R.A. Dickey Manicures Pirates As Mets Polish Off Duke

The king of the manicure, New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey was dazzling.   He threw his third complete game of his career, second this season, and lead the Mets to a dominating victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Citi Field.  Dickey was baffling including a dancing 57 mph knuckler that left Pirates catcher Chris Snyder and everyone watching the game mesmorized.

He mixed a firm knuckler

with speeds in the mid-seventies, but the movement was incredible.  When Dickey threw his fastball, even though it was far from fast, it simply appeared overpowering to the Bucs hitters.

Pirates pitcher Zach Duke (7-14) wasn’t dazzling.  Wasn’t baffling.  And definently didn’t mesmorize anyone.  He went 3 1/3 innings and allowed eight runs including multiple monster bombs to sluggers Carlos Beltran, his fourth of the season, and Nick Evans, his first.

The Pirates defense also had blunders from Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen and Ryan Doumit.

Pedro Ciriaco ripped a triple in the ninth inning and scored on a John Bowker groundout to ruin the shutout.  Then I got this tweet: The run by Ciriaco broke the streak of opposing pitchers firing 32 straight scoreless innings against the Bucs.  Andy LaRoche followed with a line drive rocket that David Wright couldn’t handle and was ruled an error.  Garrett Jones ripped a single.

But Pedro Alvarez popped the rally balloons when he fouled out.  Brandon Moss and his new stance we’ve been hearing about for months, grounded out to end the game.

A few highlights:

Chris LeRoux took just four pitches to get three outs.

I hate the blue hangers in the locker rooms.  Throw these freaking things out. From Dejan who reports Duke might be out of rotation.

"“We’ll consider what our options are.  We’ll talk about it more the next couple days.”  John Russell"

"The past four starts have seen 20 runs over 14 2/3 innings, swelling the record to 7-14, tying teammate Paul Maholm for third-most in Major League Baseball, and the ERA to 5.78, now the worst in the majors among pitchers with 140 or more innings…..read more at the link above if you have PG+  If you don’t get it now."