For the most part in 2015, Bartolo Colon has lived and died with his two-seam fastball.
More often than not for the last two months, he’s run into trouble with that pitch simply because it was catching too much of the plate.
As such, the opposition posted an .815 OPS against Colon between April 29 and June 4, during which he went 5-6 with a 5.73 ERA in 66 innings over 11 starts.
But in Colon’s last two starts, the command of the two-seamer has been much better.
Colon allowed ten hits and three runs in six innings on Tuesday night in San Francisco.
Due to a lack of offense, however, the three runs were too much for the Mets to handle.
Still, Colon wasn’t displeased with his performance on Tuesday.
“It felt ok, other than taking the loss. There were ten hits, but only two were hard hit,” Colon said through a translator.
In general, it was a vintage Colon outing. He pitched to contact, gave up a couple of runs, but kept the Mets in the game before handing it off to the bullpen. He used both sides of the plate and actually spotted his two-seamer on the corners more often than not and as Colon said, the Giants really didn’t hit the ball hard against him.
He did not pitch badly. He just didn’t pitch well enough.
“They know I am an aggressive pitcher. I am going to throw the ball over the plate and throw a lot of strikes, so they are also going to be really aggressive. I still feel I was executing because of the way they hit the ball.”
And, if not for the third inning error by Daniel Murphy, Colon might have fared a little bit better, although he would have still lost the game as the Mets still can’t score any runs.
But that’s the problem with the Mets and having a guy like Colon. If a pitcher is going to pitch to contact, the defense behind him has to be able to pick up and throw the ball to get outs for him. Seemingly more often than not, whether it’s Colon or Jon Niese or anyone else for that matter, the defense fails the pitching staff, those failures typically cost runs which lead to lost games.
Sure, the Mets can move Murphy to third and Wilmer Flores to second. But in the end it’s the same players standing on a different part of the field.
But so it goes for the Mets, their hapless offense and their loose defense.
Just Mets 