On short rest, Dickey struggles to curb homers

TORONTO — R.A. Dickey has hit another bump in the road, and once again, it’s because of his tendency to give up a lot of home runs.

Dickey has allowed more home runs than anyone else in baseball since the start of 2013, and he surrendered two more in Wednesday’s 8-4 loss to the Padres. He has surrendered 26 home runs in 22 starts this season, which is tied for most in the Major Leagues.

There are times when Dickey can get away with the home runs, but those outings never seem to come when he also issues a lot of walks. He was guilty of both in the series finale vs. San Diego, as he walked four and allowed four hits over 5 2/3 innings.

“It’s been a little bit of a rut,” said Dickey, who has allowed 17 earned runs over his last 14 2/3 innings. “I was going pretty good before the All-Star break, and I’ve run into a little bit of adversity here the last three outings.

“But there are some good things to try to take out of it to try to apply to the next outing. You have to be kind of like a robot in these situations and just keep going forward. It’s not the first time I’ve had a little bit of adversity.”

Dickey originally was not expected to start until Friday vs. Baltimore, but the Blue Jays decided to have him pitch against San Diego instead. The decision to switch the order of the rotation was because of several factors, including the upcoming opponent and the status of catcher Russell Martin.

Martin missed a couple of games earlier this week because of a sore knee. Toronto wanted to give him a day off on Wednesday, and because Josh Thole is the personal catcher for Dickey, it made sense to …

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