New story shows how dominant Roy Halladay was with the Blue Jays

Last week, The Athletic picked an All-Quarter Century team (subscription required) that highlighted the best players at every position from 2000-2025.

The list included five starting pitchers, one of whom was the late Roy Halladay, who pitched most of his career with the Blue Jays.

It's a great recognition for one of the best arms in MLB history, as he was joined on the list by Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander, Hall of Famer Randy Johnson and current Blue Jay Max Scherzer.

New story shows how dominant Roy Halladay was with the Blue Jays

It really puts into perspective the brilliance of Halladay in his years with Toronto.

“Doc” produced a 47.6 fWAR from 2000-2009, which is second in that time span behind only Randy Johnson. Halladay also compiled a 139-69 record, the third-highest total in that span.

Halladay's tenure in Toronto was defined by his “bulldog” mentality: he was always going to finish what he started. He was a true throwback and one of the last of the generation that could consistently go into the seventh inning and beyond.

He threw 47 complete games with Toronto — the most of anyone within that time frame — beating the next highest player (Livan Hernandez) by 11 games. Nobody this century has even come close to matching Halladay's complete game figure. The active leader is Verlander with 26, and Kershaw has 25. Halladay had six seasons of 220+ innings, and led the league in 2002, '03, and '08 in innings.

Some of that can be attributed to the lack of rise of advanced statistics, as those shined more of a light on limiting the amount of times the pitcher should face the order in a start.

But even if they did have those detailed stats were more prevalent during Halladay’s time, it still wouldn’t have mattered since he held hitters to a .250/.289/.383 slashline when facing them for a third time.

Hitters posted a .251/.294/.356 slashline when facing him for the first time and a .241/.275/.352 slashline when facing him a second time.

Halladay is also in the top ten of nearly every pitching stat in Blue Jays history. He has the second-highest bWAR for pitchers (48.4), the fifth-best career ERA (3.43) along with being second in wins (148), second in strikeouts (1,495), second in shutouts (15) and second in adjusted ERA+ (133). He also is first in team history in Win Probability Added (29.8).

His crowning moment with the Blue Jays came in 2003 when he became the third Toronto Blue Jays pitcher to win the Cy Young Award joining Pat Hentgen (1996) and Roger Clemens (1997, 1998). His 8.1 bWAR that season still stands as the the third-best single-season mark in team history, and he also set the franchise record for wins in a season (22) by a Blue Jays pitcher. It was one of his seven All-Star seasons in Toronto.

Halladay is a member of the Blue Jays Level of Excellence, as well as the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Halladay being named to this Quarter Century Team is another feather in the cap on what was truly a remarkable career for one of the greatest Blue Jays of all time.