Colon Becomes 1st Pitcher to Beat Same Team for 7 Different Teams
New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon earned the win in Tuesday's 3-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles, making him the first player in MLB history to beat the same team as a member of seven different teams, per MLB Stat of the Day.
The 41-year-old was dominant in the 442nd start of his 18-year career, striking out nine batters over 7.2 innings, with just one run allowed on six hits.
The lone run came in the eighth inning on a solo homer off the bat of Orioles third baseman Manny Machado, who has been one of the hottest hitters in all of baseball over the past two or three weeks.
Colon is having a fantastic season of his own, with a 5-1 record, 2.90 ERA, 0.94 WHIP and 34-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio through six outings.
The former flamethrower's late-career renaissance is one of the better stories in recent baseball history, with Colon defying all notions of a connection between physical fitness and longevity.
Listed at 5'11", 285 pounds by MLB.com, the Dominican right-hander has been nearly as effective over the last five seasons as he was during his so-called prime from the late 1990s to mid-2000s.
While he either pitched poorly or not at all from 2006 to 2010, he re-emerged as a valuable contributor for the New York Yankees in 2011.
The rest is history, as Colon now owns a 209-142 record for his career, supplemented by a 3.94 ERA and 1.30 WHIP that look much better when you consider how many of his innings were thrown during baseball's steroid era.
While he might need to effectively pitch into his mid-40s to garner serious consideration for the Hall of Fame, Colon's newly owned record is one that will be rather difficult to break, even with the expansion of interleague play.
There's actually some chance Colon will eventually beat the Orioles in an eighth different uniform, as his contract with the Mets only runs through this season, and he still seems to have plenty left in the tank.
