In All His Knuckleballing Glory.

Here at The Baseball Freak, we try to stay completely unbiased, but we've never made our love of the New York Yankees a secret. And while this has been one of the more interesting stories of the 2012 season, it pains me to praise anyone that dons a Mets uniform. But it's just become blatantly unavoidable, so here it is:

R.A. Dickey is the best pitcher in baseball right now.

Giants, Tigers and Phillies fans, let the hate mail flow in. But first, let me explain.

If you guessed this man would be the hottest hurler in the game before the season started, everyone would have thought you were nuts.

Dickey, a 37 year old hurler from Tennessee, has been in the majors for 11 seasons now, spending time with the Rangers (who drafted him in 1996 with the 18th overall selection), the Mariners and the Twins before landing in Queens. He missed the 2002 season, as well as spending all of 2007 with the Triple-A affiliate of the Brewers, the Nashville Sounds (conveniently located in his hometown), and had a losing record up to this season, 41-50, with a career ERA flirting with 5. He only had 2 winning seasons prior to 2012, and his low strikeout numbers before signing with the Mets made it seem like he was forever destined to toil in obscurity without making much of an impact. After all, he had shown flashes of brilliance a few times, but how good could a pitcher really make himself once his age starts approaching his jersey number?

Damn good, apparently.

2012 started a little differently than most seasons have for the Mets: with a win, against their longtime rivals, the Braves. Dickey was tabbed as the number 2 starter, and pitched a low-key 4-2 win against Atlanta. He pitched 6 innings, with 3 strikeouts, and garnered a 3.00 ERA to start the season. Then, something strange happened...he kept winning. He kept throwing strikeouts. In the month of June alone, he threw as many or more strikeouts than he had in 6 different seasons in his career. He started racking up the innings, going less than 6 innings only twice to date and throwing 3 complete games, all shutouts. Not only was he dominanting, he was untouchable: his scoreless inning streak of 32 2/3 set a new franchise record, and he made it look so effortless with that knuckleball of his.

Doesn't look too difficult, right? Think again.

The knuckleball is notorious for prolonging the careers of pitchers while still keeping them somewhat competitive. It's not supposed to be solely relied on, but rather used as a stopgap, when a breaking ball or slider just won't fool the batter. It's meant to be slower than a changeup, moves weirder than a curve, and is more difficult to track than a fastball. While it can be a pitcher's best friend, it can also be a nightmare, especially for the catcher to handle (some catchers have taken to using a first baseman's glove, which is larger than other fielders', to accomodate its unpredictability). The vast majority of pitchers don't seem to even know how to throw a proper knuckleball, and those that do don't use it often. Only one pitcher in the Hall of Fame used it regularly, Phil Niekro, and the second most famous knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, proved to be another exception and managed to prolong his career to age 45 thanks to the confusing properties of the pitch. Bottom line, it's true that batters can't seem to handle it, but most pitchers believe the cons outweigh the pros here.

But somehow, Dickey has utilized the pitch so masterfully, and with such precision, that he's pitched to a 13-1 record to date, with 132 strikeouts, a 2.72 ERA, a WHIP of 1.01, and 125 innings pitched. He's shattered most of his career bests, and projects to obliterate the rest of them before the end of the year. He got snubbed in the All-Star Game, with San Francisco hurler Matt Cain (who, admittedly, has been more consistent, dominant, and threw an absolutely beautiful perfect game several weeks earlier) getting the starting nod, but his first apperance was nonetheless memorable, when he struck out Mark Trumbo and got Miguel Cabrera to ground into a double play in the 6th inning as he helped preserve the NL's lead in a battle they won handily, 8-0. It may not have been what many Mets fans were hoping for, but it was characteristic of his year, and career, so far: not perfect, but pretty close.

Will Dickey continue to be a stud pitcher for the next 4 or 5 years? Probably not. Will he even be good the rest of this year? Not likely. But from where we stand right now, with Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum all looking more like awful scrubs than All-Stars, and with no clear Cy Young candidate outside of New York, this could end up being one of the finest seasons a Mets pitcher has ever put together, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.