Braves Sign R.A. Dickey to a 1 Year Deal

By Djack

The 42 year old knuckleballer has decided to put off retirement for at least one more year, signing a one year contract with the Atlanta Braves today confirmed that. The Braves starting rotation is actually dreadful, the only name that's noteworthy is Julio Tehran, everyone else on the staff is very replaceable. Dickey isn't a huge upgrade by any means, he had a 4.40ERA with Toronto last season, pitching 169.0 innings, and he posted a record of 10-15. Now if he's posting a record of 10-15 with the Blue Jays, imagine what that record will look like without the heavy run support from a high powered Blue Jays offense. Dickey has been in the MLB 15 years, he's had 3 really good years, all with the Mets, and had a couple decent seasons with Toronto after that, but with the Mets he was an absolute stud. He won 39 games in 3 seasons with the Mets, let me also remind you the Mets were absolutely dreadful those years, and he won a Cy Young award with them as well. Will we see those glory days when he plays for another bad team like Atlanta, very very doubtful, but I'm all for letting fans hope before they get their hearts ripped out by the reality of the sport. Dickey's stuff just isn't what it once was, is that because he finally made his mark in the big leagues, he got paid so he lost all ambition, became content. I doubt all those things too, he's old, his elbow is probably shot, and although knuckleballers don't need to throw very hard Dickey tends to throw his knuckleball at a much higher velocity than most. Not sure exactly why Dickey decided to come back, was it for the love of the game, we certainly know it wasn't to play competitive baseball since the Braves will probably be the worst team in the NL east again, so I can't really put my finger on this, maybe he just wanted to keep collecting checks. I'm routing for Dickey though, this man has had a rough life, his baseball career took about 15 years to finally take off, so if he's just their to collect a check that's cool too, this man worked day in day out without so much uncertainty, and his gamble on himself paid off, he made a good MLB career out of nothing. Welcome back R.A. Dickey, I look forward to watching you shutdown the Mets several times this season.