Dickey Does It Again: Another Shutout For Knuckleballer

Added by Eddie Utley on July 1, 2012.

R.A. Dickey, New York Mets starting pitching.

Another day, another shutout.  It wasn’t long ago that I said we ran out of superlatives for Dickey and now others are beginning to realize the same thing.

He really has been amazing this year with a pitch that seemed more like a sideshow pitch than a real major league pitch. But as Phil Neikro said, Dickey throws the knuckleball like a butterfly on steroids. But it’s more like a hummingbird or something than a butterfly. Butterfly is what the others throw. I used to toy around with a hard knuckleball as a teen because I saw Candiotti and others throwing this soft pitch which was hard on the knuckles. But I was capable of throwing a ball 95 MPH so I tried to harden the pitch and it just never worked out.

Will Dickey bring back the knuckleball? Probably not. But he will get people talking. If he starts the All Star Game then he has a platform to show it off.

He gets lifted for pitch counts though I’m not sure he needs to be. A typical knuckleballer can go almost everyday, not sure with Dickey since he does have a decent fastball backing it up. But he has been willing to go on 3 day rest.

When Omar brought Dickey into the organization, he was pretty much an afterthought. He was almost released instead of sent to the minors. But he worked his way up and with the injuries the Mets were taking left and right, he got his chance. He’s been good up to this year but nothing like this. The guy is 12-1 with a 2 ERA. He might be the first Met in a while to 20 wins and he has a chance at 25 if he can keep this up. He even has a chance at a Cy Young on top of all this.

R.A. Dickey, it’s your world. We just live in it.