Roy Hallafame?

By hanging up his cleats at the age of 36, Roy Halladay has set in motion a good, old-fashioned brouhaha over his Cooperstown credentials.

Halladay is credited with winning just 203 games, rarely enough to secure a bust in the august Hall. Bill James established the inadequacy of measuring pitcher wins in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, but word hasn't yet reached everyone just 34 years later. Communication is instantaneous in 2013, but only if received.

The shortage of wins are a symptom of a different problem facing Halladay's Hall candidacy. He pitched sporadically for four years until age 25 and threw only 62 innings because of shoulder woes at age 36. In between, he had only 11 years to make his case. That he got close enough to incite debate is a testament to how dominant Roy Halladay was.

Over a 10 year period (2002-2011) the gangly right-hander was the best moundsman in the game. He led the Majors four times in innings pitched, seven times in complete games, twice in wins and five times in K/BB ratio. His .697 winning percentage, for what it's worth, paced the Majors, and his 2.97 ERA trumped league average by a whopping 48%. He captured a Cy Young on merit in each league and finished in the top five of voting seven times.

The obvious comparison for anyone making a short career case for a pitcher is Sandy Koufax. Koufax was far more dominant over his best six years but nowhere near as dominant over 10.

The difference is that Koufax retired at the height of his powers. We mentally extrapolate his career and wonder how long he could have continued frustrating hitters. No need to wonder about Roy Halladay: he was done. His career denouement  of 4-5, 6.82 with more walks and home runs allowed in 62 innings than in all of 2011's 233 frames followed his worst season in a decade. Together, they speak to the trajectory of Halladay's pitching skills. At 37 next season, even a bounce-back wouldn't likely last more than a season or two.

And so, Roy Halladay's final wins against replacement tally comes up 42nd all-time among pitchers, squarely borderline in a Hall of Fame currently comprising 70 hurlers. Were he electing to retire with the same accomplishments at age 34, or coming off another stellar season, we could reasonably grant him three or four more seasons of respectability sufficient to inflate his career numbers to middling Hall of Fame territory. That, unfortunately, is not the case.

A Hall vote for Halladay five years hence would certainly be defensible. But without any reasonable expectation that he could bolster his resume, he appears to come up short.