Phillies news: Remember Roy Halladay’s best starts amid biography release

The newest piece of Phillies news brings us back to Roy Halladay’s best games

Phillies fans have another item they need to add to the bucket list.

This week Phillies beat writer, Todd Zolecki, is releasing his book, “Doc: The Life of Roy Halladay”. The book details the life and journey of the Hall of Famer. It will give a 252-page glimpse of Halladay on and off the baseball diamond. It is set to be released to the public on May 5.

It’s tough to believe Halladay only played with Phillies for a quarter of his career. Most fans look back and remember his dominance all throughout the 2010 and 2011 seasons. It was as if he could do no wrong.

After the 2011 NLCS loss to the Cardinals, Halladay began slowing down a bit. He was barely a shell of his usual dominant self in 2013, the final year in his baseball career.

But wow, was he something special to watch in his first two seasons with the Phils. During that span, Halladay posted 17 complete games and five shutouts. He pitched in 484 innings going 40-16  with a dazzling 2.46 ERA. He was the best pitcher in the game and it really wasn’t close.

Halladay breezed to win his second Cy Young award in 2010. The following year Halladay would finish runner up in the Cy Young race to a 23-year-old Clayton Kershaw.

I could go on and on about the greatness of Roy Halladay, but I’ll leave it to Mr. Zolecki to tell the full story in his biography.

Everyone knows Halladay’s greatest two starts in a Phillies uniform: The no-hitter in the 2010 NLDS vs Cincinnati Reds and the Perfect game on the road vs the Florida Marlins.

What are his best starts besides those two? I dug deep to see Halladay’s top three starts for the Philadelphia Phillies. The list is certainly debatable. Let’s take a look:

July 10th, 2010 vs Cincinnati Reds (Game score: 85) 

Stat line: 9 innings, 5 hits, 1 walk, 0 runs (Phillies won 1-0 in 11 innings) 

“Anything you can do, I can do better”. That should be the title of this ball game.

Cincinnati’s offense gave many pitchers fits in 2010. The Reds had five guys in the lineup with 18 home runs or more. They were led by a young Joey Votto, who mashed with an impressive 1.024 OPS. Votto would go on to finish sixth in the MVP voting.

Halladay faced the Reds two starts prior to this game. He didn’t fare well, giving up 13 hits and 4 runs in a 4-3 loss. The defeat stung for Halladay and was fresh in the Reds’ batters memory bank. That’s what made this revenge game that much sweeter.

On July 10, 2010, we witnessed one for the ages. Travis Wood took the mound for the Reds. He was dialed in. But Halladay kept counterpunching. “The Doc” was consistent, allowing only five hits in nine scoreless innings. The Phils couldn’t find any rhythm with the bat, as Wood had a perfect game going into the 9th inning.

That was until Carlos Ruiz ended the streak with a leadoff double in the 9th inning.

Ruiz would go on to record another hit in the 11th inning, which led to Jimmy Rollins hitting a walk-off hit to score “Chooch”.

Stats wise, Travis Wood edged out Halladay as the better pitcher on this epic night. Halladay could have let his foot off the pedal, but kept battling to force extra innings. To me, that was more impressive.

The next time the Phils’ ace would face the Reds would be in playoffs at Citizens Bank Park. I think we all remember that special October night…

September 27th, 2010 vs Washington Nationals (Game score: 89) 

Stat line: 9 innings, 2 hits, 0 runs, 6 strikeouts, no walks (Phillies won 8-0)

What made this night memorable was that the Phillies were looking to clinch their third straight NL East Division Title. In just 97 pitches, Halladay hurled 65 strikes while pitching a complete game shutout. The Nationals offense failed to reach second base this night.

This ball game was never close, as the Phightin’s pummeled a weak-hitting Nationals lineup by the score of 8-0. Jayson Werth, Carlos Ruiz and Placido Polanco all had three games for the night.

I guess you could say this start gave Halladay momentum as he entered his NLDS start vs the Cincinnati Reds… Again, Phillies fans know how it goes.

April 5th, 2012 vs Pittsburgh Pirates (Game score: 83) 

Stat line: 8 innings, 2 hits, 0 runs, 5 strikeouts (Phillies won 1-0)

This game will go down as one of the best opening day starts in Phillies history.

Pittsburgh entered the 2012 season with plenty of optimism. The Pirates had a young superstar in Andrew McCutchen. They were at their beautiful home ballpark going up against an aging Phillies team.

Halladay shut all of that down real quick. He breezed in eight scoreless innings. Halladay also got a base hit in the game as well. The Phillies would give the ball to newly acquired Jonathan Papelbon the ball to close the game out in the 9th inning.

To this day, the Phil’s haven’t had an opening day start this dominant. Maybe Aaron Nola can have a debut outing like this one of these years, but until then we will always point to “The Doc”.