The Toronto Blue Jays wasted yet another excellent outing from starting pitcher Roy Halladay. The right-hander pitched a complete game and didn’t allow a run until the ninth inning. Unfortunately, his team scored no runs in support of him and they lost 1-0. Halladay pitched a complete game: 8 and two-thirds innings, allowing five hits and one walk, and struck out six. The only run he allowed came in the bottom of the ninth inning when Kevin Youkilis singled to center to score David Ortiz from second base.

That was the fourth straight complete game from Halladay, yet the Blue Jays have won in just one of them. Granted, his April 17 and 23 starts weren’t exactly stellar, but his team wasn’t helping him out by scoring only 1 and 3 runs in those games, respectively. Despite the oddity of pitching four straight complete games and only winning one of them, this seemed familiar, so I decided to root through Halladay’s game logs on Baseball Reference and see what the deal was. I looked not just at complete games but other 9+ inning performances as well (games that went extra innings, referred to in shorthand herein as 9+EI).

Overall, the Jays are 30-10 when Halladay pitches a complete game or 9+EI. Halladay has a 27-8 record with 5 no-decisions.

His average pitching line in such games looks like:

9 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 107 pitches

His team only averages 3.8 runs in support of him. In fact, the Jays have scored 4 runs or less in 25 of the 40 games (62.5%) in question.

When Halladay throws 109 pitches or less, the Jays are 20-2. When he throws 110 or more, the Jays are 10-8.

Halladay has pitched CG's or 9+EI the most against the Devil Rays and Tigers, with six apiece. The Rangers and Red Sox are next at four apiece.

Halladay has, in fact, pitched a 10-inning complete game not once, but twice: September 6, 2003 against the Tigers and April 13, 2007 against the Tigers as well. The only other pitchers to go 10 innings in a start this decade were Aaron Harang and Mark Mulder. There were 37 such occurrences in the 1990's.

Lastly, here is the team won-lost breakdown by year (Halladay W-L-ND) with the Jays' offensive rank:

1998: 1 win, 0 losses (1-0-0); 8/14
1999: 1 win, 0 losses (1-0-0); 5/14
2001: 1 win, 0 losses (1-0-0); 9/14
2002: 2 wins, 0 losses (2-0-0); 7/14
2003: 8 wins, 2 losses (8-1-1); 2/14
2004: 1 win, 0 losses (1-0-0); 11/14
2005: 6 wins, 0 losses (5-0-1); 5/14
2006: 4 wins, 1 loss (3-1-1); 7/14
2007: 5 wins, 4 losses (4-3-2); 10/14
2008: 1 win, 3 losses (1-3-0); 12/14
Total: 30 wins, 10 losses (27-8-5)

If you want to download the Word document where I go even more in-depth with these "splits," click here to download it. If you want to download the Excel spreadsheet where I've come up with these calculations, click here to download it.

What can we conclude from this? Well, Halladay is a hell of a pitcher; however, the Jays should keep him under 110 pitches. The reason why the team hasn't truly benefited in recent years from his CG and 9+EI performances is because they're not scoring any runs for him -- their offense has gotten progressively worse since 2005.

In the era of the bullpen, Halladay's rash of complete games are truly unique and he should stick out like a sore thumb when we look back on the 2000's in the future.