. It all fell apart on him in the third,
when the Red Sox roughed him up for five runs on a couple of walks, a
bunch of bloops, and more Manny. But it didn't matter. You could tell, you could absolutely tell, that
it was a new guy out there. It wasn't the kid who had been so awful the
year before, and so inconsistent the year before that. He was Doc, I
tell ya. He was here, at last.
Good times we had.
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