Record-Chasing Bartolo Colon Sets One, Sits On Another
It seems I really want to write about Bartolo Colon this year, so here goes another: He didn’t pitch badly in his record-setting start against the A’s Monday in Oakland. In fact, for somebody pushing 45 years of age, he looked pretty damn good. Six full innings and one earned run gets you a Quality Start these days, so Big Sexy proved he’s still got something left in the tank.
With the start, Colon sets the MLB record for most AL teams pitched for in a career with eight. If you’re keeping score at home, Colon has pitched for the Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, Oakland Athletics, Minnesota Twins and, now, the Rangers.
Despite breaking one record, he fell short in his effort to get closer to another. By not getting the run support he needed to notch a W, he left the game with no decision. And he could also find himself out of a job soon, with Martin Perez ready to return to the Rangers from the disabled list. This was a missed opportunity for Colon, since he has one career goal—one legacy—in mind, and Monday’s start did nothing to bring it any closer to reality.
Colon is sitting at 240 wins over an MLB career that now stretches 21 seasons. Only 55 men have ever won more games in their careers, and Colon can count himself as one of the all-time leaders in this category. But as a native of the Dominican Republic, only one of those 55 pitchers matters to him: countryman Juan Marichal.
Marichal’s 243 career wins puts him above all other Dominican pitchers, and Bartolo Colon knows how very close he is to matching, if not exceeding, this total. Marichal is alive at 80 years old, and may or may not welcome another Dominican pitcher making a run at his career win total. But Colon’s time is limited, and there are no guarantees he will get enough starts to pick up the three wins—or, preferably, the four wins—he needs to join Marichal at the top of the heap of Dominican pitchers.
If the Rangers should send Colon to the minors—or even give him a DFA in order to clear a roster spot for Perez—it will make his quest to match or exceed Marichal’s win total even more unlikely than it already is. Each start Bartolo Colon makes at the major league level can potentially bring him one step closer to Marichal, but the Rangers’ bats didn’t cooperate on Monday. We’ll have to see where things go from here, but Monday certainly was not a step in the right direction.
