Colon Blow

To the General Manger of the New York Mets,

We meet again.

I'm fake-writing you here with all the admiration in the world for your team. I should, by every intent and purpose, absolutely despise the Mets, but I don't. I think they're a fun team. That being said, however, a certain move you made today baffled, confused, and damn-near enraged me.

You signed Bartolo Colon, an aging pitcher that refuses to age, to a two year contract today. Colon, the Rob Ford of the MLB, had an 18 win season last year, marred by the fact that he was, for the second season in a row, caught taking some sort of performance enhancing substance.

First of all, I get that PEDs aren't a big deal anymore. I totally get it. The Cardinals signed Peralta, even if he was taking them. Whatever. They're so 2007. However, there's taking PEDs, and there's what Colon's been doing. I always used to joke that Colon used some sort of Dominican Mystery Cream on his arm that made this forty-year-old pitcher throw like he was pushing 29.

This guy's gonna be 41 by the end of next season, and he will likely still be throwing hard, and winning a good 17 or 18 games, just on ability. And the problem here is that the only ability a player at his age should have is to run out, wave at the crowd, stay a few innings, pitch unspectacularly, and rest. I don't care if you're superman, or Greg Maddux or Mariano Rivera, but even if you ARE juicing, there is a time to stop.

Colon doesn't seem like he's going to stop. Unless there's an injury to his magical throwing arm, or unless Lucas Duda mistakes Colon's stash for Cheetos, Colon will have just as big a season as he did in 2013, or 2012, or 2005 when he won the Cy Young, as a 32-year old pitcher, pitching like he was still in his twenties. And that's the problem you face when you sign a substance abuser like Colon. You know exactly what is going to happen, and you know he's going to perform like some sort of couch potato Adonis, if such a being exists.

Baseball is supposed to be unpredictable. Players have up seasons, players have down seasons, players evade relevance. You can't shoot a lazer at Matt Harvey and say 'yup, Hall of Famer'. The game molds the player. Steroids, and Bartolo Colon, are doing the opposite- the player takes the substance, tells exactly what he's going to do, and how well he's going to perform, and that's what he does. That isn't unpredictable. That's cheap. That's why the same baseball team hasn't won every year, because some years they have to suck. Bartolo Colon, once he started taking testosterone, evaded all possibility of ever being crappy, or even subpar by Colon standards, again.

He went 8-and-10 with the Yankees in 2011, and people still saw that he was rebounding. I imagine he started taking the testosterone around there, because from then on he had no down seasons. 2012, he won two more than he lost. This year he won 18, and got an All Star nod. From here, he can do whatever the hell he wants, but whatever it is, it won't be unpredictable.

Unpredictable is the Mets winning the NL East in 2014. Could it happen? Possibly. That's why it's unpredictable. Predictable is Bartolo Colon having another good season. Why? Because it was predictable that Barry Bonds was gonna break the record in 2007, because he wouldn't let himself get injured, and/or have a down season.

That's what you're signing up for. Barry Bonds throwing 88 every start for two seasons.

Sincerely,

Jordan

P.S.- If you want to redeem yourself, dump Ike Davis either in the Atlantic Ocean or in Houston.