Besides being a surprise choice for Opening Day starter (and we have beaten that story to death), Bartolo Colon offered a few other surprises, in the way he pitched, on Monday. The 41-year-old hurler was impressive, matching $210 million man Max Scherzer, frame-by-frame, over six innings of three-hit ball.
How he did that is what is really interesting.
Of course, one game is, well, one game. We don’t want to draw any conclusions from one game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t let some of the details help us in showing how Colon was able to find success on a sun-splashed day in DC.
The first thing that sticks out about Monday’s performance is that Colon didn’t throw one change-up. He never throws a lot of offspeed pitches, obviously, known for his heavy usage of the fastball, but this was the first game since June 2012 that he didn’t at least throw one change-up.
The change is usually something that Colon saves for left-handed hitters, mixing between that and the slider to keep batters off balance. On Monday, Colon saved his slider to use exclusively for righties, another interesting difference, and as mentioned, he didn’t throw any change-ups at all. He relied heavily on his sinker, throwing it each of the three times a left-handed hitter was ahead in the count.
That brings us to the next interesting note from Colon’s first start, and that is, he garnered an unusually high number of ground ball outs. Over 437 career starts, his 64.3% ground ball rate on Monday was the 13th highest he has ever recorded. By using less of his change-up, which has been inconsistent in his career in producing ground balls, he kept the ball on the ground with his sinker and slider.
The Mets should be ecstatic with Colon’s performance on Monday. The ageless right-hander keeps getting the job done. And as his age rightfully worries some, another promising sign from his first start was his velocity – both his four-seam and two-seam averaging a tick up from 2013.
Whether Colon continues to shy away from his change-up and find ground balls with his sinker and slider remains to be seen, and after one game, we can’t draw too many conclusion, but it is something to keep an eye on.
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball. Follow me on Twitter @OverWhitestone.
