Former Blue Jays with a worse reputation than they deserve

Let’s get this out of the way

If there’s a poster child for what I’m talking about here today, it’s probably R.A. Dickey.

The former knuckleballer arrived in Toronto prior to the 2013 season, and at a time that it looked like the Blue Jays should be one of the true contenders in baseball. That was the same offseason that saw Alex Anthopoulos pull off a blockbuster swap with the Miami Marlins as well, and it was clear that the Blue Jays’ front office was ready to push a lot of chips to the centre of the table.

Dickey was seen as one of the finishing pieces of putting together a championship contender, which made some sense at the time. He was coming off of three elite seasons with the New York Mets, including the NL Cy Young award in 2012. He was certainly at an advanced age for a pitcher at the time as he was 38 in his first season as a Blue Jay, but the fact that he relied on a knuckleball as his primary weapon meant that he should age a lot better than a typical pitcher.

As I reflect back on his time with the Blue Jays, Dickey wasn’t bad at all, he just didn’t perform at an ace calibre level in Toronto. Over the course of four seasons he was 49-52 with a 4.05 ERA and a 1.251 WHIP over 130 starts. He was a model of consistency as far as taking his turn every fifth day, averaging better than 32 starts per year from 2013-16.

Of course, the reason that Blue Jays fans were so hard on Dickey went beyond not being able to win a Cy Young in the American League. The bigger problem was what the Jays sent back to New York in return, which was a package of prospects that included Noah Syndergaard, who would go on to become one of the top young pitchers in baseball for a few years.

When you take a step back and look at the trade again, it probably wasn’t a dealbreaker either way for the Blue Jays. The 2013 team disappointed in many more ways than just Dickey, and the veteran found a way to contribute a lot more than people give him credit for.