R.A. Dickey

Dickey's 2016 is a campaign he'll be happy to put in the rearview mirror. His numbers across the board were pretty awful. He lost a career-high 15 games while putting up his highest ERA (4.46) and WHIP (1.37) since becoming a starter in 2010 with the Mets. Despite a small spike in K/9 (6.7) from 2015, Dickey walked away from this past year with a disappointing 2.0 K/BB over 169.7 innings, his lowest inning total in any of his 14 MLB seasons with 16-plus starts. The knuckleballer surrendered the AL's sixth-worst home run rate at 1.49 HR/9 while owning the third-worst FIP (5.03) in his respective league. Since winning the NL Cy Young as a Met in 2012, many of veteran's number have been trending in the wrong direction. At 41 years old, Dickey has acknowledged that retirement is on the horizon, but he will continue his career with Atlanta in 2017 and hope his numbers improve with a return to the National League.

After a Cy Young Award winning season in 2012 with the Mets, the Blue Jays paid a mammoth price to get Dickey: a promising catching prospect named Travis d’Arnaud and a raw but talented pitcher named Noah Syndergaard. It is under this frame that Dickey will always be judged while he is in Toronto, but the 41-year-old has been as consistent as it gets. Last season, he posted a 3.91 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 126:61 K:BB in 214.1 innings. While 61 walks is still high, he managed to shave 13 walks off his total from 2014. The ageless knuckleballer gives his high-octane offense a chance to win every time he’s on the mound, but at this stage, the pitcher from 2012 who struck out 230 batters in 233.2 innings with a 2.73 ERA seems to be a distant memory. Dickey is not an ace, but he is good enough to stick in the rotation for the final year of his contract in 2016.

As great as Dickey’s Cy Young campaign was in 2012, it was almost impossible to envision him continuing at that level. Yeah, a knuckleballer is impervious to some of the age-related concerns that plague other pitchers, but strip away the age consideration and there still would have been an expectation of regression. He was going to a tougher league, a tougher park and coming off of a near-perfect season. The dip was more than expected, but that’s the volatility of the knuckleball and age. Plus, he had a 3.46 ERA in his last 18 starts, so projecting him to jump back under 4.00 in 2014 felt right, and he did just that. The volatility remained, though, as his eight games of five-plus earned runs tied for the fifth-most in baseball, and his 21 outings of allowing two or fewer runs was tied for sixth-most. Expect more of the same in 2015, and if you aren't prepared to be patient through the trouble spots, don’t bother investing.

On a team full of disappointments, Dickey was arguably the biggest, finishing with a 4.21 ERA and 7.1 K/9 in his first season as a Blue Jay. While his strikeout rate didn't dip back down to pre-2012 levels, it still represented a major drop-off from the 8.9 K/9 he posted in 2012. The silver lining is that Dickey turned in a strong 1.24 WHIP and pitched much better late in the season. His 3.55 ERA after the All-Star break actually wasn't far from what the Blue Jays could expect, given that Dickey was transitioning from the NL East to the AL East. A repeat of the 2012 Cy Young season is highly unlikely, but it won't be surprising if Dickey establishes himself as the solid starter that we saw late in 2013.

It all came together for Dickey last year, as he was dominant from start to finish to earn the 2012 NL Cy Young Award. He finished with 20 wins (nine more than high previous career high), led the NL with 230 strikeouts, and was only behind Clayton Kershaw in the NL with a 2.73 ERA. The Mets exercised their $5 million option on Dickey for 2013, but then opted to trade him to the Blue Jays in December upon his agreement to a two-year, $25 million contract extension. Even with the move into a loaded AL East, Dickey's hard knuckleball mixed with his sneaky fastball is a deadly combination and should continue to keep hitters off balance most nights.

Dickey dealt with a variety of ailments during the season including a split fingernail, tight left glute and partially torn plantar fascia in his right foot, yet he may have pitched his best during the last two months of the season. He once again held batters to a low BABIP (.288) proving that the previous year's mark was no fluke. Dickey's GB/FB ratio dropped slightly last year, which may be concerning given that the Mets have moved the fences in at Citi Field. The team around him isn't great, yet Dickey should still be a solid starter with a good ERA and WHIP.

Dickey came out of nowhere to finish the year with a 2.84 ERA, 1.187 WHIP and 104:42 K:BB ratio in 174.1 innings with the Mets, finishing seventh in the league in ERA. Dickey might have been the best of former GM Omar Minaya's bargain basement signings. He was a groundball machine, generating twice as many groundouts than flyouts while holding batters to a .281 BABIP, which may be sustainable due to the difficulty in hitting a knuckleball. It's also possible the bottom falls out as quickly as it rose, but Dickey is locked in as the Mets' second starter while Johan Santana is sidelined.

A Rule 5 refugee, Dickey came in handy last season when the Mariners needed a long man or a spot starter. Dickey transformed himself into a knuckleballer after his last stint in the majors in 2006 but certainly hasn't mastered the pitch. When he controlled it, he was effective; when he didn't, he got rocked. In half of his 14 starts, he posted a 2.33 ERA and averaged 6.2 innings per start. In the other half, he had a 13.68 ERA and averaged 4.1 innings pitched. He was better as a reliever than a starter, with a 2.00 ERA out of the bullpen. As a result, Minnesota signed him to compete for a set-up role this spring.

In the minors, and with modest success, Dickey added a knuckleball to his increasingly hittable repertoire in an attempt to save his career. He surely didn't pitch well in the majors, allowing mulitple earned runs in every appearance that lasted more than an inning. That he's still on Texas' 40-man roster is a bit of a surprise. He'll compete for a bullpen role in the spring.

Dickey went from a feel-good story in April to getting his brains beat in over the rest of the season. He was decent as a reliever toward the end of the year, which may be his role for 2005.

Dickey was passable as a starter for Texas the final few months, though a few forgettable starts tarnished the final numbers. His best starts came against AL lightweights Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore, but there were solid starts against Toronto and Boston mixed in too. Dickey went two days between his first career complete game shutout and his first career save, which figures to be an answer to a trivia question somewhere.