Mets Morning News: Dickey Reclaims Wins Lead, Mets Announce Sterling Award Winners

Is it just me, or do the rest of you highlight R.A. Dickey starts on your calendar now? Yesterday was one of those days, and while R.A. didn't have his best Dickeyface on, it was still easily good enough to collect his league leading 18th win. Dickey would be helped by Ike Davis launching a 3 run blast in the 5th, it's the 9th time he's homered this season with at least 2 runners on base. The box can be found here, the highlights from ESPN here.

While the DIckey win was fun, many fans had their attention yesterday focused on the minor leagues. The FSL playoffs were underway, and St. Lucie managed to even their series with Jupiter behind a gem from Jacob DeGrom. It was a great day for Brooklyn fans as well, despite running out most of their bench en route to a 5-3 loss. The Batavia loss in the first half of their double header had clinched a post season berth for the Cyclones, so they'll be facing Hudson Valley beginning on Friday night.

Pitching seems to be a running theme this morning, and Howard Megdal believes that the young arms the Mets have will be the key to winning in 2013. I have a hard time disagreeing with him, as the surplus value to be had from some of these guys is just ridiculous. While speaking of the Mets young arms, Jeurys Familia has been drawing great reviews for his debut on Tuesday. John SIckels also touched on a Mets pitching prospect yesterday, as he had one listed amongst his sleepers going into the season.

I mentioned surplus value in the last paragraph, and that will be very important to the Mets next season. While losses this year appear to have been cut dramatically, there are still indications that payroll will be at about the same level as this season. As long as the club manages to secure reasonable extensions for both David Wright and R.A. Dickey, I'm ok with that.

Yesterday at AA:

Recaps of R.A. Dickey starts are never as much fun at ESPN as they are at AA, so here's the recap from yesterday's game.

The Mets announced their Sterling Award winners yesterday, and we had those for you as well.

Matthew Callan looked at a favorite of all Mets fans yesterday, Larry "Chipper" Jones. Larry will be playing his last series in NY this weekend, so make sure to buy a ticket if you want to boo him one last time.

Around MLB:

The Braves will head into Queens on the back of a nice pitching performance from Mike Minor. Hopefully we'll be feasting on that pitching for the next three games.

The Nats also won on the back of a strong pitching performance. Gio Gonzalez was excellent, and he'll need to continue that trend as the Nats shut down Stephen Strasburg.

The Phillies joined the winning fun by beating up on the Reds. Like the other 3 divisional teams already mentioned, their starter was excellent on the day.

Unlike the rest of the NL East, the lowly Marlins pinned another check in the loss column. Yay!

We'll head over to MLB.com to get a look at how all of the playoff races were altered by the results of yesterday's games. Grant Brisbee also had a look at the remaining schedules for the AL contenders.

One team that won't be making the playoffs is the Boston Red Sox. Bobby Valentine is always entertaining though, and yesterday was classic Bobby V.

Finally for today, Fangraphs took a look at the most indiscriminate hitter in baseball. It's not Jeff Francoeur.