Committee Chairman, I agree--Halladay is a legitimate Hall of Fame pitcher.
I ask the question, though, because I think that thinking about the Hall is going to have to change.
He had the dominating seasons, was considered among the top five for a long time, and though he falls short for some on accumulative stats on the traditional side, his bWAR more than makes up for it.
This is my purpose for asking whether he is a HoFer. Given the high talent compression that is likely to be the way baseball is going to be for some time, players are not going to be hanging around for 20 years, piling up counting numbers for their Hall case in their final seasons--because they will be replaced. So, those dominating seasons, those top-five finishes, are going to be more critical. That in turn means that evaluating a career will necessitate looking beyond the obvious indicators.
One aspect to this is realizing that "dominant" doesn't always mean "league-leading." This is again because of high talent compression: There more dominant players, meaning that their league-leading dominance gets spread around. There are exceptions, of course--Miguel Cabrera has led the AL in batting average three years in a row, the first time in the AL since Wade Boggs did it from 1985 to 1988 (we'll see next year whether Miggy can match Boggs's four-year stretch), and the first time in the majors since Tony Gwynn did it from 1994 to 1997 (ditto regarding four years consecutively). But even an elite hitter such as Albert Pujols--who has already proved to be one of game's greatest-ever all-around hitters--does not top all the categories with regularity. And we'll need to see whether his period of elite dominance is gone for good or whether he can rebound (in any event--boy, did the Angels overbuy!). Given the high talent compression, we might have seen the last of the sheer awesomeness Pujols could generate; he (and we) might have to settle for mere excellence. And these are two of the best players, Cabrera and Pujols, of the last decade. What about when it comes to evaluating those closer to the borderline?
He also has that playoff perfect game, giving him a "moment", that is important for some voters (i admit i am a big moment guy)
Big moments are important--Jack Morris has his Hall of Fame case built on one. . . . Seriously, though, I agree. Those who have read my baseball analyses know that I'm a stat geek, but those stats are ultimately only a reflection of the drama and the conflict that happens during the game. And you can't get any bigger drama and conflict than the postseason. But unlike the only other pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter in the postseason, Don Larsen, Roy Halladay has the rest of his career to back up his case.
But even Halladay is not immune to high compression. A couple of years ago, a good sportswriter named Christina Kahrl stated, about Halladay, that "it's his world and we just live in it." This was after his terrific 2011 campaign with the Phillies, and it seemed to be a fair statement. What happened? He fell off the cliff in 2012, and this year, with the surgery, was another less-than-elite season. Then he retired. But by then he'd already set the bar for what a Hall of Fame pitcher of this era should look like.