PHOENIX — R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball might have finally finished its mid-summer vacation.
The Mets had gone a month without receiving this kind of performance from their All-Star pitcher. Not even an upset stomach could derail Dickey yesterday.
It was the Diamondbacks who dry heaved, as Dickey’s dominance allowed the Mets to salvage a split in their four-game series at Chase Field with a 5-1 victory in front of 32,134.
There is still plenty of work ahead if the Mets (49-53) are to rebound into serious wild-card contention, but for a day manager Terry Collins’ crew had everything working. That meant grabbing an early lead and letting Dickey’s knuckler handle the rest.
“This is a good hitting team,” Dickey said, referring to the Diamondbacks. “And in this park in particular it’s nice to get out of here with a split and move on to a place we can probably play a little bit better, certainly.”
The next stop is San Francisco, where the Mets tonight open a four-game series against the Giants — who just finished getting swept by the Dodgers.
Though Dickey had early nausea — he suspects it was something he ate — he allowed only an unearned run on four hits and three walks over seven innings with eight strikeouts. Dickey (14-2) became the National League’s first 14-game winner.
“I had a pretty good knuckleball from the beginning,” he said.
It was a return to form for Dickey, who was 1-1 with a 6.49 ERA over his previous five appearances. That included a relief outing against the Dodgers in which he allowed two runs in one inning. Over the last month, Dickey had watched his ERA surge by more than a half-run, to 2.97.
“He threw very well, and that’s the R.A. Dickey we saw in the first half,” Collins said. “He didn’t feel good the entire game, but all he did was he went out and battled, which is what we’ve seen.’’ It got us where we needed to be — deep in the game — and we scored some runs and gave him the lead.”
Ike Davis, a day after tying the franchise record by hitting three homers in a game, returned to earth. The Mets first baseman finished 0-for-5 with three strikeouts against lefty Joe Saunders (5-7) and reliever Brad Bergesen.
Jason Bay had another silent day, finishing 0-for-3 with a walk, running his hitless streak to 22 at-bats. Bay was heckled throughout the game by the smattering of Mets fans in attendance.
Scott Hairston led the Mets’ 10-hit attack by going 2-for-5 with two RBIs. Daniel Murphy was 2-for-5 with an RBI. David Wright and Hairston delivered consecutive RBI doubles in the first to give the Mets a 2-0 lead before Hairston’s single in the fifth added another run.
Murphy’s RBI double in the sixth made it 4-0 before the Mets’ final run scored in the eighth on Josh Thole’s RBI double.
Collins said the Mets still haven’t given up on the season.
“We’re here to win as many games as we can,” he said. “We owe it to the fans and we owe it to the organization, so we’re doing the best we can right now.’’
“Right now times are tough — we’re not swinging very good and we ran into a tough time pitching and we’re seeing the results of it, but we’ll hopefully bounce back from it all.”