Roy Halladay

After he threw 109 pitches Friday, Roy Halladay declared it "was about as close as I've felt to where I want to be. " Halladay has made four starts in 2013 and the evolution has been constant. That was more than evident in Halladay's pitch selection. He relied on his sinker more than ever while with the Phillies. Against St. Louis, Halladay threw his sinker 50 times, according to Pitch F/X data. Research by ESPN Stats & Info showed it was the most frequently Halladay has used his sinker in a game since the beginning of 2009.

Brad Lidge announced his retirement during spring training and is pursuing a master's degree in archaeology from the University of Leicester in England. "It's a distance [online] program," Lidge said by phone from his home in Boulder, Colo. During the latter stages of his career with the Phillies, Lidge earned a degree in digging for answers when the life leaves your right arm, the same difficult course that two-time Cy Young Award winner Roy Halladay is trying to navigate now. "I think the greatest challenge, which is also the most frustrating part, is the length of time it takes to figure out what to do and how to get hitters out when you're not using Plan A anymore," Lidge said Saturday by phone from Boulder.

NEW YORK - The Phillies on Tuesday placed star righthander Roy Halladay on the disabled list retroactive to Monday with a strained muscle in his right shoulder and back. The injury could keep him out of the lineup for up to two months. Halladay strained his latissimus dorsi, the team said. That muscle is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science and Medicine as the broad back muscle that swings the arm backward and rotates it inward. Phillies assistant general manager Scott Proefrock said that Halladay will be shut down a minimum of three weeks and that the team hopes to have him back pitching in six to eight weeks.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Roy Halladay walked off the mound and found pitching coach Rich Dubee before reaching the foul line. He smiled. The two shared a short conversation before the pitching coach went on to the next mound and the pitcher jogged off to finish his day's work. Halladay, who missed close to 2 months last season with a lat injury, was among the first pitchers to throw live batting practice at Camp Clearwater on Tuesday morning. After Halladay and Dubee left, the players who remained on the field may have had the best perspective for how Halladay looked in his first bullpen session against hitters in 2013.

And so we have arrived at another Roy Halladay start. At some point, his outings will cease receiving so much scrutiny and the hackneyed expression "it is what it is" will rule the day. Exactly how this developing story is going to end remains to be seen, but history suggests it is not going to end well for the two-time Cy Young Award winner. Oddly, this start Sunday afternoon against the Miami Marlins will be a bit of a defining one for the 35-year-old pitcher who threw a perfect game against the same franchise in 2010.

THE STRETCH RUN began around 5:30 p.m. yesterday. Fresh off a 14-2 thrashing at the hands of the worst team in the National League, the Phillies dressed in silence and headed to the airport for the start of a 4-week window that could very well dictate how much meaningful baseball they play for the rest of the season. Of their next 22 games, 19 will feature opponents who entered Sunday with a winning record. They are 5-14 against such teams this season, a winning percentage that, if maintained, would leave them around 22-32 on the final day of May. The arrival at such a juncture would force the Phillies to consider turning their attention to 2014 and beyond, a process that would involve a number of difficult conversations, including those with their tradable veterans, most of whom can exert at least some control over where they land thanks to clauses in their contracts.

ATLANTA - It is an obituary nobody wants to write, and only Roy Halladay can prevent it from being written. He forced us all to sharpen our pencils Wednesday night. If the question before this start was whether Halladay would be closer to his vintage self now that the games count, it is now this: If he isn't going to be that pitcher again, can he learn how to be effective in a different way? The guess here is that the answer will turn out to be yes. Halladay is just too competitive, too dedicated to his craft to be daunted by this challenge.

MIAMI - Roy Halladay's final act was at 9:02 p.m. Saturday when he threw a 90-m.p.h. fastball. Greg Dobbs swung and missed. Halladay, without flinching, walked to the dugout bench. There, Rich Dubee told him this season was mercifully over. Myriad reasons existed to prevent his right arm from throwing 90 more pitches, except Halladay wanted it to end on his terms. The Phillies ceded that to their ace, one of the most respected players in the game, and permitted him this night. "They didn't fight me on it a lot," Halladay said.

LOS ANGELES - The Phillies' starting rotation got considerably better the moment Roy Halladay returned to the mound Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Pitching coach Rich Dubee was sure of that even before he watched Halladay pitch for the first time since May 27, the afternoon he landed on the disabled list because of soreness in the back of his right shoulder. Halladay only confirmed Dubee's opinion with his performance. After making just one rehab appearance with single-A Clearwater, Halladay delivered five strong innings against the Dodgers, surrendering two second-inning runs while allowing just one hit in his other four innings of work.

LAKELAND, Fla. - Expectations had to be tempered because the setting required it. Roy Halladay threw 22 pitches in a Grapefruit League game Sunday with a few thousand people watching at Joker Marchant Stadium. This is the time when the pitchers are usually ahead of the hitters; when radar-gun readings mean little; when praise is readily distributed because, after all, optimism is boundless during springtime. Halladay said he felt fine after allowing one run in two innings against the Detroit Tigers.