Roy Halladay lives on in many ways around the Blue Jays organization.

The players wear a No. 32 patch on their jerseys to honour the late pitcher, who died in November at the age of 40 when a small sport plane he was piloting crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. His name is on the Level of Excellence at the Rogers Centre, his number retired in the rafters, and it’s not unusual to spot a Halladay replica jersey in the crowd.

He also lives on in Aaron Sanchez’s game.

The pitchers were never teammates — Sanchez was drafted by the Jays in 2010, about six months after Halladay was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies — but a mutual connection with Donovan Santas, now Toronto’s head of strength and conditioning, had Sanchez following in Halladay’s footsteps early in his professional career.

“I stayed in Florida that off-season (2010-11) and worked out,” Sanchez said before the two teams Halladay played for squared off for the first time since his death. “Once I started getting deeper into the off-season, I said: Hey, I want to do some workouts that Doc did.”

After the fatal crash, Atlanta Braves pitcher Brandon McCarthy tweeted, “Roy Halladay was your favourite player’s favourite player.” That rang true for Sanchez.

“He was one of the guys that I watched time and time again, on YouTube or something, when he was pitching,” Sanchez said.

It helped that the two righties featured similar stuff: sinker, changeup, spun the ball a bit. Pat Hentgen, who won a Cy Young Award with the Jays in 1996 and is now a special assistant, noted the similarities back in 2012.

“I thought that when I saw (ex-Jays prospect Noah) Syndergaard first, I came back and I said: Wow, that’s the best pitching prospect I’ve seen here since ’04-05,” Hentgen told the Star’s Richard Griffin at the time. “Then when I saw Sanchez from behind the rubber, I thought: Wow, now we’ve got 1 and 1A. You know, they’re (Chris) Carpenter and Halladay. That’s my best analogy. That’s what I’m thinking right there, if they develop. They’re both hard workers. They just remind me a lot of Carp and Doc.”

It wasn’t until Sanchez was sent to the minors in September 2016, in an effort to limit his innings, that he had a chance to pick Halladay’s brain. Sanchez was having his best season, and went on to win the American League ERA title at 3.00, but felt like he was getting too predictable.

“I’d never been a guy to really understand the side of when to throw a certain pitch (based on the count),” Sanchez said.

They sat down and watched video of entire games thrown by each of them, sharing the thought process behind some of the pitch selection.

“When we watched my game, he was asking me, ‘Why (are you) doing this?’ and ‘What do you think about that?’ Just kind of about how to attack different hitters with certain pitchers and certain counts, saying, ‘I threw this there because I had a pitch to waste’ and how he scouted teams before,” Sanchez said. “Any little thing that I could take from him.”

Halladay won Cy Youngs in each league, and pitched a perfect game with the Phillies in 2010.

“When you’re talking about a guy whose had a career like he’s had, it’s a little bit different,” Sanchez said. “… I knew when I got sent down I was going to have a lot of time on my hands. Why not try to get better in the time that I had to do it in?”

While they only met a few times, Doc’s advice left a lasting impression on Sanchez, who will start Monday’s series opener in Boston.

In return, Sanchez made time to talk to Halladay’s sons — 17-year-old Braden, a top high school pitcher in Florida who has played for Team Canada, and 13-year-old Ryan — when they were in Toronto for a special ceremony to honour their father before opening day in March.

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“Somebody who loses their dad at a young age, I feel for them,” Sanchez said. “I wouldn’t say I know them any better than anybody else. I just feel like that was the right thing to do.

“Doc did so much for me in the short little time that I knew him, I felt like that’s what I could do for paying it forward.”

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