10 Game Winners and Finger Nails

Lost in the excitement of Wednesday night’s perfect game by Matt Cain was the fact that we also got our first 10 game winner of the season. Actually two pitchers reached 10 wins that night.

Lance Lynn, STL, had one career win coming into the 2012 season.  He started off Spring Training as a “sixth” starter but moved into the rotation when Chris Carpenter went to the DL to begin the year. Lynn won his first 6 starts and now stands at 10-2 through 13 starts after his dominating 12 strikeout, no runs victory over the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday.

The other 10 game winner is R. A. Dickey.  Dickey’s performance Wed. night was almost as good as Cain’s; R. A. faced just 29 batters. He allowed only 1 hit, a first inning infield single (The Mets appealed to MLB to change the ruling to an error but were denied), and he struck out 12.

Dickey is baseball’s only pure knuckle-ball pitcher still in the majors. I don’t know if Dickey is as particular about his nails as some knuckle-ball pitchers in the past, but I wouldn’t want to have the locker next to his. I can imagine it might be something a little like this………………..