NFL Tickets
New York Mets starting pitcher R.A. Dickey is all the rage in Major League Baseball right now and after his first rocky start in over two months, the 37-year-old phenom responded with another gem last night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. As big of a sensation that Dickey has become, after showing he was human for just one night, some members of the national media started to back off of the knuckleball bandwagon and move over to pitchers like Matt Cain and Stephen Strasburg. Last night in Hollywood–a place that scripts like Dickey’s are made–he once again quieted any critics with 8 shutout innings allowing just 3 hits, striking out 10 and walking none.
After three straight months of absolute dominance over nearly every single team he’s faced, R.A. Dickey has been in the discussion to start in the 2012 MLB All-Star Game. At this point, is there anyone else more deserving? The short answer is no, but I’ll go the long route and explain why. First off, he has completely mastered and reinvented the art of the knuckleball. He throws a hard one, a slow one and even a rising knuckleball. Unlike any knuckleball pitcher we’ve ever seen, he actually seems to know where it’s going and consistently throws it for strikes. Just in case you weren’t aware, Dickey leads baseball in just about every pitching category. He has the best ERA of any active pitcher (2.15), the best WHIP (0.88), the 3rd most strikeouts (116), the most wins (12) and just 1 loss on the entire season. So yeah, R.A. Dickey has the stats to back it up. Not only that but he’s had an incredible streak of 44.2 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run, 2 consecutive one-hitter (one of which was nearly a no-hitter), 3 complete games and 5 games with 10 or more strikeouts which is the most of any pitcher in the league. So does R.A. Dickey deserve to start the 2012 All-Star Game? The statistics speak for themselves.
Follow me on Twitter, @richmacleod.
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