The one word to describe Bartolo Colon’s outing on Monday is: progress.
He was good enough to deliver a much-needed win for the Mets, allowing three runs and six hits with two walks and six strikeouts in six innings, throwing 67 of his 94 pitches for strikes.
“He’s [played stopper] for a long time, been one of those guys that everybody turns to,” Terry Collins said after the win. “It’s nice to have Bartolo, who isn’t going to beat himself out there. If he makes pitches and you catch the ball behind him, you’re going to look up in the seventh inning and you’re going to be in the game. You can win some of those games to help you get going.’’
Colon earned his seventh win of the season, tying Michael Wacha and Felix Hernandez for the most wins in baseball. All of this after celebrating his 42nd birthday on Sunday.
“I felt great [on Monday],” Colon explained through an interpreter after the win. “Everything was good.”
In 41 starts since joining the Mets before the 2014 season, Colon is 22-16 with a 4.26 ERA in 264 innings pitched. He has more wins, more starts and more innings pitched than any other Met during that span, all of which have come in his age-41 and now 42 seasons.
“I surprised myself that I’m pitching the way I’m pitching. I’ve been happy,” Colon said of his season to date.
Early on, Colon was fantastic. He struck out the side in the first inning and had pinpoint control of his two-seam fastball, something which was severely lacking in his previous three starts in which he compiled a 9.98 ERA in just 15 innings. That control started to slip a little bit as the game rolled on, and he centered too many of them in the third inning which resulted in a couple of runs against him. The frustrating part about that was those two runs came after Colon had two outs and nobody on.
However, as Colon has done so many times, he regrouped and was effective for the remainder of his outing, although he allowed another run to come across thanks to a leadoff walk in the fifth inning to the opposing pitcher Severino Gonzalez.
“He’s been pitching for 50 years,” Terry Collins joked after the win. “I just think it’s a matter of him locating.”
Indeed it is, and that location is still off from when he was really rolling through the first five weeks of the season. Given what he showed early on yesterday, it really isn’t a concern – he just has to get back to consistently spotting that two-seamer on the corners, as Collins said.
It will come back for him, because he doesn’t waver even in the deepest part of his struggles.
Just Mets 