R.A. Dickey May be the Key to Toronto's Playoff Run

The Toronto Blue Jays are the talk of baseball at the moment because their executives threw caution to the wind in order to create a baseball juggernaut. Naturally, their two most recent All-Star additions, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and pitcher David Price—both acquired prior to this year's trade deadline—have garnered the most attention. Deadline acquisitions are always exciting, even more so when they immediately bump their new team up to another level, and Toronto is 13-1 since the Tulowitzki trade.

Of course, this isn't the first time Jays ownership has decided to bet big to reach the postseason. The franchise has taken a somewhat bipolar approach in recent years. They invested a whole lot of money and prospects to acquire R.A. Dickey, Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle prior to 2013. They did nothing in 2014. And then they pushed in most of their chips with big trades before the season and at the deadline this season.

The crown jewel of that 2013 spending spree, Dickey, was acquired from the Mets in exchange for a slew of prospects. He's still plugging away in Toronto's rotation, and his story illustrates the complexities involved when attempting to evaluate successful trades for veteran talent. Part of the return the Mets got in exchange for Dickey was Noah Syndergaard, who has blossomed into one of first-place New York's best pitchers and is a leading candidate for NL Rookie of the Year.

While the Dickey trade may seem lopsidedly in favor of the Mets—who also received starting catcher Travis d'Arnaud in the deal—the 40-year-old knuckleballer might just be the key to breaking Toronto's two-decade playoff drought. In fact, Dickey's quality start on Wednesday—three runs in six innings in Toronto's 10-3 win against Oakland—helped the Blue Jays vault the Yankees to the top of the AL East standings. If Dickey helps the Blue Jays into the playoffs, then it's worth revisiting the oft-panned swap.

Your standard vet-for-prospects baseball trade is a bit like playing a single hand of high-stakes blackjack—you can prepare all you want, memorize the statistics and probabilities involved, make the perfect bet, but in the end you're essentially at the mercy of luck. Prospects, especially pitching prospects, flame out at a spectacular rate. Even the squad acquiring established talent for a playoff push gets little in the way of assurance they will actually reach October. No competition marginalizes a talent advantage quite like the MLB postseason. Prospects are lottery tickets. Playoff berths—particularly wild cards—are also lottery tickets.

But even given those uncertainties, the December 2012 Dickey trade seemed particularly risky. The pitcher was coming off a Cy Young award-winning season with the Mets, but he was also a damn freak of nature. He had just turned 38. He had rebuilt his shattered MLB career in his late 30s by learning the knuckleball (a pitch that takes a big, steaming dump on Sir Isaac Newton's grave) and he was born without the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow.

Toronto signed Dickey to a three-year, $29 million deal with a team option for 2016, and he quickly settled in as a perfectly average innings-eater. And I do mean perfectly average: since 2013, he ranks second in MLB in starts, second in innings pitched (598.1) and has an ERA+ of 100…in other words, right smack-dab on the baseline for a league-average starter.

And what did the Jays give up for his consistent mediocrity? Syndergaard and d'Arnaud have become foundational pieces for the Mets. Injuries have hampered d'Arnaud this season after a quality rookie campaign in 2014, but Syndergaard has been a major part of New York's playoff run since being called up on May 12. In terms of bWAR, Syndergaard has provided as much value as Dickey this season in two-third as many innings:

So the Blue Jays screwed the pooch with this trade, right? It's still too early to say. Much of the legacy of this deal—and Dickey's Blue Jays career—will be settled in the next few months. And things are looking up, not only for his team but for the man himself.

Dickey has been pitching like a Cy Young-winner since the beginning of June, rocking a 2.71 ERA in his last 14 starts. He is also an unholy terror against Toronto's nearest AL East competitor, the New York Yankees. Yankee hitters have struggled to hit even scrub knucklers, and they have no answer for Dickey, who has a 1.14 ERA in his last seven starts against New York. Compare that with David Price, Toronto's newest ace, who has been fairly hit-or-miss against the Yankees of late (4-3, 6.23 ERA in his last seven starts, even after Saturday's shutout). Dickey isn't Toronto's best starter anymore—maybe he never was. He probably won't be their best starter next season, even if the Jays pick up his option and Price signs elsewhere. At this moment, however, he's the right guy at the right time.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it can be difficult to put these sorts of trades into proper perspective. The 1987 Doyle Alexander trade is often cited as one of the worst deadline deals of all time because he was traded for recently-minted Hall of Famer John Smoltz. But the Tigers probably don't make the playoffs in 1987 without Alexander, who went 9-0 with a 279 ERA+ in 11 starts. Of course, the Tigers went on to lose in the ALCS against a vastly inferior Minnesota Twins club, and Alexander's name now lives in infamy. That's just baseball; baseball is fucking dumb sometimes.

How Dickey will be remembered by Blue Jays fans will depend not only these next few starts, but also on the warped perspective of sports fans everywhere. Would it be enough to help Toronto break its league-worst playoff drought, even if they get knocked out early? Would a pennant or a championship cement his legacy, no matter how well d'Arnaud and Syndergaard perform for the Mets? Who the hell knows? But it should make for a captivating end to the season.