Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

MLB

Mets have needed some Colon time

PORT ST. LUCIE — They called him “Boogie” back in Cleveland, for precisely the reason you would think.

“Because he looked like the Boogie Monster,” said Yankees consultant Ray Negron, who worked for the Indians from 1997-2001.

We are, of course, discussing Bartolo Colon, who arrived at Tradition Field on Saturday accompanied by an entourage of four people and sporting his legendary gut and Andre the Giant hairdo. Then he met with the media and confirmed through an interpreter that yup, he’s a Met because no other team offered him a two-year contract. He’s as straightforward with his words as with his pitching, attributes that complement his unique looks and history.

Baseball’s longest-running freak show is now a Met, and he will bet on himself to reward his new employers for extending themselves to sign him.

“I’m not worried about my weight,” said Colon, who turns 41 in May and is listed by the Mets at 265 pounds (and 5-foot-11). “I’ve always been a big guy. I’ve always pitched that way. I’m comfortable with that.”
Asked how long he could keep pitching at this level, Colon — whose family makes its full-time home in New Jersey — said, “Until my body can’t take it anymore.”

“I think that Bartolo, he’s kind of like a bottle of Jordan wine,” Sandy Alomar Jr., Colon’s first regular big-league catcher and (briefly) a Met in 2007, said Saturday in a telephone interview. “He’s been aging like wine. He has sound, fundamental mechanics. He’s always used his legs. He has very strong legs.”

The Mets’ two-year, $20-million commitment to Colon drew its share of derision in baseball circles. Yet none would dispute that, of all the free-agent starting pitchers from this offseason, Colon enjoyed the best 2013. His 2.65 ERA and 4.03 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 190 ¹/₃ innings pitched with the A’s landed him on the American League Cy Young award ballot (he finished sixth) for the first time since he won the honor in 2005 with the Angels.

“I was a little surprised, as well,” Colon said. “Just keeping healthy and working hard.”

Then-Oakland A’s pitcher Bartolo Colon throws against the Detroit Tigers, Oct. 4, 2013.UPI/Bruce Gordon

As he essentially tries to replace the injured Matt Harvey, Colon brings risk — that his unorthodox physique finally will surrender to common sense, or he will get caught using illegal performance-enhancing drugs for a second time. Colon failed a drug test in 2012, and it turned out he acquired the offending testosterone from the renowned Anthony Bosch — demerit to Colon for apparently not following Bosch’s test-beating advice as diligently as did Alex Rodriguez.

He brings wisdom, too. The soft-spoken Colon won’t be working as Dan Warthen’s associate pitching coach. None of his new teammates will probably become great friends with him. Yet they can watch and learn from this master of movement, command and self-control.

Alomar, now the Indians’ first-base coach, said Colon “throws like a catcher a little bit.”

“He’s not a long-arm guy,” Almar said. “He’s always on top of the ball. You almost never see him underneath the ball. When that happens, he corrects himself right away. He creates an unbelievable amount of sink.”

He does this almost exclusively with his fastball. According to FanGraphs, Colon led the majors last year by throwing his fastball 85.5 percent of the time. Of pitchers who tallied a minimum of 162 innings, Cleveland’s Justin Masterson placed a distant second, at 73.3 percent.

“I think it’s going to be interesting to have our young pitchers … see how this guy goes about his job with one pitch, basically,” manager Terry Collins said Friday. “How he moves that fastball in and out, up and down.”
“When the game ends and you look at him, you don’t know what the outcome is,” Alomar said.

He’s a freak in his approach, his look and his durability. The Mets, up and down the organization, have more than their share of experience with eccentricity. What took this perfect pairing so long to happen? Now the Mets must hope that Boogie can keep scaring hitters despite his status as a baseball senior citizen.