New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon referred to his home run as his best baseball moment. That got us to thinking. What would rank No. 2 through 5. Here’s a quick list.
Sept. 18, 2000 -- The best game Colon ever pitched is a 13-strikeout, one-hit shutout on the road against the two-time defending champion Yankees at age 27 with the Indians. Colon took a no-hitter into the eighth inning before Luis Polonia broke it up with a single to center field. Colon is the only visiting pitcher to allow one hit or fewer with at least 13 strikeouts in a shutout in the history of the ballparks known as Yankee Stadium.
"The way Bartolo was throwing, we were lucky to get a hit off him," said the opposing pitcher that day, Roger Clemens.
2002 season –- Colon won 20 games for the first time, but did it in an unusual way. Colon was the centerpiece of a megatrade between the two teams, in which the Indians netted Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore from the Expos. That the deal didn’t work out for Montreal wasn’t Colon’s fault. After going 10-4 with the Indians, he went 10-4 with the Expos as well, finishing 20-8 with a 2.93 ERA.
2005 season –- Colon won the AL Cy Young after posting a 21-8 record with a 3.48 ERA. Though you can use modern sabermetric tools to make a case that others should have won the award, Colon was still pretty good that season. With the Angels and Athletics battling for a division title, Colon went 9-2 with a 3.04 ERA in his last dozen starts. That included allowing one run in five innings in a 7-1 win over the Athletics during the final weekend of the season that put the Angels in the division lead for good.
Sept. 5, 2015 –- Colon not only became the oldest Mets pitcher to throw a shutout, in beating the Marlins, 7-0, he made one of the most amazing defensive plays you’ll ever see –- a behind-the-back flip on Justin Bour’s soft grounder in the sixth inning. The 42-year-old Colon also became the oldest pitcher to throw a shutout since 47-year-old Jamie Moyer in 2010.
