How Good was Halladay?

The playoffs supposedly started yesterday.  One of the games was the Reds visiting the Phillies.  A lot of the talk prior to the game revolved around how pitcher Roy Halladay would fare in his playoff debut.  We see it all the time, a star pitcher who has never been in the playoffs before then throws a mediocre game his first time out.  Fairly, or unfairly, he gets labeled by that appearance until he has about 10 more games to turn it around.


Halladay..... well, he fared pretty well in his playoff debut.... by throwing just the second post-season no-hitter in history.  Touche, Year of the Pitcher, touche.


However, after the game, Reds SS Orlando Cabrera said, "Another umpire, he [Halladay] wouldn’t have thrown a game like that,” Cabrera said. “He was getting every pitch. We had no chance. We had to swing."  


I know a lot of people think things like that during the game, especially if you go  0-3 with a strikeout.  However, Brooks Baseball has a pretty neat little graphic displaying pitch location, and for Halladay's debut, it looks a little like this:

Now, I know that it's a little difficult to see, but let me just tell you what the chart says.  Basically, its says that Orlando Cabrera is a whiner with no factual basis for his comments, or, as teammate Brandon Phillips may say.... well, we won't go there.


There is exactly one called strike that was located outside of the strike zone.  In fact, there were four pitches inside the strike zone that were not called strikes.  There are several pitches outside of the strike zone that were swinging strikes, but the Reds have nobody but themselves to blame for that.


Big congratulations goes out to Halladay for following in the footsteps of Don Larsen, the only other person to throw a post-season no-no (and his was the perfect game in the '56 World Series).  And just to point out something, an NL Central team still has not won a post-season game since Game 5 of the 2006 World Series when the Cardinals ended it against the Tigers.