Baloney. He was a hunter and was being aggressive. Standing by off the beach makes carriers great sub targets. Armchair admirals expect things to always go their way... they don’t in real life.
If you wanna go a level deeper, we shouldn’t habe been landing there at all. We only did because MacArthur prevailed on FDR that we had to go back. The Nimitz plan would have bypassed PI and ended the war much faster.
Halsey job was to protect the landing at Leyte, period. He went haring off to attack a Japanese fleet which had little offensive capability because he wanted his own Midway type victory. I would have taken two stars and transferred him to the Alaska naval district.