Jaffe: Mets’ Dickey knuckling way toward historic season
From SABR member Jay Jaffe at SI.com on June 19, 2012:
In a season that has already seen five no-hitters and several other sterling pitching performances, R.A. Dickey added another to the books on Monday night. Fresh off one-hitting the Rays last Wednesday, the 37-year-old knuckleballer spun another one-hitter — this time a shutout — against the Orioles. He became the first pitcher to string back-to-back one-hitters together since the Blue Jays’ Dave Stieb did so in September 1988; remarkably, Stieb was one strike away from a no-hitter each time. Dickey is easily the hottest pitcher in baseball right now, with one earned run allowed over his last six starts — a stretch totaling 48 2/3 innings, and punctuated by an astonishing 63/5 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Thanks to that run, he now leads the National League in the three Triple Crown categories of wins (11), strikeouts (103) and ERA (2.00) as well as innings (99) ,10-strikeout games (four, all during this run), complete games (three) and shutouts (two). Those numbers make him a deserving candidate to start the All-Star Game for the National League next month in Kansas City, an honor that has gone to only two other knuckleballers: Dutch Leonard of the Senators in 1943 and Bob Purkey of the Reds in 1961.
Read the full article here: http://mlb.si.com/2012/06/19/ra-dickey-knuckleball-history/
Originally published: June 19, 2012. Last Updated: June 19, 2012.