Philadelphia Phillies Celebrate Legend's Birthday In Style

If Roy Halladay was still alive, he would have been proud of Aaron Nola.

The Philadelphia Phillies ace was on top of his game Tuesday on what would have been Halladay's 47th birthday. Fittingly, turned in a Halladay-esque performance against the New York Mets, tossing a complete-game shutout and leading the Phillies to a 4-0 win. He scattered four hits and no walks while striking out eight, throwing 73 of his 109 pitches for strikes at Citi Field.

Halladay, who spent the final four seasons of his Hall of Fame career with Philadelphia from 2010 to 2013, threw 20 shutouts, leading the league four times. Five of those blankings came with the Phillies, including an MLB-high four during his second Cy Young campaign in 2010.

Never afraid to finish what he started, Halladay completed 67 of his 390 starts -- the most by any pitcher in the last 30 seasons. He topped the league seven times, including five straight seasons from 2007 to 2011.

It’s only fitting that on Roy Halladay’s Birthday, Aaron Nola throws a Complete Game Shutout!

9 IP | 4 H | 0 ER | 0 BB | 8 K pic.twitter.com/MlQWcsMWp7
— Phillies Tailgate (@PhilsTailgate) May 14, 2024

Baseball has changed a good deal since Halladay threw his last pitch in 2013. There's a pitch clock now, for starters, and starting pitchers have ceded much of their workload to relievers. Strikeout rates have continued to soar over the past decade, making Halladay's career 6.9 K/9 look pedestrian by comparison.

Even so, Nola is relatively old-school. He takes the ball every fifth day and usually goes six or seven innings, topping 180 frames in his last five full seasons (excluding 2020). He's only completed six of his 244 starts, however, four of which have been shutouts.

More importantly, Nola's fifth win of the season was Philadelphia's 30th, making the Phillies the first team to reach 30 wins this season. They needed just 43 games to get there -- the second-fastest rate in club history behind only the 1976 team.

Led by Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, Philadelphia won 101 regular-season games that year before getting swept in the NLCS by the Big Red Machine Cincinnati Reds, who went on to win their second straight World Series. Hopefully this year's Phillies can avoid a similar fate.