In an afternoon game today in Oakland 40-year-old Bartolo Colon takes on 38-year-old R.A. Dickey. You would think with both guys having so much service time in the big leagues that they would have faced each other a bunch of times, well you'd be wrong. Colon has been good again this year after being suspended last season for PEDs, but won't be punished again for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal since he has already served his time, like Melky Cabrera. Colon has a 2.54 ERA and a 3.25 FIP with an xFIP of 4.02 due to his nice spacious home ballpark. Both his K/9 and BB/9 are extremely low with his strikeouts at a rate of 4.89 K/9 and his BB/9 at 1.14. His win-loss record of 14-3 has made the people who care about those things pretty excited, but regardless of that Colon has been very good this year for a bargain of $3 million. The last couple years Colon has followed the same strategy of keeping the ball in the huge Oakland ballpark and not walking anyone.
Bartolo throws a four-seamer, sinker, changeup, and slider with his hard stuff still hanging in the low 90's a mere 16 years after his debut in the major leagues. Colon has been getting his whiffs on the outside of the plate against righties mainly with his slider:
I think this could be a good match-up for the Blue Jays as Toronto's hitters are good fastball hitters and Colon has thrown a whole lot of hard stuff in his starts this year:
Lefties are slightly better against Colon than righties so the lineup I'd like to see this afternoon would be:
- Reyes SS
- Cabrera LF
- Bautsita RF
- Encarnacion 1B
- Lind DH
- Rasmus CF
- Izturis 2B
- Lawrie 3B
- Thole C