Chicago Tribune’s Dave van Dyck reports the fourth slot in the White Sox rotation may be stuffed with bulky 36 year old RHP Bartolo Colon. The regional network of Old Country Buffet restaurants has been placed on threat level Orange.
The White Sox are on the verge of bringing back Bartolo Colon to see if he has enough left in his innings-taxed arm to help in the starting rotation.
Colon, who was 15-13 with a 3.87 ERA in a career-high 242 innings for the 2003 Sox, spent most of last season fighting back problems while with Boston.
Colon will be 36 in May and pitched only 39 innings last summer, but sources said the White Sox think he still has enough that he will be signed to a non-guaranteed one-year, incentive-laden deal if he passes a physical.
The pending deal apparently means another former Sox veteran, Freddy Garcia, will not return to supplement a rotation headed by Mark Buehrle, John Danks and Gavin Floyd.
Colon is expected to compete with Clayton Richard, Lance Broadway, rookie Aaron Poreda and Jeff Marquez, acquired from the Yankees in the Nick Swisher trade, for a spot in the back end of the rotation.
No one is sure what Colon has left in his 5-foot-11-inch, 250-plus-pound body. He started only seven games for Boston last year but won four of them before straining his back while batting in an interleague game.
He was placed on the 60-day disabled list and, after being shelled in his return, was sent to the bullpen. He later was suspended without pay Sept. 19 after leaving the team because he was upset at being a reliever.
White Sox general manager Ken Williams, who always has been a Colon fan, is ready to take another chance on the burly right-hander. Colon last pitched more than 100 innings in 2005, when he threw 2222/3 while going 21-8 for the Angels. He is 150-97 for his career.
Colon’s off-speed stuff has always been wicked, and had he not pulled a muscle in the ’05 ALDS against New York, the Sox might not have benefited from the early appearance and defeat of John Lackey in the ALCS Game 3 in Anaheim. But that’s just it: Colon’s muscles have been so tasked with the job of carrying around Bartolo Colon, it wouldn’t be any surprise that the tank is empty for other endavors. You can eat a lot of innings, or you can eat a lot of arroz con pollo, but you probably can’t do both.
That’s a good headline, Rob.
Well thanks Dave. Did you know that Google hates that headline?
It might not be common knowledge to “actual”, non-primarily-blogging writers, but the headline of a blog post is a real big deal to Google and search engines (and therefore to blog traffic), and not in a good way.
For example, this headline does nothing to tell Google that the post is about the White Sox because it doesn’t have the exact characters “White Sox” in it. Nor “Bartolo Colon”.
The reason that matters is if you don’t give Google what it wants the way it wants it, Google brings the site site fewer eyeballs – of people searching for those terms. That means traffic loss.
Their software has to make decisions about what the pages are about and those decisions are absurdly weighted by what words are in the headline.
So, Google is really kind of dumb and won’t “get” a subtle or snappy or non-obvious headline. Which leads to not “getting” the page. Then not “getting” the site and burying it in search results.
It’s a goddamn robotocracy. Fuck ’em, I say.
So the “robotocracy” inhibits traffic on Sox posts? A nation’s apathy toward the South Side has finally entered the digital age.
Ben