Halladay brushes off questions about his health, velocity

Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com spoke with Roy Halladay about the report of his diminished velocity and the speculation that maybe he has a physical problem. Halladay ain’t having it. First on the idea of any health problems:

“Yeah, I heard about that ... Poor reporting on the extreme end of poor reporting. It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

To be fair to Ken Rosenthal, who wrote the article to which Halladay refers, he wasn’t reporting that Halladay had health problems. He quoted a scout who speculated it. Whatever the case, however, you take the player’s word for it unless and until the information at hand contradicts it. Halladay’s health is fine.

As for the velocity, Halladay blames age:

“Yeah, I’m 34 and 2,500 innings. It does take a while to get going. I don’t pay attention to that. The older you get, the more you throw, the longer it takes you to get yourself going ... It’s not unusual. When you get older, it takes you longer. The more innings you throw the more it takes to get yourself going again.”

I have a very strong feeling that this will be forgotten about -- and laughed about if it is remembered -- come the end of the month. But given the injuries to Howard and Utley, the rotation, once again, has to be stellar. So it’s not totally unreasonable to get mildly freaked about Halladay at the moment. As long as it stays mild.