With the release of Bartolo Colon by the Braves becoming official a few days ago, many expected the Mets to re-up with "Big Sexy," but instead Colon has signed a minor-league deal with the Twins. The club announced the move Friday evening.
Perhaps most noteworthy here is that this marks Colon's 10th team in his 20-year career.
The Twins are still hanging around in contention in both the AL Central and AL wild-card races and need some starting pitcher depth. It remains to be seen if Colon can provide any help, though.
In 14 starts for the Braves this season, Colon was 2-8 with an 8.14 ERA, 1.78 WHIP and 42 strikeouts against 20 walks in 63 innings. He coughed up 30 runs (23 earned) in 15 innings in his last four outings for Atlanta, leading to his being designated for assignment.
Given that he's 44 years old and carrying 3,235 1/3 regular-season innings on that arm, it's fair to believe that he's done as a useful big-leaguer.
The flip side of that is Colon had a 3.43 ERA in nearly 200 innings for the Mets last season. He has defied Father Time for this long, so is one more half season of that really out of the question?
Not to mention -- from the Twins' perspective -- that they only have to pay Colon the pro-rated league minimum. The Braves are still responsible for Colon's one-year, $12.5 million price tag.
Basically, it's possible there's no reward here, but there's also very little risk. If Colon has nothing in the minors, the Twins don't have to promote him to the bigs.
