Unlike Mariano Rivera or Chipper Jones, Halladay received no farewell tour. His career ended unceremoniously as he succumbed to a string of brutal injuries to his shoulder and back that he simply could not play through. It’s not unusual for injuries to end a player’s career, but the rapidity with which injuries took Halladay from the mound is remarkable.

At the end of 2011, Halladay was the best pitcher in the league. Sure, Verlander was rising, but Halladay had just polished off an 8.1 fWAR season in which he threw 233 2/3 innings with a 2.35 ERA. Just two years ago, Halladay was at the pinnacle of the sport. Today, his career is over.

But it wasn’t just the phenomenal 2011 season that makes this such steep decline. Halladay wasn’t just the best pitcher in the league in 2011, he was the best pitcher in the league over the previous decade. From 2002-2011, Roy Halladay defined greatness on the mound. Two years later, he was signing a one day contract so that he could retire a Blue Jay.

Over that ten year stretch, Halladay led the league in fWAR with 60.9 – a full 9.5 wins ahead of second place C.C. Sabathia. Sabathia made 322 starts during that time period and Halladay made just 303. Despite 19 fewer starts, Halladay threw 12.2 more innings and provided his team with nearly ten extra wins of value. That’s an entire peak Sandy Koufax season.

Halladay had a microscopic walk rate and a devastatingly high groundball rate. He could strike you out, but he mostly chose to induce weak contact early in counts to conserve pitches. During the Halladay decade, Doc finished 63 games. The next closest pitcher finished 33. That’s essentially an entire season of extra complete games.

He was the best in the business for an entire decade. It took him a few years to get his legs under him, but after struggling through 1998-2000, he hit his stride in 2001 as he threw 105 strong innings and put up 4.1 fWAR. The next year, he rose to the top of the pack. Despite a few injuries along the way, he was the best there was through the end of 2011.

The 2012 season was hard to watch as Halladay started walking batters, allowing homeruns, and not inducing grounders. He allowed the highest ERA and posted the lowest WAR since 2000 and spent time on the DL with injuries. It was a sign of aging for a titan of the game, something we all knew would come.

But how quickly it came was surprising. Doc made 13 troubling starts in 2013 and posted horrifying walk, homerun, and ground ball numbers. His ERA, FIP, and xFIP were enormous. His WAR was negative. He wasn’t the surgeon of the strikezone anymore. He barely looked like he could get the ball to the plate.

And so Halladay called it a career after parts of 16 seasons – ten and a half of them superb ones. It’s a reminder that pitchers are so fragile and that anyone who can sustain greatness for a long period of time is truly exceptional. It’s also a reminder that no matter how durable and automatic they are, they aren’t immune to the pitcher’s curse.

Halladay was the best pitcher in the league for a decade and just two years later he’s out of baseball. Perhaps we’re all so melancholy today because Halladay was such a treat to watch or because he was such a tremendously hard worker. The way he attacked hitters is legendary and his work ethic was second to none. But I think we’re also a little sad because it was taken from us so quickly. Halladay was the best there was in 2011 and then he was never even close to his former self again. Part of what makes cheering for aging stars so compelling are those brief moments where they show you a flash of what they used to be. We never got those moments with Doc.

This is a guy who twirled a perfect game in 2010 and then another no-hitter that October in his first postseason game. He was the definition of must watch baseball. It’s sad to see one of these players go, but it’s even worse when they vanish so quickly.

For me, Halladay’s Hall of Fame case is open and shut. He won’t get any points for longevity, but the superlative peak is plenty. Dave Cameron made a great case at FanGraphs, so I won’t repeat the specifics, but I’ll just say this.

Halladay wasn’t Pedro or Maddux. He wasn’t Clemens. But he defined the era after the Steroid Era. As the pitcher rose again, it was Halladay leading the charge. He never played for my favorite team, but he was always someone I wanted to see do well. Sports are mostly about your team, but outside of that they’re about the most talented people competing against one another. For much of my adolescence and early adulthood, Roy Halladay was the pitcher who defined that competition and it’s sad to see him go.

Neil Weinberg is the founder of New English D and the associate managing editor at Beyond The Box Score.