Jays’ Dickey has made a speedy turnaround
As the velocity of his knuckleball has risen, the pitcher’s ERA has dropped and dropped
Back on May 15, after R.A. Dickey was pounded by the Houston Astros for seven runs on 10 hits, including two home runs, the 40-year-old knuckleballer made a stark admission, rare for a professional athlete.
“The truth of the matter is I’m searching right now,” he said then. “Searching for answers, for consistency.”
Dickey was lugging a burdensome 5.76 ERA through the season’s first six weeks. He was walking batters and giving up home runs at a distressingly high clip.
So he and Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker got to work trying to solve the problem, studying video of his time with the New York Mets to try to identify what was different about his delivery.
They made a few tweaks and Dickey’s performance improved almost immediately.
Since the beginning of June, Dickey has compiled a 2.70 ERA over his last dozen starts, while dramatically lowering his home-run rate. In four starts since the all-star break, Dickey has actually been one of the best pitchers in baseball, allowing just three earned runs while averaging more than seven innings per outing. He hasn’t given up a single homer and opposing batters are hitting just .171 off him.
He hopes to continue that trend Friday in New York as the Jays open their biggest series of the season against the first-place Yankees, against whom Dickey owns a 2.43 career ERA.
If you had to point to one reason for Dickey’s improved performance, it would be his increased velocity.
“That and I’ve been consistently more in the strike zone and I think there’s a correlation between those two,” he said earlier this week. “The slower the knuckleball the bigger the break a lot of the time, so it’s tougher to keep in the strike zone.”
It may not seem like much, but Dickey’s average knuckleball velocity is up two miles per hour over what it was earlier in the season.
“That’s not a big difference, conventionally pitching,” he said. “But with a knuckleball that’s the equivalent of 10 miles an hour. It can be that significant because the ball reacts so acutely — and late — when you’re at those speeds.”
The increase in average velocity signals that Dickey has been able to go to his harder knuckleball — which typically sits in the 78 m.p.h. to 81 m.p.h. range — more often. He adds and subtracts velocity from his pitch intentionally to keep hitters off balance, but he relies on the hard knuckler as a strikeout pitch. As he mentioned, the harder knuckleball also has less chance to break out of the strike zone, so hitters can’t wait him out and hope for a walk as they were earlier in the season.
“I think there’s been a tangible thing that’s happened over the last two months,” Dickey said. “I think just that mechanical adjustment I was able to identify with Pete after the Houston game was a big deal, and just kind of working off that a little bit here, a little bit there.”
The key, Dickey and Walker found, was that he needed to generate more power through his hips. That allowed him to reach the higher velocities more consistently without labouring or over-throwing.
“Last game I threw probably 15 (knuckleballs) that were 79-81 (m.p.h.), maybe more than that. But not having to labour to do it. That’s where the mechanic comes in.”
During his 2012 season, when Dickey led the majors in strikeouts, his average knuckleball velocity was never below 77 m.p.h. His seasonlong average was 78 m.p.h., a little less than two clicks above what it has been since he joined the Jays.
“When I started striking out guys is when I went to those much harder velocities consistently,” he said. “But the key is throwing strikes with it. Whatever firm speed I can consistently throw strikes with it, that’s what I need to do.”