Dickey earns 100th career victory
Blue Jays gain game on Yankees in East, wait to see if playoff spot is theirs
It wasn’t so long ago R.A. Dickey was simply chasing a job in baseball, let alone any kind of career milestones.
In 2010 he was a 35-year-old, minor-league free agent and fledging knuckleballer — literally clutching his career by his fingernails — and trying to convince big-league teams that his last-ditch gambit was worth the gamble.
He found a willing bettor in the New York Mets, with whom he signed a minor-league deal and eventually worked his way into the majorleague rotation in what was the beginning of his late-career reinvention and renaissance. Dickey had just 22 wins to his name back then, before he grew into a stalwart arm in the Mets’ rotation, before he won the National League Cy Young in 2012 and before he was dealt to the Blue Jays prior to the overhyped and underwhelming 2013 season.
Bolstered by a triad of homers on Friday, Dickey earned the 100th win of his career as the Jays defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 5-3.
Friday’s win could also have been a major milestone for the Jays, who reduced their magic number to one while waiting to see if they had clinched their first playoff berth in 22 years. They needed both the Minnesota Twins and the L.A. Angels to lose their games. The Twins fell 6-4 to Detroit, but with the Angels playing Seattle in California, the Jays wouldn’t know their fate until early Saturday morning. “I don’t know who would hang around and who wouldn’t because we have a one o’clock game tomorrow,” manager John Gibbons said before Friday’s game. “When it’s been that long and guys bring up the subject, people shy away from that stuff. Let’s get there first. I don’t know what the reaction is going to be after the game.”
So there was no special celebration Friday night, with the Twins tied at the conclusion of the Jays game and the Angels not yet begun. And the Jays were willing to wait, if they had to, until Saturday to decide their own fate with David Price on the hill.
“You want to be able to do it by yourselves and you don’t want it to be on the account of other teams losing,” Price said Friday. “So we just need to continue to win games and we hold our own destiny.”
Other milestones on Friday included Josh Donaldson’s 40th homer of the season. Donaldson, who was given a day off third-base duties and served as DH, became the ninth Blue Jay to hit 40 homers and just the third to also hit as many doubles in a season, joining Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green.
Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista add- ed their 12th and 37th blasts of the season, respectively, while Cliff Pennington — starting at third in Donaldson’s absence — had three hits and an RBI.
The Rays took a 2-0 lead in the first inning, but Dickey — who has been one of the best pitchers in baseball in the second half — settled in to throw six scoreless innings, allowing just two baserunners after the opening frame.
As a statistic, the pitching win is not valued in baseball circles as highly as it once was. In the wake of baseball’s post- Moneyball statistical revolution and the influx of pitch-tracking data, wins have been replaced, in many ways, by more precise tools to judge a pitcher’s effectiveness. But for the players, it’s still a meaningful milestone by which to measure longevity and resilience in a career.
For Dickey, in particular, who spent 14 years toiling in the minors before the knuckleball gave him a second life in the game, it’s even more meaningful.