You're a Dickey

Sitting here, the night after Christmas watching Step Brothers and thinking about the newest Twin, the Minnesota version of CC Sabathia if you will, R.A. Dickey, and as you might guess, I have some thoughts.

- First the movie review of Stepbrothers. It's not over just yet, but I like it. Not love it, but like it. Snake told me it really sucked, and he's an idiot, so I figured it would be pretty good. Some pretty legit laugh out loud moments, and a not overly horrid story - thin as it is. The movie is basically just an excuse for Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly to both act like Will Ferrell for 90 minutes. Actually, now that I think about it, if I wasn't drunk off my ass I'd probably hate this.

- Drinking Red Stripe and Newcastle - both X-mas gifts from the wife along with a Gophers' shirt and Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. I got her an Ipod and a Coach Purse. I think I'm lower maintenance.

- So back to the awesomeness that is Robert Allen Dickey, the newest Minnesota Twin baseball thrower guy. He's a knuckleballer, which automatically means he's an awesome dude. But instead of just taking my first impressions, based on nothing more than his knuckleballness, I should probably break down what up with this guy.

Honestly, this isn't a very exciting signing. Dickey is pretty much the definition of mediocre - and boring. He's played for the Rangers and Mariners for the past six years, but only pitched as much as 30 innings in 2003, 2004, and 2008; all as a part-time starter, part-time reliever. None of these years were very good, the best being in 2003 with a 5.09 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP, last year he posted similar numbers with a 5.21 ERA and 1.56 WHIP. More interestingly and less compellingly, he never really even put up good numbers in the minor leagues. His best minor league season was 2007, when he pitched 169 innings at triple A in 31 games (22 starts), posting an ERA of 3.72 with a 1.29 ERA - decent numbers, but nothing that will blow you away, especially considering his poor major league numbers.

What you're going to hear alot of, and I already have, is that he put up "great" numbers in relief last season, a 2-0 record and a 2.00 ERA. Yes, he was better in relief, putting up a 1.11 WHIP, .205 OAV, and a .594 oOPS compared to a 1.77 WHIP, .316 OAV, and .892 oOPS when starting. Which, hey, maybe he really is that good as a reliever but to me it sounds basically like a huge fluke and this is a completely retarded waste of a signing, except for the whole knuckleballer thing. His BABIP (opponent's batting average on balls in play) as a starter was .322 as a starter, and just .226 in his 36 innings of relief. His career number is .314, which means his performance as a starter was pretty much in line with what you would expect, but his reliever numbers were so many standard deviations from what you would expect that they can not be trusted as being indicative of future performance.

But wait, WWWWWW, he's a knuckleballer, that's a weird pitch. Maybe he does much better when batters don't get to see him much. I thought maybe that could be something positive, but alas, no such luck. Two of his worse three innings last season were innings 1 and 2, and actually in the first three innings of a game his opponent's line read .300/.373/.518. Oof. Worthless.

- How fluky was that .226 BABIP by the way? Not a single pitcher in the major leagues with 100ips or more beat that number. And actually, only 1 pitcher (Carlos Marmol) with more than 65 innings beat that number. I'm very skeptical of this pick up. And bored.

- The movie got worse, too. So I switched to Vodka/Cranberry. Bogart introduced me to the art of putting a lime in these, and it's rocked my world.

- We are watching Made on MTV now, and it's about some gay drama kid who wants to become a varsity baseball player and she's not buying it when I try and tell her baseball would be the hardest sport to get good at if you've never played before. I'm right, right? Of course, they're in Boston and keep saying Vah-sity instead of Varsity. I don't get how that happens. I mean, you know you're completely butchering a language and sound like a bunch of uneducated douche bags, right? And yet you take pride in this? It's like that overstated accent they use for Minnesotans in Fargo which drives every actual Minnesotan crazy, but if we were proud to sound like and intentionally wanted to.

- You know how people are all pissy because the Yankees signed Sabathia, Burnett, and Texeira? Well calm down. First of all, the Yanks lost $88 million off their payroll from last season with Mussina, Abrea, Giambi, and others coming off the books so technically they are actually paying less this coming season compared to last season right now. And there is no guarantee they are going to be any kind of good team. Texeira is the only really great signing in there. Sabathia is an injury risk or a "get fat" risk, and Burnett is pretty much guaranteed to get hurt next year, considering he's only had 3 season's out of 8 where he stayed healthy, and last season was one of the good ones - he's pretty much Carl Pavano version 2.0. Their catcher is like, 50 years old and fading and the backup is a Red Sox reject. Jeter is losing the minute amount of range he ever had over at short as well as his power and should probably be moved to second base at this point. Their outfield is probably going to be one of the slowest in the majors, the starting pitching is a massive question mark, and short of Mariano Rivera there isn't a single decent reliever in the group. So no worries. Twins will win more games than the Yanks, I mean, they have R.A. Dickey now.

- Billy Bean (not Billy Beane) just appeared on this Made episode to pump up the gay kid since he's gay too. Too bad Bean sucked ass as a hitter (career OPS+ = 55).