Inside Baseball

Grand Opening  

Maturing Indian Bartolo Colon got high marks for his low pitch count in the lid lifter

By Phil Taylor

Bartolo Colon was doing crunches on the floor of the visitors' clubhouse at Edison International Field on Sunday night, which was an unexpected sight for at least two reasons: Colon, the Indians' hard-throwing righthander, has an ample midsection that suggests the only crunches he's familiar with are made by Nestlé, and he was doing the exercises only 20 minutes after ushering in the 2002 season with a five-hit shutout of the Angels. Cleveland third baseman Travis Fryman, who homered in the Tribe's 6-0 win, watched Colon pump away. "Just look at him," Fryman said. "Ever since spring training started, he's been working more diligently than I've ever seen him."

With newfound confidence in his off-speed pitches, Colon delivered a 98-pitch shutout of the Angels. V.J. Lovero

Maybe Colon was just trying to work off excess energy after dispatching Anaheim with a mere 98 pitches, a total that often represents just a few innings' work for him. His 3,650 pitches last season were the most thrown by any pitcher in the American League, bolstering his reputation as an abundantly talented but inconsistent pitcher who causes unnecessary work for himself with his lapses in concentration.

For Cleveland, Colon's performance on Sunday was a sign that he might be ready to become the ace it will need to help offset the drop in offensive production it's likely to see now that two of its heavy hitters from a year ago, Roberto Alomar and Juan Gonzalez, are gone. Colon was overpowering when he needed to be -- he was still throwing in the mid-90s in the ninth inning -- but, more important, he was efficient, with five strikeouts, two walks and only one inning in which he faced more than four batters.

Colon, a native of the Dominican Republic, has a formidable fastball that helped him strike out 201 hitters in 222 1/3 innings last year, but he has often relied on it to a fault. Against the Mariners two years ago he threw 60 pitches in one inning, all but one of them fastballs. But he spent the past off-season and spring training working on his curveball and slider, with the goal of getting outs earlier in the count by inducing hitters to put those deliveries into play. "The off-speed pitches are important for me," he said through an interpreter, bullpen coach Luis Isaac. "They could mean five or six fewer pitches every inning, and that's a big difference."

The Angels had a runner on second with one out in the eighth when Colon used his head as much as his arm to get out of trouble. Instead of trying to blow away Darin Erstad and Tim Salmon with heat, he got Erstad to bounce to first on a second-pitch curve and then set up Salmon with two sliders for strikes before fanning him on a 94-mph fastball.

That's the kind of intelligent approach the Indians have been waiting for Colon to adopt since his rookie year, in 1997. "When a young pitcher throws a game like that, it teaches him more about how to pitch than words from a manager or pitching coach could ever teach him," Cleveland manager Charlie Manuel said after the game. "He sent a message tonight, but he learned a lot too."

It turns out that Colon isn't as young a pitcher as the Indians once thought he was. He's one of several Latin American players whose listed ages were discovered to be inaccurate when their birth certificates were more closely checked this year. Colon, who was thought to be 26, is 28. But the Indians aren't concerned about that. He may have aged two years overnight, but if opening night was any indication, Cleveland will find his new maturity most welcome.      

Issue date: April 8, 2002

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