Dickey keeps his cool while Jays bats go wild
• R.A . Dicke y, the knuckleball diplomat, must have chosen his words with care.
He was so displeased with Mark Wegner’s strike zone that he twice approached the umpire after an inning to make his case or, perhaps, to let Wegner make his.
Normally, it is not a great notion for a pitcher to do this. Better to walk off the field, head down, without inviting a verbal rebuke or worse. Shooting a momentarily glare at the object of your disaffection also makes the point.
But the Blue Jays starter, having walked five in his first three innings and narrowly escaping the natural consequences, strode directly to the umpire and the two chatted at some length in foul ground along the thirdbase line.
It was undoubtedly coincidental that Dickey did not walk another batter. It was, however, no coincidence that his walk total became virtually irrelevant when his offence staged one of its familiar outbursts. Toronto batters have been doing that for some time now. The Mets are the latest to feel the sting.
The Jays won this one 7-1, thanks largely to a five-run assault on Bartolo Colon in the fourth inning. The previous night, they beat the Mets 8-0.
This was Dickey’s first start against the Mets, for whom he once won a Cy Young Award. It began as a faceoff between the majors’ two oldest pitchers. Colon is 42, Dickey 40. Colon had won nine games, Dickey just two, partly because he had given up the most earned runs of any pitcher in the American League and partly because he entered the game with the lowest run support (4.2 per game) of any Jays’ starter.
Well-supported on this night, Dickey left after 7-1/3 innings, with the announced crowd of 27,588 on its feet and cheering. He replied with a wave of his cap. He had allowed three hits and struck out seven while throwing a season-high 120 pitches — 47 in the first two innings.
He did a tightrope act in the second inning, walking the bases full, the last two on full counts, before striking out Curtis Granderson to end it. That occasioned his first dialogue with Wegner. They met again following the second inning, after Dickey had issued a two-out walk.
In the fourth, the Jays amassed five singles and a double. Perhaps the inning’s biggest play, however, was Kevin Pillar’s aggressive slide into second base that foiled a double-play and allowed a run to score.
Chris Colabello hit Toronto’s only homer, which dispatched Colon in the fifth.