R.A. Dickey displays dominant side in Blue Jays' win over Yankees

There’s only one way Blue Jays starting pitcher R.A. Dickey can really start to peel away the pain from the 2013 season – pitch like he did against the Yankees Saturday afternoon.

 “He had it working today. The other day in Tampa he wasn’t on, today he was on,” said manager John Gibbons after Toronto’s 4-0 win. “This was a big game for us, he stepped up.”

It was a bounceback performance for Dickey after he struggled mightily in the season opening loss to the Rays. In that game he gave up six earned runs and walked six batters; on Saturday Dickey faced 25 batters over six and two-third innings and his command was sharp. With the exception of a sidearm knuckleball that got away and hit Fransisco Cervelli and a four-pitch walk to Derek Jeter, he was better able to locate the pitch that can be uncooperative by nature, which resulted in six strikeouts.

“Part of it’s the pitch. You have to live and die with the pitch. It’s part of what makes it very difficult to do at the big-league level, it’s part of the thing that makes it very special but you have to have resolve to hold both,” said Dickey. “I didn’t feel great in Tampa, I had a rough game, and it’s nice to get over that.”

A key factor was his ability to generate a more powerful knuckleball with better consistency, a conversation that goes back to last season. According to brooksbaseball.net’s pitch tracking data, Dickey’s average knuckleball velocity against the Yankees was 77.7 mph, up from an average of 75.5 mph against Tampa Bay on Opening Day.

“I certainly feel much more in control when I’m able to get to those higher velocities. I feel like I know where to start it,” said Dickey. “That’s kind of the thing that has always separated me from being a traditional knuckleballer, I have the velocity that’s a little bit higher and that allows me to throw more strikes and tonight I was able to do that.”

 “The knuckleball was electric,” said catcher Josh Thole. “He was much more aggressive today than he was in the first game. I think that was [him] getting the first game under his belt, making an adjustment and I think he did a good job.”

When he’s able to attack hitters like that, the game moves at a faster pace. Dickey might give up a few more hits than your prototypical shutdown pitcher because of the knuckleball but the quality of those hits should result in softly hit balls and easy outs.

 “Dickey’s different, his ball isn’t like a conventional pitcher. He’ll give up a lot of hits off the end of the bat [where] the ball takes off at the last second,” said Gibbons.

To take full advantage of that, the Blue Jays used several aggressive infield shifts, most notably against Jacoby Ellsbury and Brian McCann, and Dickey has input on where fielders are positioned.

 “I can turn around and move guys based on the type of pitch that I’m throwing, whether it’s a slow one or a hard one and I did that a couple times with succcess tonight,” said Dickey.

Held up as the face of last season’s disappointment because of the price the Blue Jays paid to get him following his Cy Young award-winning year with the Mets in 2012, Saturday afternoon’s display reminded the kind of strong outing that Dickey is capable of putting together.