I’m still annoyed at Tony LaRussa‘s decision not to start R.A. Dickey in tomorrow night’s All-Star Game.
Bad enough that an ambitious late voting campaign got Pablo Sandoval the starting nod at third base over MVP candidate David Wright, LaRussa had to go pick another San Francisco Giant – Matt Cain.
Cain is far more deserving of his starting assignment than Sandoval, but even he felt that it might have made more sense to start Dickey.
“I was actually thinking that it might be a little bit of help if R.A were able to start it, because maybe Buster [Posey] would be able to catch him today and then catch him warming up or something like that — maybe a little bit of help doing it that way,” Cain said as reported by ESPN New York.
Dickey has more victories and a better ERA. Cain has a perfect game. Most of the other numbers are close enough that we’re splitting hairs. I wanted to see Dickey get the honor because he’s a Met and because it would be a great story.
LaRussa explained his choice by saying that he thought it would give the National League an advantage if Cain were paired with his regular-season catcher. Whatever gain that might provide is sure to be offset by Posey or Carlos Ruiz getting just seven or eight warmup pitches to accustom themselves to Dickey’s knuckleball — assuming that LaRussa keeps his word that Dickey will get to pitch in the game.
Chances are, a month from now I won’t be able to tell you much about the All-Star game. Without looking online or checking to see if I kept score, I couldn’t tell you who won last year’s game – much less who started for either league.
The best revenge would be to have Terry Collins in a position to fill the National League roster with his own players in 2013. Unlikely? Sure… but stranger things have happened.
PaulHadsall.com 
The decision still bothers me, too, and will probably until Dickey gets into the game. I think what we’ll see tonight is Ruiz and Dickey enter the game at the same time, giving Ruiz time to warm up Dickey in the bullpen and giving him way more than just eight pitches to get accustomed to the knuckler.
There were also some rumblings that the Giants whined about not wanting Posey to have to catch the knuckleball, so they lobbied LaRussa to start someone other than Dickey.
And come on — are you telling me that after however many years of AL reign, you don’t remember that the NL won the last two All-Star Games? 😉
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I remembered that the NL won last year, but I couldn’t tell you the winning pitcher or the MVP without cheating and looking it up.
However he decided things, it all worked out. (And aside from Bryce Harper’s gold shoes & dropped fly ball, and maybe Pablo Sandoval’s triple, I doubt I’ll remember much about this game by next summer.)
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