SPORTS
Tuesday, November 24, 2015 17
Which Edition of the Toronto Blue Jays Is Better?
A Comparison of the 2015 Team With Its 1992 Predecessor
Part Five: Examining the Starting Pitching - Back-end of the Rotation
kenneth cheak kwan lam
› sports editor
T
raditionally speaking, the back-end
of the starting rotation is where General
Managers (GMs) can go “bargain hunting”
for cheap options via non-tendered players and/or wavier claims. Why? With the front and
middle of the rotation sorted out, GMs can “pencil
in” a certain number of wins which the team can
expect to pocket over the course of the season.
Ideally, the top three starting pitchers would do
their job as “innings eater” by each supplying the
ballclub with at least two hundred innings, thereby
giving the team six hundred innings with the
remaining two hundred innings being spread to
multiple candidates. Unless one or more slots in the
back-end of the rotation can be filled internally be
promising young starters who are in their pre-arbitration years—think of a young Roy Halladay back in
2000—GMs would in all likelihood shop for multiple
serviceable pitchers, including signing pitchers to
minor league contracts with an invitation to spring
training who can give the team a reasonable chance
to win when pitching and have them compete for
the remaining one or two spots in the back-end of
the rotation. More than often, the back-end of the
rotation typically feature starters who have a .500
(or near .500) record with an unspectacular era run
average (ERA) and low strikeout (K) totals.
One of the reasons why teams have to round out
the back-end of their starting rotation with nonfront and middle of the rotation pitchers is due to
the financial landscapes of Major League Baseball.
With the going prices for aces reaching the neighbourhood of seven years for over two hundred million dollars (e.g., Max Scherzer earned a seven-year,
$210 million contract with Washington after signing
with the Nationals as an unrestricted free agent on
21 January 2015), putting together an entire starting rotation with frontline starters is near if not
simply unrealistic. Even the New York Yankees,
which seemed to have unlimited financial resources
under then-owner George Steinbrenner, did not bolster five aces in their starting rotation—albeit they
have multiple front of the rotation starters when
they won four World Championships within a span
of five seasons from 1996 to 2000. If anything,
the Philadelphia Phillies would probably be team
remembered as having rolled out the most aces in a
starting rotation when they had Halladay, Cliff Lee,
Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels occupying the first
ê Can you teach me how to “Dickey”? The seemingly mystical knuckle ball can make hitters look silly but can also
do the same to the pitcher throwing it as his primary arsenal. Photo credit: Rawlings.com
four slots in their rotation back in 2011. Still, all
championship-calibre need a strong supporting cast
and it comes as no surprise that playoff teams, at the
very least, have decent starters in the back-end of
their station, just as the 2015 and 1992 Toronto Blue
Jays did.
Number Four Starter
R.A. Dickey (2015) versus Jimmy Key (1992)
Analysis: While Dickey was not able to replicate his
National League Cy Young Award season from 2012
when he went twenty and six with the New York
Mets before being traded to Toronto, he has been a
very steady force in the starting rotation since joining the Blue Jays. Sceptics were quick to criticize
Dickey in the early part of the 2015 season when
the knuckle ball pitcher posted a dismal three and
ten record with a ballooned 4.87 ERA in eighteen
starts. Yet the savvy veteran was able to battle and
recover by turning in an impressive eight and one
record with an excellent 2.80 ERA in fifteen starts
in the second-half of the season. At the end of the
day, Dickey give Toronto exactly what they were
looking for from a starting pitcher in the back-end
of the rotation by finishing with a .500 record, going
eleven and eleven while logging 2141⁄3 innings. In
fact, upon tempering with the ultra-high expectation of having Dickey serve as the ace of the
Blue Jays, he has lived up to being a good starting pitcher for Toronto over the past three seasons
when we take into account the fact that he also had
plus .500 records (going fourteen and thirteen in
thirty-four starts) in 2013 (with a decent 4.21 ERA
while pitching 2242⁄3 innings) and 2014 (with a
respectable 3.71 ERA while logging 2242⁄3 innings).
Unfortunately, Dickey’s 2015 postseason performance is more polarizing because after holding
the powerful Texas team to one earned run in 42⁄3
innings (resulting in an 1.93 ERA) in his only start
in the 2015 American League Division Series (ALDS)
before giving way to David Price in relief, Dickey
was torched by the well-rounded Kansas City ballclub for five runs (four earned) in only 12⁄3 innings
(translating into an ugly 21.60 ERA) in his only start
in the 2015 American League Championship Series
(ALCS).
As for Key, who served as the team’s number
two starting pitcher behind ace Dave Stieb for
many ye