It was one of those starts for Bartolo Colon that just get tossed in the trash can. Unfortunately, it’s happened quite frequently over the first half of the season.
But maybe it didn’t have to be.
Against an opponent in a ballpark he needed to have command of his two-seamer on the corners, Colon did not, and it resulted in what looked like batting practice for the Blue Jays, specifically in the fourth inning of the Mets 7-1 loss to Toronto at Rogers Centre on Thursday night.
“[Colon] didn’t have the command I’ve seen him have,” Terry Collins said. “I’ve seen him be this good and better.”
Thursday was the fifth time in Colon’s first 14 starts of the year he’s allowed four earned runs or more, and his 4 1/3 innings matched a season-low as he fell to 9-5 and saw his ERA rise to 4.85 in 86 innings this season.
Colon simply could not throw his two-seam fastball for strikes the entire night. The effort was noticeable as he was doing his best to nibble with that pitch on both sides of the plate, but it just didn’t have the movement to nip the corners. It resulted in a lot of hitters counts, and forced Colon to come back over the plate. The problem was, when he did that he couldn’t keep the ball down and that’s just not going to work against the Blue Jays.
Having said that, things most certainly could have and probably should have been better for Colon in the fifth inning. He was victimized by a misplay of a line drive by Wilmer Flores with one out in the fourth inning, a not too uncommon occurrence for the Mets, unfortunately. If Flores catches the ball – which there is no question he should have – Colon very likely escapes the inning with little to no damage ensued, and it’s a different ballgame.
However, that doesn’t excuse Colon’s poor pitching. It’s said about Jon Niese a lot in these instances that the pitcher has to pick up the poor defense in these times, especially at critical moments of the game. Colon didn’t, and the game became silly after that moment.
“If Flo catches the line drive, he’s out of the inning and it’s a 1-0 game,” Collins explained with an annoyed grin on his face. “I know it knuckled on him. I know what happened. You’ve seen it a lot. But we’ve got to make a concerted effort to pick each other up a little bit better than we have.”
It wasn’t just Flores last night. His mistakes are only magnified because the rumination about his defense have been ongoing since November. But there were double plays which weren’t turned as well, all of which contributed to prolonged innings, extra pitches thrown by Colon, and more pitches thrown under duress. As Collins seems to say every few days, the Mets give away too many outs, and they seemingly give away outs in bunches too. It doesn’t matter if it’s Colon, Niese Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and so on – it is next to impossible for pitchers to manage four or five outs in an inning. It doesn’t ever excuse poor pitching, and there’s nobody in the room that would downplay their own poor performances, either.
But in an era where defense and speed are the core ingredients for success in baseball, neither are prevalent on the current Mets roster for the most part, and that will likely ultimately lead to their demise if it’s not fixed.
Just Mets 