TORONTO – The amazing run the Blue Jays are on continued on a beautiful Saturday afternoon at Rogers Centre. A crowd of nearly 30,000 enjoyed the bright, sunny sky for the first time this season as they watched their first-place Blue Jays win for the fifth straight time and 10th time in 12 games.
When a team is on a roll like this, everything tends to be working well, and it certainly is for the Blue Jays. Starting pitching, bullpen, offence, defence – it’s all performing at peak efficiency, and it’s been incredibly fun to watch.
The standout, though, has been watching Jose Reyes and Anthony Gose run the bases with reckless abandon. Gose scored all the way from first on a ground single to left field by Melky Cabrera in the third inning of Saturday’s win over Oakland. He was off with the pitch and never broke stride as Cabrera shot a base hit through the vacated shortstop position. When A’s left fielder Craig Gentry momentarily bobbled the ball, Gose kicked it into gear and slid home safely to tie the game.
Reyes scored from second base on an infield grounder. Twice. He did it in the fifth, when Oakland starter Jesse Chavez couldn’t handle a bad flip from Brandon Moss at first on a grounder by Cabrera, and he did it again in the seventh. That time, Reyes was off and running, trying to steal third, when Cabrera hit a ground ball too short. He rounded third and kept on coming as Cabrera was thrown out at first, then slid in safely ahead of Moss’ throw home.
Home runs are a lot of fun – certainly the most efficient way to score runs, and the Blue Jays are really good at hitting them – but a great bit of derring-do on the basepaths really seems to get the fans out of their seats, and with good reason.
It was a game, too, that should have served to dispel a couple of myths about knuckleballist R.A. Dickey, who had his best outing of the season. He pitched into the eighth inning for the first time all year, and wound up taking it into the ninth before leaving, having allowed a one-out walk and single to bring the tying run to the on-deck circle. Dickey’s final line read two runs allowed on five hits with only one walk and four strikeouts as he receipted for his fifth win.
The roof being open caused a great deal of distress among some of the Blue Jays’ faithful, the idea being that Dickey’s knuckleball is a greater weapon with fewer outside forces working upon it, and so the roof should be closed whenever he pitches.
While it’s certainly true, by the laws of physics, that the knuckleball will likely spin less with no atmospheric conditions at play, two other things are also true: A. Dickey has to pitch outdoors a significant amount of the time, and in fact won a Cy Young Award in a season in which he pitched almost exclusively outdoors; and B. While he’s better with a roof over his head, he’s still pretty good when there isn’t one.
Somehow there became some sort of a narrative that Dickey doesn’t pitch well outside, and heaven forfend the Blue Jays should ever send him to the mound without making sure the roof stays sealed shut. One game certainly doesn’t tell a story, but Dickey was absolutely dominant against the best offensive team in baseball with the roof open. He gave up just one run over the first eight innings on a home run by Yoenis Cespedes, but that had nothing to do with atmospheric forces affecting his knuckleball – Cespedes hit a fastball out of the yard.
When you break down the numbers for the season, Dickey’s OPS against is actually better outdoors than it is indoors. It’s .689 under a roof, .646 otherwise.
There seems also to be this feeling that the sixth inning is some sort of nightmare for Dickey – that he pitches well to that point but once the sixth rolls around, completely falls apart. The numbers show that feeling isn’t based in fact, either.
In fact, over his last six starts, Dickey has held opponents to a .200/.317/.343 line from the sixth inning on, having allowed only one home run over that span. If you want to look specifically at the sixth inning itself, Dickey has held opponents hitless in that frame over those last six starts – they’re 0-for-17 with two walks.
He’s no longer the Blue Jays’ ace – Mark Buehrle has assumed that role with a spectacular start to his season – but R.A. Dickey and his dancing knuckleball still make a pretty good team, and will be significant ingredients in the first-place Blue Jays’ success as what’s shaping up to be an awfully fun summer continues.
