Inning-by-inning runs, with totals for runs, hits and errors.
Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	R	H	E
TOR	1	2	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	2	7	11	2
TB	0	0	1	2	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	5	13	0

IV · THE GAME · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Roy Halladay

Pitcher · 20 September 1998 · Toronto Blue Jays · Philadelphia Phillies · 14 May 1977, Denver, Colorado

Halladay's career earned run average was 3.38. His final season, 2013, posted 6.82. The gap between those two numbers is the shape of the end.

At a glance

Career: 416 games · 203 wins · 105 losses · 2,749.1 innings · 3.38 ERA
Complete games: 67 · 20 shutouts
Debut: 20 September 1998, aged 21, at Tropicana Field
Last game: 23 September 2013, for the Philadelphia Phillies

Look closer

The debut went twelve innings and Toronto won by two
On 20 September 1998 the Blue Jays and the Devil Rays played twelve innings in four hours and eighteen minutes. Toronto led 3–0 after two, Tampa Bay tied it in the fourth, Toronto retook the lead in the sixth, Tampa Bay tied it again in the eighth and once more in the ninth. The game stayed level through the tenth and eleventh. Toronto scored twice in the twelfth and Tampa Bay did not answer. Eleven hits for Toronto, thirteen for Tampa Bay, but Toronto made two errors and Tampa Bay made none.
The 2000 season is the outlier
In 2000 Halladay pitched 67.2 innings across nineteen games and thirteen starts. His earned run average that year was 10.64, his walks and hits per inning pitched 2.20. Every other season in the table sits between 2.35 and 4.49 for ERA and between 0.96 and 1.57 for WHIP. The 2000 line is not close to any of them. He allowed 107 hits and 42 walks in those 67.2 innings — more than two baserunners per inning — and gave up 80 earned runs.
Complete games cluster in the middle years
Between 2003 and 2011 Halladay threw sixty-one complete games in two hundred and seventy-three starts. That is roughly one finish for every four or five outings. Before 2003 he completed four games in ninety-one starts. After 2011 he completed one in fifty-one starts. The sixty-seven career total is almost entirely the product of those consecutive seasons, and within them the rate held steady: never fewer than four complete games in a year, never more than nine.

The story

Roy Halladay made his major-league debut on 20 September 1998 at Tropicana Field in a day game that went twelve innings. Toronto led early, scoring once in the first and twice in the second. Tampa Bay answered with a run in the third and two more in the fourth to tie it at three. Toronto put two on the board in the sixth to lead 5–3. Tampa Bay scored once in the eighth to make it 5–4, then once in the ninth to tie it again. The game stayed level through the tenth and eleventh innings. Toronto scored twice in the twelfth and Tampa Bay could not match it. The final was 7–5 after four hours and eighteen minutes in front of 27,453 people. Toronto made eleven hits and two errors, Tampa Bay thirteen hits and none.

Halladay pitched sixteen seasons, all but four of them for Toronto. The career totals are 416 games, 390 of them starts, 203 wins against 105 losses, and 2,749.1 innings pitched. His earned run average across those sixteen years was 3.38, his walks and hits per inning pitched 1.18. He struck out 2,117 batters and walked 592. He threw sixty-seven complete games, twenty of them shutouts.

The season-by-season table shows the shape. In 1998 he made two starts and posted a 1.93 ERA. In 1999 he appeared in thirty-six games, eighteen of them starts, and the ERA rose to 3.92. In 2000 it jumped to 10.64 across nineteen games and sixty-seven innings — the only season in the table above ten, and the only one above five. From 2001 onward the figures stabilised. Between 2001 and 2011 his ERA never rose above 4.20 and sat below 3.00 in six of those eleven seasons. The lowest mark was 2.35 in 2011, when he won nineteen and lost six for Philadelphia.

The complete-game total divides the same way. Between 1998 and 2002 he finished five games. Between 2003 and 2011 he finished sixty-one, never fewer than four in a season and never more than nine. In 2012 he threw none in twenty-five starts. In 2013 he threw one in thirteen.

The final two seasons show the decline plainly. In 2012 his ERA was 4.49 across 156.1 innings. In 2013 it was 6.82 across sixty-two innings, the highest of his career apart from 2000. He walked thirty-six batters in those sixty-two innings, struck out fifty-one, and allowed fifty-five hits and forty-seven earned runs. His last game was on 23 September 2013.

Why it mattered then

A complete game — one pitcher throwing all nine innings without relief — was already uncommon by the late 1990s. Pitch counts, specialist relievers, and bullpen management had made the practice rare. Between 2003 and 2011 Halladay threw sixty-one of them, at a time when many teams recorded fewer than ten complete games across an entire season from all pitchers combined. The rate itself was the statement: not a single spectacular outing but a sustained pattern, one finish every four or five starts, in an era when starting pitchers were routinely lifted after six or seven innings regardless of performance. The 2.35 ERA in 2011, paired with eight complete games and 233.2 innings, described a pitcher still working at full capacity in his mid-thirties.

Why it matters now

The complete-game figure sits at the centre of how pitching has changed. In 1998, Halladay's debut year, major-league teams combined for 234 complete games. By 2013, his final season, that number had fallen to 88. By the 2020s it had dropped below fifty. Halladay's sixty-seven complete games were accumulated during the years when the practice was disappearing, which makes the total both a document of one pitcher's durability and a marker of a structural shift. The 2000 season, with its 10.64 ERA, is the other half of the story: the single year in which the numbers broke down entirely, followed by a rebuild that produced eleven seasons of control. The gap between 2000 and 2003 is not explained in the statistics themselves, but the before and after are both visible.

The surprising detail

The 2000 season stands alone. In sixty-seven innings Halladay allowed 107 hits and 42 walks — 149 baserunners in 67.2 innings, or 2.20 per inning. His earned run average that year was 10.64. No other season in the table is close: the next-highest ERA is 6.82 in 2013, and the next-highest WHIP is 1.57 in 1999. Between 2001 and 2011 his ERA never rose above 4.20 and his WHIP never above 1.24. The 2000 line is not a gradual decline or a minor wobble; it is a collapse followed by a recovery. What happened between September 2000 and April 2001 is not recorded in these figures, but the difference between the two lines is stark enough to read as two separate careers.

What is disputed

The career totals and season-by-season figures come from the MLB Stats API, which compiles data from official league records. Definitions of some statistics — particularly earned runs and errors — were applied inconsistently across different parks and scorers during the period covered, and pitch counts were not recorded in detail until the mid-1980s. The figures here are those the league currently publishes, not independently recomputed.

Remember this

Sixty-seven complete games in sixteen seasons, sixty-one of them thrown between 2003 and 2011, during the years when finishing games became rare.

Test yourself

Halladay's 2000 season shows an ERA of 10.64 and a WHIP of 2.20 across 67.2 innings. Using the figures in that season's line, what do those two numbers describe?

Go deeper

Image: User Keith Allison on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. Source.

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