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Who's the best Blue Jay pitcher of all time? Stieb was an arse. Halladay the perfect guy. Stieb was on a few winning teams. It was never Halladay's fault. Maybe the stat hounds can break it down.

No brainer for me. Steib was never considered the best pitcher in baseball, or at minimum top-3. Halladay has been referred to by those descriptions since 2003.

OldNo7 wrote:No brainer for me. Stieb was never considered the best pitcher in baseball, or at minimum top-3. Halladay has been referred to by those descriptions since 2003.

Stieb always was in the top of the leagues pitchers when he pitched...however Stieb pitched on much much better teams then Halladay ever did.

You almost expected 1 win every 5 games with the Jays when Halladay was on the team. No one ever thought he would lose.

imagine the wins he would have had, had the teams been better. How many games did he lose 1-0 or 2-1 and he pitched 8 or 9 innings

Stieb was pretty good back in the day. I never saw Stieb during his prime but the amount of close no-hitters he had should tell you how good he was. Still I voted for Halladay because watching him pitch, control the game, make hitters do what he wanted was unbelievable. The way he'd almost finish every game on his own, you just don't see that this day an age. I swear, you could almost go old school and pitch him every 4th game if you wanted to go with a smaller rotation and wouldn't burn out. And that's not even talking about his character and the class act he was.

Stieb was a good pitcher no doubt, but he was never an elite pitcher and generally overrated by Blue Jay fans back in the day. And when his career ended, nobody on the planet considered him a HOF type of player.

Halladay would have a solid shot at the HOF if his career ended right now and has been on the short list for the 'best pitcher in baseball' conversation for several years now.

In other words, no contest.

Given the way Cox rode him from '82-'85, Stieb is lucky that he lasted past age 30; Leal didn't. There's no doubt that he was a terrific groundball pitcher, but Halladay has him in every category save for longevity stats (he'll catch him in most soon enough), and complete games/shutouts, but that again owes to Cox and his three-and-a-half man rotation.

I am fond of Dave Stieb because he did live down the street from my parents when I was a kid during the season, and he was the nicest guy on the planet,

But Doc is Doc.

cosmostein wrote:I am fond of Dave Stieb because he did live down the street from my parents when I was a kid during the season, and he was the nicest guy on the planet,

But Doc is Doc.

As I recall, this is not a commonly held belief.

I'll take Stieb's slider to go with Doc's cutter. Deadly.

Modern_epic wrote:

cosmostein wrote:I am fond of Dave Stieb because he did live down the street from my parents when I was a kid during the season, and he was the nicest guy on the planet,

But Doc is Doc.

As I recall, this is not a commonly held belief.

As a kid it was an intimidating moment to walk up to a guy who was just chillin out front at home for an autograph and i recall riding back and forth on my bike with some friends trying to build the courage to ask, he waved us over and was very nice.

Much nicer then he had to be.

I think all folks have their moments.

Weird about Stieb as a neighbour.

David Wells was one of my neighbours in Markham during his first go-around with the Jays. Again, really active in the community and extremely nice to gawkers and non-gawkers alike, which was a far cry from how others perceived him.

Mr Stieb is notgetting the love he deserves, i was suprised he didn't have any votes, I kinda remember thinking that for a stretch not only did i expect DS to win every game as mentioned above for Doc, but to pitch a no-no to boot, Maybe i was just young and nieve.