Roy Halladay remembers a lot of late Julys during his 12 years with the Blue Jays when he got his hopes up as the trade deadline approached, only to be disappointed year after year when team officials didn’t make a major move.
Maybe that’s why Toronto never reached the playoffs while Halladay was in a Blue Jays uniform.
While he was winning 148 games and a Cy Young Award, going to six All-Star Games and winning 20 games twice, the Blue Jays were good enough to post eight winning seasons but never made the moves necessary to take that next step down the stretch.
One of the reasons Halladay is now a Phillie is his confidence in this organization making deadline moves to improve the roster. No matter how good the roster already is.
“It was always frustrating watching New York and Boston do it whenever we got close around the break, so it's nice to be on a team that goes out and gets those guys, whether it's in the winter or during the break or whenever,” Halladay said after beating the Padres Sunday afternoon for his 12th win. “They're always trying to make us better.”
The Blue Jays haven’t been to the playoffs since beating the Phillies in the 1993 World Series. They were always pretty good while Halladay was in Toronto – they won at least 80 games in nine of his 12 years – but those blockbuster late-season moves?
That’s what the other teams in the AL East did.
With the Phillies, Halladay expects those moves. And that’s one of the big reasons he’s here.
"Not just this week, but (moves like) going to get Cliff (Lee) this winter,” he said. “That's a big part of it. Teams that win and do it consistently, they do those things and they are aggressive and they go out and get players, and that's a big part of being here.”
With the trade deadline just six days away, the Phillies are 64-36 going into today’s series finale against the Padres at Citizens Bank Park.
They have the best record in the majors, and they’re 27-11 since June 10 – that’s .710 baseball over the past six weeks. They’ve won five straight games and haven’t lost a series since mid-June. They haven’t lost a home series since the first week of May.
With Halladay, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Vance Worley a combined 39-16, the Phillies now have a season-best-matching six-game lead over the Braves and appear to be sailing toward their fifth straight division title.
But nonetheless Halladay, 12-4 with a 2.55 ERA and a candidate for his third Cy Young Award, said he expects the Phillies to be active this week.
“You're always hoping to get better,” he said. “There's definitely a lot of things that go into it. Knowing I’m only here for a certain amount of years, yeah, I'd sell the farm. But they have to look out for the interest of the franchise beyond what we're doing right now, so it's a delicate balance.
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