Blue Jays best pitching repertoire: Building the ultimate pitcher

Fastball

I really wanted to save this legend for another pitch that we’ll get to later, but I just couldn’t pass on Roy Halladay as the fastball guy for our ultimate pitcher. It is the most important pitch in baseball after all.

There’s no doubt that the Hall of Famer had a legendary curveball, but his variety of fastballs were even more important to his success. And since this is a fantasy scenario and the only rules are the ones that I’ve put in place, I decided to cheat a little for the “fastball”, since Halladay can offer two plus-heaters.

His “sinker” was often also referred to as a two-seamer, as it not only had sinking action, but also tailed to the right out of his hand. That movement was what made the offering so devastating, and the fact that Halladay was able to harness his control of the pitch made him un-hittable at times.

As if that wasn’t enough for opposing hitters to deal with, Halladay had an equally effective cut fastball that moved in the opposite direction. Not only did hitters have to account for his devastating curveball and rock solid split-change, but they had to almost guess which way his fastball was going to move, and the results were often comical. Let’s just say that the good doctor broke a lot of bats while on the mound.

There’s a reason that Halladay is pretty much universally considered to be the best pitcher in Blue Jays history, and he’s the only pitcher in the Hall of Fame for now as well (Jack Morris doesn’t count here). And as good as his other pitches were, I couldn’t pass on having Halladay’s fastball in the repertoire for my ultimate Blue Jays pitcher.

On to the off-speed stuff.