TORONTO – If you stop and think about what Bartolo Colon does, it’s hard not to be amazed.
A little less than a month away from his 45th birthday, Colon is older than Rangers GM Jon Daniels or his counterpart in Toronto, Ross Atkins. He signed his first professional contract in 1993, before Roberto Osuna was born, and the first time he started against the Blue Jays, Joe Carter was in the lineup. Eighteen of the hitters he has faced have already earned plaques in Cooperstown.
And yet age is just one part of what distinguishes Colon. There’s also his style. He throws one pitch, more or less — a fastball that’s really not that fast. He throws it with impressive conviction, though, always in and around the strike zone.
“You know he’s going to be close to the plate,” Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak said. “A lot of guys throw 95-96 and they don’t really know where it’s going, snapdragon this, snapdragon that. With him I’m not saying it’s comfortable, but it’s comfortable knowing that pretty much he knows where he’s throwing it.”
That sense of comfort can be misleading.
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“When you see Bartolo he gives you a sense of ‘Hey that’s Bartolo, that’s Big Sexy,” said outfielder Curtis Granderson, who first faced Colon 13 seasons ago. “There’s a reason why he’s got that nickname. So you’re comfortable from that standpoint. At the same time, he’s throwing (pitches) that are strikes and I can’t hit those pitches, so now what do I do?”
On Saturday the Blue Jays didn’t do much against Colon. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hit his first big-league homer, and Kevin Pillar connected for the first of his two homers, but still the Blue Jays managed just three runs over Colon’s seven innings. The resulting 7-4 Rangers win extends the Blue Jays’ losing streak to four games and gives them a record of 14-12.
While Colon was constantly around the strike zone, Blue Jays starter Jaime Garcia struggled with command over his five innings of work. The left-hander walked four and allowed five earned runs on a day he missed down in the zone too often.
As manager John Gibbons said, “It was a tough day for him, really. It started out good and then his command deserted him.”
Asked whether he could take anything positive from the start, Garcia offered a succinct reply. “No. We lost. I didn’t get the job done.”
Source: Baseball Savant
Garcia looked sharp at first, opening the game with four consecutive strikeouts, but Joey Gallo reached on a walk and Texas started doing real damage soon afterwards thanks to back-to-back home runs from Jurickson Profar and Robinson Chirinos.
Later in the second inning, Ryan Rua hit a catchable to the right-field wall only to have Teoscar Hernandez miss it. After retrieving the ball, Hernandez unloaded an impressive throw that reached third base on the fly just after Rua. Despite the show of arm strength, Hernandez hasn’t matched the defensive ability of Randal Grichuk, who’s presently limited to a part-time role. That said, it’s a trade-off the Blue Jays will willingly make as long as Hernandez sustains this level of offence, and his sixth-inning triple served as another reminder of what he can do at the plate.
The Rangers added to their lead in the fourth inning, when Pillar and Granderson missed a catchable ball in left-centre field and two Rangers scored to give Texas a 5-0 lead. Pillar called for the ball, but Granderson didn’t hear him so he called for it, too. At that point Pillar pulled up, wary of a collision.
“I heard him late and I should have done a better job making sure he could hear me,” Pillar said. “I’ve just got to be a little bit more vocal out there.”
“That ball’s got to be caught, bottom line,” Gibbons said. “And they’ll do it. They’ll be fine.”
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To his credit, though, Pillar continued his hot start at the plate two homers: a fifth-inning shot to centre that got the Blue Jays on the board and a ninth-inning homer to the opposite field. He almost had a third hit, but Colon caught a line drive up the middle to end the sixth inning.
“The older he gets, the bigger he gets, he just continues to make plays,” Pillar said. “If you watch him pitch, he’s always in a good (fielding) position.”
The Blue Jays’ most significant swing of the day might have come from Gurriel, who took Colon deep to open the seventh inning for his first big-league homer, one he celebrated by raising his arms as he crossed the plate.
“There’s a lot in there,” Gibbons said of Gurriel. “We signed him for a reason. He’s a two-way player. He plays offence and defence. He can run. I think he’s just getting better and better.”
On a personal level, the homer was especially meaningful to Gurriel, who debuted little more than a week ago.
“Bartolo’s a legend so I feel a bit more happy and more pumped up that it was against him,” said Gurriel. “It’s something I’ll never forget in my life.”
Still, the homer wasn’t enough as Colon added to his “legend” status by shutting the Blue Jays down yet again.
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