Bartolo Colon turned in his first rehab assignment of the spring Thursday night at McCoy Stadium and a few first-hand accounts of the performance got my attention.
Joe McDonald from the Providence Journal,
In his first – and possible only – start for the PawSox, the veteran right-hander was outstanding in his five scoreless innings of work. He threw 74 pitches (45 strikes) and allowed just one hit with one walk and five strikeouts while earning the victory. He was consistently hitting 94-95 mph on the radar gun, and his splitter and changeup were working, too. The veteran right-hander, who signed a minor-league deal with the Red Sox at the start of spring training, was in total command of the strike zone and was working in a fluid tempo.
After reading that, I did a double take. Was Colon really consistently hitting 94 MPH on the radar gun and in total command of the strike zone? Did he really toss 29 balls compared to 45 strikes in his first regular season outing? Another first hand account deterred a bit of my optimism, but the details are still very encouraging. From Clem21 on Soxprospects.com:
Had excellent command tonight considering the conditions. His breaking pitches were pretty sharp and he was in control of the hitters for his outing. AB touched on his velocity in his post. He seemed to have pretty good velocity for innings 1-3, but it trailed
off in innings 4-5. Generated a good amount of swings and misses from the AAA hitters in the beginning innings, but they started fouling off a lot of his pitches as the outing went on. I saw him hit 95 on the stadium gun as pointed out, but I checked in with a Cubs scout sitting next to me and he had him at 92 on his gun for the same pitch. He had Colon at 88-91 for the outing with him dipping down to 87-88 in the 5th inning before reaching back to 92 on his last pitch. Overall, it was a positive outing for Colon, but I don’t see the arm strength there as of yet and see it being another 2-3 outings before we see what he’s really got.
That is much more in line with what I expected for Colon. I managed to run into one of his winter ball starts in January and noticed his fastball was pretty straight at 90-91 and his sinker lacked much dip, but he was working with precise control as Colon mastered during his Cy Young season of 2005. Ron Johnson commented on how Colon showed the minor leaguers how to pitch:
“He set a really nice tempo,” Johnson said. “I enjoyed watching his overall demeanor. When you talk about game awareness, I know there weren’t a lot of baserunners, but he has a feel that you can see out there.
“It’s a good teaching tool for the young guys. He’s varying his times to the plate. He’s ‘picking’ to first. He’s elevating his pitches. At times when it was very conducive to getting outs, he used his sinker and his changeup.
“It was impressive.”
In the end, I
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