![\"WHGB11\"](\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/WHGB.png\" "\\"WHGB11\\"")
He arrived as an uninspiring second prize to a team unaccustomed to accepting second best.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\nHe arrived as an uninspiring second prize to a team unaccustomed to accepting second best.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The New York Yankee way was for Cliff Lee, the most-prized pitcher on the free agent market, to be stood in front of the cameras wearing pinstripes at a press conference.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead they had to make do with Bartolo Colon signing a Minor League contract.\u00c2\u00a0 No cameras, no fanfare, no bullish statement of intent to demoralize their rivals.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
And why would there be?\u00c2\u00a0 Here was a pitcher pushing 38 years old who hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pitched at all in the Majors in 2010 and had battled through four injury-riddled seasons prior to that.\u00c2\u00a0 The Yankees were signing a former Cy Young award winner, but his 2005 season seemed a lifetime ago and there was no pretence that Cy Young form was expected from the new recruit.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colon had pitched well in the Dominican Winter League and the Yankees thought he was worth a flyer; a Minor League deal and an invite to Spring Training to see if he had anything left.\u00c2\u00a0 Against the odds, Colon won a place on the Yankees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pitching staff as a long-reliever and when Phil Hughes went down, he was next in line to step into the rotation.<\/p>\n
Two starts in and the Yankees couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be happier with how he has done.\u00c2\u00a0 His eight-inning performance against the Chicago White Sox last Wednesday was particularly impressive. Showing a four-seam fastball that hit 96 MPH on the radar gun, he was able to keep an admittedly scuffling Sox lineup in check with relative ease after escaping from a bases-loaded jam in the second inning.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
While the speed of his four-seam fastball caught the eye, watching his start more closely shows that it was his two-seamer that gave the White Sox hitters the most trouble.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The beauty of a pitch is in the eye of the beholder.\u00c2\u00a0 Some are awed by a blazing high fastball that the hitter can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t leave but can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit either, others revel in a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBugs Bunny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 changeup that baffles completely, or a 12-6 curve that starts at the letters and ends up on the shoetops of a hitter busy swinging himself into the ground.<\/p>\n
But the comeback two-seamer takes some beating for me.\u00c2\u00a0 There have been many fine exponents of the pitch over the years, but Greg Maddux was the master and I always think of it as the Maddux pitch.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
When thrown by a right-handed pitcher to a left-handed hitter, the pitch looks as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to hit their front hip, often causing the batter to slightly move away and lift their bat to let the pitch harmless fly past.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the tailing action on the pitch brings it back in so that it catches the inside corner of the plate for a strike.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the baseball equivalent of a batsman shouldering arms at a swinging delivery only to hear the death rattle as it clips the top of off-stump.<\/p>\n
Colon used the pitch to great effect on Wednesday.\u00c2\u00a0 In one case he got Paul Konerko to harmlessly ground into an inning-ending double play, the movement on the pitch making it so difficult for the batter to square the ball up.\u00c2\u00a0 Then he took care of Adam Dunn in the fourth and A.J. Pierzynski in the sixth in the classic come-backer style: a called third strike with the batter left staring at a pitch that they thought was going to be several inches inside.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no telling how long Colon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good form will last and the Yankees will be glad for whatever they get from him.\u00c2\u00a0 So long as he can throw that two-seamer for a strike and has another pitch or two to work with, Colon might just be able to hold back Father Time for a little longer yet.<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in a name?<\/strong><\/p>\n As an A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fan on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the charmless nature of the ballpark in Oakland doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect me too much.\u00c2\u00a0 I can join in with the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a dump, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 banter without having to face the practicalities of its less-than-impressive facilities.<\/p>\n One part of the ballpark that I am confronted by on a regular basis is its name.\u00c2\u00a0 On game reports, news items and commentaries, it always gets a mention.\u00c2\u00a0 And after an announcement\u00c2\u00a0last week, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be a real pain.<\/p>\n An online discount retailer has paid $7.2m to buy the naming rights of the Oakland A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Oakland Raiders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 home for the next six years.\u00c2\u00a0 As of this week, Bob Geren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s team are welcoming their opponents to the Overstock.com Coliseum. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The .com bit makes it all the more horrible.\u00c2\u00a0 Overstock Coliseum would sound daft too, but in time it would roll off the tongue, or glide past the eye, without anyone taking much notice as to what it stands for, just as football fans refer to Arsenal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stadium as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Emirates\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without consciously linking it to the airline.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 As it is, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t overlook the link (although you can refuse to click on it in protest).<\/p>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the compromise of corporate sponsorship.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll cringe every time I see the name and defiantly continue to call it the Coliseum.<\/p>\n All-Stars already?<\/strong><\/p>\n Every year a debate starts on what criteria fans should use to choose their All-Star selections.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an empty debate in some ways as there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a right or wrong answer to the question, no matter how forcefully some may argue for their approach as being correct.\u00c2\u00a0 It comes down to a personal choice of who you would like to see being part of it and how you decide on that is up to you.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n However, one question always crops up: how much weight should you give to a player\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance so far this season?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n I mention it because the voting system for this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s All-Star game has already opened, which seems very early to me.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take into account how a player is performing during the current season when making your picks then that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fair enough.\u00c2\u00a0 A good first-half to the season can tip the balance between two close contenders for me, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be leaving my ballot until much closer to the voting deadline (30 June).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bartolo Colon’s comeback, the A’s ballpark becomes even more uninviting and All-Star voting begins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[553,98,128],"class_list":["post-10719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-oakland-as"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10719"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10735,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719\/revisions\/10735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}