Doc Halladay is the Ace of Aces

Postseason baseball has been waiting patiently for Roy Halladay, and the game’s best pitcher did not disappoint — unless of course you’re a Cincinnati Reds fan. For everyone else, however, last night’s no-hitter was an opportunity to watch the game’s best pitcher of the last decade at his absolute best.

Cincinnati hitters didn’t just swing and miss at Halladay’s pitches in their 4-0 loss in Game 1 of the National League Divisional Series; they sometimes missed balls by more than six inches. His sinking fastball and cut fastball — which break in opposite directions at about 93 mph — were darting all over the place, and just when the Reds thought they had a handle on them, Halladay unleashed a devastating curve ball or change-up to make them really look silly. His stuff was so filthy that the league’s best lineup was reduced to cheap defensive swings, pesky time-out calls, and abject failure. It almost wasn’t fair.

Carlos Ruiz wasn't the only one in South Philly who wanted to hug Roy Halladay. (Carr/AP)

So in case you haven’t heard, Roy Halladay is really, really, really good. What did the Reds — who led the National League in most statistical categories, including average (.272), homers (188) and runs (790) — think about him? They did, after all, have an up-close-and-personal look at Doc’s stuff.

• “Tough night,” manager Dusty Baker said. “The sumbitch was dealing.”
• “It’s like trying to hit nothing,” first baseman and MVP candidate Joey Votto said. “He’s an ace among aces.”
• “That is the best pitched game I’ve seen since I’ve been going to the playoffs and World Series,” Baker said.
• “Luckily, he’s not pitching the next game or the following game,” outfielder Jonny Gomes said.

Bad news to Reds fans: Halladay was the team’s third best starting pitcher in the month of September. Cole Hamels is back, having regained his transcendent 2008 form, and Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. dealt for former Houston ace Roy Oswalt before the deadline. Both pitchers have no-hit stuff in their own right which means that the league’s best offense might fall victim to baseball’s postseason adage: great pitching beats great hitting.

With that I owe Amaro a BIG apology. Sure, the Lee trade looks atrocious now, but he didn’t compound the error by standing pat or trying to reacquire him at twice the value they traded him for. Instead, he went with Plan B and acquired another playoff-starved ace in Oswalt. Since coming to Camelot Philly, Oswalt looks every bit the 20-game-winner he was five or six years ago. With Hamels looking like a future 20-game-winner in his own right, suddenly Cliff Lee is old news — which is good news for Amaro, who probably was kicking himself mid-May. If you still aren’t convinced of Amaro’s greatness, check out the top three starting pitchers on the three previous Phillies teams:

• Hamels, Kyle Kendrick, Jamie Moyer in ‘07
• Hamels, Brett Myers, Moyer in ‘08
• Lee, Hamels, Pedro Martinez in ‘09
• Halladay, Oswalt, Hamels in ‘10

I call that progress.

Yesterday, Cliff Lee opened the playoffs with yet another brilliant pitching performance and improved his postseason record to 5-0. On any other day, Lee’s work on the mound would be the top story, but Roy Halladay followed him with perhaps the most dominant pitching performance of my lifetime. It was as if Doc Halladay had been waiting all year to finally upstage his predecessor, who shined his brightest in the postseason. How fitting then for both pitchers to lead off the 2010 postseason with a pair of dominant performances. After all, they’re the two best pitchers in baseball — Roy being 1a to Cliff’s 1b. Yes, it would be nice to have both of them — and still have J.A. Happ on the roster — but that is now a thing of the past. The Phillies have moved on, and now it’s time for us fans to move on as well.

Lost in all the shuffle of this past offseason, I didn’t realize that Halladay took Lee’s number (34). Talk about putting pressure on yourself! And as obsessive (that’s the word) as I am about Philly sports, how did I not know that?! While I was living under a rock, it was actually Halladay’s wife who put this little issue in the proper perspective:

“Everybody says, ‘Oh so interesting, he’s taking Lee’s number,’” Brandy Halladay said at the time. “It should have been ours to begin with.”

Agreed. And if Halladay has a few more games in him like he did last night, something tells me that no one else will wear the number 34 in red pinstripes ever again. I guess the new 34 is helping me finally get over the last 34. I call that progress, too.

As Harry Kalas would put it: “Roy Halladay, you are the man!”