Game 62: Dickey, Mets Throttle Rays in Dominating Effort

Let’s get this recap over with and move on.

R.A. Dickey was dominant. The knuckleballer allowed a single with 2 outs in the first inning on a groundball to third that David Wright tried to barehand but couldn’t come up with. That was it. Dickey retired the next 22 Rays in a row. 22! The streak only ended on a Wright error in the 9th inning, and after a couple of passed balls on wicked knucklers, the Rays stole a run on a Desmond Jennings groundout. Dickey line: 9 innings, 1 run, unearned, on 1 hit, striking out 12 while walking none. His groundout to flyout ratio was 10-5 and maybe 1 ball was hit hard. He got weak grounders and routine flyballs all he wanted. The Rays have to just shake their heads.

What if… You get started on one of those and who knows who far you can go. But it looked like for a while maybe David Price could hang with Dickey and the Rays could steal a win. Price stranded a single and a walk in the 1st inning and 2 walks in the 2nd inning before striking out the side in the 3rd and forcing two groundouts and a strikeout in the 4th. But his command was off all game and it cost him severely in the next 2 innings. With 1 out in the 5th, Price allowed an Ike Davis double and a flyball just out of the reach of Matt Joyce, and then Mets backup catcher Mike Nikeas got a fastball right down the pipe from Price and drilled a hard line drive single to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. Price then got a strikeout, but Andres Torres then doubled and Price could not escape the jam before Daniel Murphy singled in 2 runs. Then things continued to fall apart in the 6th as Price allowed 4 straight hits to begin the inning before exiting, and afte Burke Badenhop allowed a couple of inherited runners to score, Price ended up going just 5+ innings, allowing 7 runs on 9 hits, striking out 8 while walking 3. Price was legitimately Matt Moore-esque in this outing, good for 4 innings before imploding, but he’s an established frontline big league pitcher, and it’s just one bad start. By the way, his ERA after this start: 3.01. You can do a whole lot worse than that.

The final in the game was 9-1. Dickey (10-1) earned the win while Price (8-4) took the loss. The Rays drop to 35-27, 2 games back in the AL East. The past couple of days have been rough, but the Rays’ record speaks for itself, there’s a ton of baseball still to be played, and we know that this team, especially when Evan Longoria gets healthy, has as much talent as any team in baseball.