Bartolo Colon had a rather impressive start to his big league career with the Red Sox.
Throwing 74 pitches, 62 percent were for strikes, an encouraging sign, especially with someone coming off an arm injury making his first start in the bigs. Only 6.7 percent of batted balls registered as line drives, perhaps the most significant measure of BABIP that measures how well batters tee off a pitcher.
To be sure, pitching against the corpse known as the Royals offense sure helped his line, but he limited the Royals to six singles in five innings, walking two and whiffing four. He also gave up two runs and induced eight ground balls to three flies.
I was able to watch a good amount of the game last night, and I came away impressed with Colon’s two-seamer, as it had good tail and he was able to control the strike zone with it. I did not notice anything special about his other off-speed pitches (such as his change up and slider) but that is unsurprising as Colon has always been and will always be a pitcher who relies on speed and location of his fastballs.
His change-up last year averaged 86 miles per hour, while his slider was a tick below at 85. His two-seamer registered at 92 and normal four-seam fastball at 95. He rarely relies on the change and whets his appetite with the two-seamer, which has very good horizontal break away from a right-handed batter and his four-seamer tends to ride up.
Having two different fastballs that operate on two different planes (two-seamer low and breaking horizontally versus a rising four-seamer with a slight break of a two-seamer) is perfect for varying the eye level of a batter.
| Colon relies heavily upon his fastball, and there |