This afternoon in Washington, Bartolo Colon will be making his seventh career Opening Day start after starting on Opening Day with the Indians from 2000-2002 and the Angels from 2004-2006. He will also become the oldest (41, 317 days) Mets pitcher to start on Opening Day.
With a rotation rich with young, hard throwing arms, Terry Collins still believes Colon the obvious choice to start this afternoon against the Nationals.
“[Colon] has been there so many times before and I think he earned that right,” Collins told the New York Post. “You look at what he did last year and he earned it.”
I buy that, and to an extent I agree Colon should be today’s starter, but it’s mostly because they’re setup to maximize Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom over a crucial early season stretch of games
By aligning the rotation this way, their two featured arms open the home schedule next week, whereas if Harvey or deGrom had started today and Wednesday, Only one of them would be going in the first two games.
The rotation is also aligned to give them as much of a competitive advantage as they can gain over the first month of the year, as they play 27 of their first 31 games against teams in the National League East, seven of which are against the Nationals. The way things are aligned, Harvey will face the Nationals twice and the Yankees and Orioles once over that span.
As such, if the cost is not seeing him on Opening Day in order to give the club the best possible advantage against their toughest opponents in the next 30 days or so, I’m on-board with Colon pitching today.
Just Mets 