Oakland Athletics re-sign Bartolo Colon for year – MLB Update
Starting pitcher Bartolo Colon despite suspension for PED gets another year deal with the Oakland Athletics.
"We wanted to bring him back - everybody, Bob (manager Melvin), me, everybody, We ended up with a very good rotation, a young and talented rotation. But we wanted to find a veteran guy. In Bartolo's case, based on the production, he was cost effective and good,” general manager Billy Beane said.
Beane added, "Once again, he's still got five games to serve on the suspension. The punishment is handed down by Major League Baseball, it is served and then at that point we move forward, He threw in winter ball a few times and we were down there."
The A’s signed him for one-year for his relatively good performance in the 2012 Major League Baseball season.
His stats of 3.43 ERA along with 10-9 win loss, 91 strike-outs and 1.21 WHIP impressed the A’s to re-sign him for another despite his involvement in Performance Enhancing Drugs.
In addition to that PED charges, the Major League authorities banned him for 50-games.
It is a good sign for the Athletics that they have re-signed Bartolo Colon, but at the same time many experts believe that he should have not been re-signed by any Major League franchise which would have created a hard line for game’s offenders.
Any game’s dignity rests in its originality and those who breach any code of conduct of any discipline; those should have dealt with most seriousness.
However, some experts also defend this inflexible thinking of giving hard punishments to these kinds of offenders, that the Major League should expand their testing procedure to be more trustworthy for its evident lack of competitiveness.
A recent case of Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun’s PED issue also raised some serious questions on authentication of MLB and its test labs.
On the other hand, excluding Bartolo’s involvement in PED, he still is a vital player and in the future he will prove a productive individual for the Athletics.
He is carrying his career 4.05 ERA along with 171-122 win-loss 1833 strike-outs and 1.33 WHIP which makes a very good player in the league.
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