Today, I went for my daily run and coincidentally ran into one of my baseball teammates and former professional right-handed pitcher Luis Torres. After running for awhile, we went to a public park and started to work out.

As you can all imagine, we were talking about baseball. He asked me about Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. I told him that Colon pitched four innings coming out of the bullpen and was charged with four earned runs in his first outing with the Yankees this season. He told me that sometimes a pitcher can’t get the job done while coming out of the bullpen, but as starters they are successful.

He didn’t say that this was always the case though, but he told me that when he was playing for the Nationals organization, the same thing happened to him. He told me that as a starter, in the first two, three innings, his fastball sat at 87-88 MPH, and around the seventh inning his fastball sat at 93-94 MPH.

I wasn’t surprised at all when he told me that, mostly because that happens to me too, although I just thought I was a lousy pitcher. He told me he used to feel more loose as the game went by, and that’s why he felt he could work better. After the 2002 season he underwent shoulder surgery and was moved to the bullpen.

According to my friend, he had some good outings from the pen, but most of them were the opposite of good. He told me some of his managers had faith in him, but some of them didn’t, and that’s why he was given his unconditional release after the 2003 season. That year, he finished with a 0-4 record with a 4.80 ERA and 20 strikeouts over 15 innings in 11 relieving appearances for the Nationals’ Double-A team.

I believe that Joba Chamberlain has struggled the past two seasons because he was moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation and then back to the bullpen again. The inverse occurred as well with Joaquin Benoit, who was a great reliever but was an unsuccessful starter.

There are some pitchers that can be successful in both roles such as John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley, to name a few, but sometimes that’s not the case. Only time will tell if Colon can be successful coming out of the bullpen.