Colon To Pen?

Today was supposed to be the day that Bartolo Colon was to be promoted to the Big Leagues or have the opportunity to opt out of his contract. Because of his oblique injury he has agreed to push back the opt-out clause to June 1. There is still a good chance that he can help this team, but I wonder what would have happened if he did not agree to move back the clause and chose to opt out if he was not promoted.

This day comes a couple of days after Jon Lester’s best start in a Red Sox uniform and possibly Clay Buchholz best start as well. You might argue that his no-hitter was his best start, but some people who know about these things and watched both games, John Farrell, for one, have said that the stuff he had in his last start was even better than the stuff he had during the no-hitter. There is also the fact that he had the advantage of never having faced the Orioles before the no-hitter, whereas most of the Blue Jays hitters who faced him the other night had already faced him once before, last September. Which one of these two games was his best is debatable, but my main point here is that both of these young pitchers threw very good games in their last outings, both are showing signs of improvement and both have the potential, while still developing in the Major Leagues, to give us at least as much as Colon might give us with a much higher upside.

As it stands right now, it wouldn’t make sense to me to send one of them down, most likely Buchholz, just so we could add Colon to the Big League team instead of losing him.

Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that right now and we have another month to make that decision. A lot can happen in a month. One or more pitchers could get injured or one or both of our young pitchers could struggle and make the decision on June 1^st an easy one. But it’s also possible that all 5 of our starters will stay healthy, Lester and Buchholz will continue to develop and pitch well and we will find ourselves right back in the same situation of trying to decide what to do with Colon a month from now.

What would we do then? To me it would still not make sense to send one of them down and plug Colon into the starting rotation, but what about bringing him up to plug a hole in the set up role where we clearly could use some help?

Manny Delcarmen is struggling right now. Sure it could still be the effects of the flu bug he had, but he’s not the only one that had it and everyone else seems to be over it. Maybe he just hasn’t turned the corner yet, like we thought he had. Mike Timlin is also struggling big time and as much as I love the guy, I have to admit to thinking that at 42 years old he just might be done being an effective Major League pitcher. Of course I thought that last year as well and he ended up proving me wrong. David Aardsma is doing an okay job right now, but he’s struggling with control, having already walked 11 in 13.2 innings, and he has a history of this always catching up with him.

Bartolo Colon is 34 years old, normally still young enough to succeed as a starter in the Major Leagues, but shoulder problems have limited him to a total of 29 games over the last two seasons. What’s more, those shoulder problems have caused the velocity in his 4-seamer to drop from the mid-90’s to the high 80’s-low 90’s. Colon has always had a weight problem and even when healthy over the last few seasons he has struggled with endurance. It’s possible that his arm might not be adaptable to bullpen duty, especially with the shoulder problems. But if it is, wouldn’t it make sense to give it a try?