When Halladay faced the Blue Jays for the first time this spring as a Phillie, a group of Toronto reporters stuck around at Halladay's locker at Bright House Field to chat.
One of them asked Halladay if he was still fooling around with that darned change-up. It had seemed so silly in the past - one of the best pitchers in the game working so hard on a pitch he rarely used when the games counted.
"It's the eternal search," one reporter joked.
"Yeah," Halladay said with a smile.
And that search is what makes Halladay so good, if it already wasn't clear enough. The best pitchers are always looking for a way to adjust. Adjust before the hitters can.
Through eight starts with the Phillies, the split-fingered change-up is Halladay's newest way of leaping ahead of the curve.
"It's been outstanding," Halladay said last week. "It took a while to get in spring training and it's still coming. There are days when it's better than others. But it's been far more effective than anything else I've done to this point."
In 2009, Halladay threw his change-up 4.6 percent of the time, according to pitch data from Baseball Info Solutions.
In 2010, Halladay has used the change-up for 13.1 percent of his total pitches. If he keeps throwing it at that rate, it would be by far the most Halladay has used the pitch over his entire nine-year career. (His previous high was 6.0 percent change-ups in 2007.)
Halladay's 1.59 ERA this season is the lowest of his career through eight starts.
Of course, the new change-up isn't responsible for all of Halladay's success as a Phillie, but it has certainly helped. Halladay now has four pitches he is comfortable using in any situation.
