R.A. Dickey trade: Blue Jays acquire Cy Young winner from Mets

It’s been my position for some time that Dickey’s brilliance last season was almost entirely due to his angry knuckler, which he routinely threw at 79 or 80 miles an hour. I’m not sure if there’s a magic formula, though. Last season he averaged 77 miles an hour with his knuckleball, and was brilliant. In the two seasons before that, he averaged 76 miles an hour and was quite good. One wouldn’t think that dropping to 75 this season would result in the dramatically worse performance we saw before today.

Pitching’s complicated. It’s quite possible that the same health issues that kept him from throwing quite as hard have also damaged his control somehow. The bottom line, I suspect, isn’t that Dickey needs to throw 77 and occasionally 80 to thrive, but rather that he needs to be healthier than he’s been.