Phew! There is a lot of commentary about RA Dickey getting traction on the interwebs these days. Let’s filter some of it, shall we?
Going in, please understand that all post-season commentary does not necessarily find it’s exegesis in the rumor factory that is big baseball, or its effort to turn media minnow stories into whales. Sometimes those tales come natural from the fans, from their tendency to create something just so they can be riled. A common one: create a junk pile trade/salary-salvage in exchange for a big name getting a lot of talk-time.
What I mean to say here is this, during the off-season some fans think that if their team ties enough of it’s scrubs together, they can make a raft out of them and float it out into the trade ocean and swap it out for a yacht because, you know, bulk value.
This assumes a lot. A lot, a lot. First, that another team is looking for a pile of scrubs—sure they’re useless, but it’s a complete set! Frankly, no teams are looking for scrubs. The Marlins weren’t even looking for scrubs when they made the great Super Trade of 13’.
Teams are always looking for value and sometimes that value can be found in diminished pay role or prospects, but it’s rarely ever found in scrubs. So you can’t simply think of the rest of the league as a nuclear waste dump ready and willing to take your players if you bundle enough of them together.
Second, thinking along the lines of a bundle-o-scrubs trade usually assumes that the scrubs in questions are tradable, deal-able, get-rid-able. They’re not—which is why we hate them so much.
Players that don’t produce usually don’t’ get paid a lot, but they still have value since they supply depth. Such players aren’t scrubs. They’re replacement parts, paid like replacement parts, and expecting them to play like superstars just because they’re getting more time in the Bigs than they should is incorrect. The real scrubs are the ones that should play a lot, get paid a lot, but still suck. Ryan Howard is a scrub, which leads me to my next point…
Third, once a scrub becomes a scrub, he’s damn near impossible to dump for anything more than a roster spot and some payroll flexibility. What is this you say about getting comparable value similar to his contract back when he was producing? Don’t make me laugh! You’ll be paying the other team to take his cost to value ratio, because it’s more economical to pay to have him inflicted on someone else than keep him.
So, players that have use comparable to their value = not scrubs. Players in decline that suck and ruin your flexibility = scrubs. Therefore, RA Dickey = not a scrub.
Now that we have that cleared up, do I think the Blue Jays will win the World Series with Dickey as their Ace? No, hell no. Do I think fans should have thought him as the Jays ace in the first place? No, hell no. Did that stop me from being a good little Rogers mouth-piece and saying he’s the new Ace. No, Hell no.
But you really can’t blame a lot of folks for being star-struck by the guy as, when they picked him up, he was coming off a Cy Young year, was part of an off season rife with massive trades, and the zeitgeist of the baseball world at the time was all The Jays will win it all and Dickey is the Capstone!
Boy, have times changed.
Did the Jays get, and are they still getting value out of Dickey? Absolutely. The man turns in 200 innings, 30 starts, and pitches swiftly. He saves your pen. He dominates crossword puzzles. He also provides a nice landing spot for complimentary Doctorate Degrees from local universities because he writes books and wins Cy Youngs while writing books. Who else would you give a complementary doctorate degree to, John Gibbons? “Yeah, well, yessir this here degree’s awful kind of yee, I reckon.”
But, as I stated earlier, come the off-season, folks take long looks at a roster, at its static numbers and think to themselves, “I really want a new big name I don’t know much about but will make me feel like I’ll win next year, and for that I’m okay with getting rid of an old big name I don’t like anymore.” Fans want change. They want something that will make them feel like they are getting a winner even when they’re months away from winning anything. When they see other teams getting big names, they get jealous, and, suddenly, reasons that would, might, could fix that jealously spring into existence and a story is born.
The Jays could replace Dickey and his departure wouldn’t be damning to the Jays’ plans. Or, they could keep him and he’d be a very serviceable back end starter. In fact, they may very well replace him, and/or Buehrle. But not because those two don’t have value, rather because the Jays want to upgrade. Again, you can’t trade or deal scrubs, you can only dump them. And the Jays wouldn’t be dumping Buehrle or Dickey, they’d be dealing them for other options. If those options aren’t better, there is no move for them.
Yet, for some fans, that’s not enough. What makes Dickey such an interesting topic is how he—even in the face of the aforementioned logic— is now the one player that should go, not because he’s not that valuable anymore, but because he’s suddenly never really been a team player, and can’t really relate to his team. Supposedly that makes him a dangerous chemistry liability that is contrary to where the team is headed. really? Where are they headed? What mission statement did they forge together about the future? Did I miss that?
If you read my stuff, you know how I feel about chemistry, how it’s mostly a function of narrative before it’s a function of utility. I concede that there are rare exceptions when chemistry is a liability, but this isn’t one of them.
I always laugh when baseball types drudge up the who said what sketchy thing to who like it’s the reason teams don’t win or don’t like a player. Having spent 10 years in the game, I can tell you that a little tussle about a contract, or not playing, or getting pulled early, or whatever, is nothing compared the type of quintuple X-rated, poison tipped death stars flung around a locker room daily. You want to work in baseball, bring a flack jacket. Thick skin is a requirement, not an option. There is always a reason to be offended or play the “unprofessional” card.
Yet, Dickey sticks out. Why? Well, it’s not because he’s an ass. It’s that he’s a snob. A high brow, deep thinking, writes his thoughts, measures his words, judges the motives of others, doesn’t buy into stuff he doesn’t agree with, talks above the media, is his own person/player who also throws a knuckle ball. He is never going to be one of the other guys. He never was! Everything about him screams unique. To be shocked by that is, well, shocking.
Still, I find that many folks around the Jays are surprised by him being him. Or they think that his pronounced sense of individuality is a liability of some kind. They drag up Dickey’s “incident” at the holiday function when he said he was unhappy about how the Mets were handling his contract. They say he keeps to himself and isn’t really plugged into team activities. Even Jerry Howarth took a moment to weigh in on it:
“R.A. is kind of a man unto himself on an island, and you don’t want that in your clubhouse. He gives you 200 innings, he goes out there and starts 30 games, that’s great; but you need more than that. You need someone who is right there with his team, communicates with his team, listens, gets involved with his team; I don’t see R.A. doing that. For me, I can already see the team moving in a different direction. You have to have people who are part of a 25 man roster, not a separate entity.”
Please note that you do have to filter Howarth. He’s the master of the supercilious critique. He’s very conscious of his legacy and what sounds correct and will say things to support that agenda. That’s why his critiques often make it seem like there is a higher power baseball should pay reverence to. If you recall, a lot his “analysis” is framed by arbitrary concepts like heart and teamwork and togetherness and so on. Why? Because fans get behind that stuff even though it says nothing. It implies much more than it states, and to argue such patriotic team concepts would be to argue the essence of team, which no one could do and not look like a schmuck.
But that doesn’t make him correct. Sure, Howarth looked virtuous saying it, but only by making a guy that’s done a great deal of work for his team (for a reasonable price) sound like a deadbeat dad that mails his kids a check but never shows up to any family functions.
Look, it takes all kinds to win folks, and unless a player is going out of his way to make his team look like a joke—like, say, painting homophobic slurs in his eye black— you find a way to assimilate his persona. Besides, if RA really is a man unto himself out there, he’s certainly not the only one. There were plenty of times you could say that Melky was that way, or EE, or even Joey Bats. Goodness, does Howarth not remember the ultimate locker room Island, Roy Halladay? Furthermore, you think that’s the reason the team isn’t winning, that RA has that much power over the team, you’re nuts. Asking Dickey to pitch better is one thing. Asking him to be more involved… that’s something else.
Lets recapitulate. Teams trade for value, and value is contextual and subjective. Selling scrubs is like asking someone to take plutonium off your hands. The off-season doldrums tend to create stories that aren’t really stories. Not all players you don’t like are scrubs just because you want someone who is popular right now. RA Dickey has value, and the Jays should look to maximize it. And saying a player isn’t right there when he just threw more innings than anyone else on your team this year is dumb.
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