OAKLAND — Stephen Vogt had never caught Bartolo Colon before Friday and had never caught any of the A’s starters before this week. Vogt is undefeated in three starts behind the plate after Colon pitched eight strong innings in a 6-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
Vogt’s 3-0 is impressive, but not as much so as the 8-0 record and 1.37 ERA Colon has put together in his last eight starts. The last seven starts have come since his 40th birthday, making him the first big league pitcher ever to win his first seven starts after turning the big 4-0.
“He was phenomenal,” Vogt said of Colon, who retired the first 13 batters and didn’t allow a run until he had a six-run cushion. “It’s neat to catch a guy like Colon.”
Colon, now 11-2 with a 2.79 ERA after his eight-inning, 101-pitch effort, stopped by Vogt and gave him a big hug after manager Bob Melvin let Colon know he was done for the night.
“He pulled me over and said ‘Thanks, Papi,'” Vogt said.
It’s possible that memory will stick with Vogt as long as the baseball he collected for his first big league hit. Vogt was 0 for 25 in his career before coming to the A’s from Tampa Bay in April.
That number got to 0 for 32 before the fourth inning, when Vogt got behind 0-2 to Cardinals reliever Joe Kelly, then lined the ball over the right field wall for his first big league hit, a homer. The ball was caught by a 5-year-old girl and returned to the A’s to give to Vogt as a keepsake.
“I feel so happy for him getting his first hit, his first home run,” Colon said.
He and his Oakland teammates had a funny way of showing it. Vogt raced around the bases only to find the A’s just sitting quietly in the dugout. It was a classic case of the silent treatment, and it lasted just a few seconds before the dugout erupted in celebration.
“Giving somebody the cold shoulder like that, the silent treatment, that’s baseball,” Seth Smith said with a big smile. The D.H., who had arguably the biggest hit of the game with a bases-loaded single in the second, said, “It only lasts for a moment. It’s literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing for him, and we know that. We were all happy to be part of it.”
Vogt said he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“To me, it’s the greatest thing in the world,” he said, “to get the silent treatment and to have this team adopt me after just three days.”
In bringing the first half of the 2013 season to a close by winning game 81 of 162, Colon got the A’s on pace to win 94 games, the same number they had in winning the American League West last year.
And Colon would be putting himself in prime consideration for an All-Star game start if Detroit’s Max Scherzer hadn’t beaten Tampa Bay on Friday to run his record to 12-0. Scherzer’s ERA is higher than Colon’s, however, at 3.10.
The A’s hit their halfway point ranked fourth in the league in runs scored and sixth in runs allowed. Mostly they’ve spent the last six weeks getting quality starting pitching such as the effort turned in Friday by Colon.
“They have really good pitching here,” Vogt said.
And it starts with a 40-year-old who throws mostly fastballs.
“I don’t know if you can call it a fastball,” Smith said, alluding to the great amount of movement Colon gets on his pitches. “It’s a pitch unique to him.”
And so far, age hasn’t been a factor.
