Just Mets

Bartolo Colon is equally as fascinating as he is fun to watch.

He never wavers, he never gets knocked down, even if he’s on the mound and his team falls behind by four runs in a blink of an eye.

“We’ve got all these theories, and he’s got his own style of calming himself down,” Terry Collins said after the game. “When it starts to get to be a tough situation, we have all these techniques now we’re trying to teach guys on how to breathe and how to do this, and Bart’s got his own little thing he does on the mound to get him back in focus, and it works.”

He’ll be 42 soon, but you’d never know his career could end within a blink of an eye. He’s pitching like he’s in the prime of his career again, which is almost impossible to believe.

On Friday night, Colon was fantastic once again, allowing a run on six hits with five strikeouts in seven innings.

Colon needed a little more than the 77 pitches he threw in seven innings against the Braves last Sunday at 91. But he threw 66 of his 91 pitches for strikes, and didn’t allow a single walk.

But the glaring difference for Colon didn’t come on the mound on Friday night. Once again, it came with him at the plate.

With the bases loaded and one out in the fifth inning, Colon delivered a sacrifice fly to plate Eric Campbell. That RBI tied the game for the Mets, and they didn’t look back from there.

“He’s been working really hard, actually, with Kevin Long and Pat Roessler on his swing, on bunting, on everything,” Anthony Recker said after the game, “he’s showcasing it all so far, so it’s been impressive.”

Impressive, but mostly surprising. Colon waited ten years between RBI until last Sunday. This time, he waited five days for his next RBI. It’s the first time he’s had an RBI in two straight games and, yes, he now leads all big league pitchers in RBI.

Again, fascinating and fun.

“I don’t think many people would know this about Bartolo — he’s actually very athletic,” Recker said. “He’s a big man, but he can move.”

Given what he’s doing in his age-42 season, there’s no questioning Colon’s athletic prowess, despite his appearance.

But, back to his mound work.

Colon made one mistake all night – it came in the first inning on a pitch on the outer half and up the Giancarlo Stanton.

The fact remains if any pitcher makes even the tiniest mistake, Stanton is going to crush it. Minimize the damage by keeping the guys in front of him off the bases, and move on.

And, that’s what Colon did.

Colon didn’t allow a run for the rest of the night, moving his fastball on and off the corners on both sides of the plate, tailing his two-seamer in away from the left-handers and throwing curling his four-seamer away from the right-handers. He has an amazing ability to off-set his fastballs by varying the speed of them by 4-6 mph at any point, which really helps effectively give him an extra pitch in his repertoire.

Colon did throw 15 true off-speed pitches against Miami on Friday, but the Marlins did nothing with them – they didn’t reach base on any of them.

Colon has now issued only one walk in 20 innings so far in 2015. He’s 3-0 with a 2.25 ERA. His 0.5 walks per nine innings is the best in baseball over the first 13 days of the season.

“He plays the game like a kid plays the game,” David Wright said, according to the New York Post. “and that’s I think what we all strive for. Me personally, that’s what I try to do, but it seems like he genuinely goes out there, you see him just flipping the ball up, a guy will get a hit off him and he kinda claps. It’s fun to watch him have fun. It’s kinda infectious.”

Again, fascinating and fun, and yes indeed, he is quite infectious and engaging every five days.