The Nationals announced Friday that they’ve signed veteran reliever Alex Colome to a minor league contract and invited him to Major League spring training. Colome is represented by Wasserman. According to Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post, Colome has long been on the Nationals’ radar.
Colome, 34, pitched for the Rockies last year and struggled mightily. In 47 innings, he posted a 5.74 ERA, 14.9 K%, and 10.2 BB%. The silver lining was a career-best 55.6% groundball rate, which ranked tenth in the National League for relievers with at least 40 frames. That allowed Colome to post a slightly above-average 0.96 HR/9 despite half his innings coming at Coors Field.
Some of Colome’s best work came with the Rays, the team that signed him as an 18-year-old out of the Dominican Republic. He made his lone All-Star team in 2016, and led MLB in saves the following year. The Rays traded Colome to the Mariners in 2018, who shipped him to the White Sox six months later. He’s since signed a series of one-year deals in free agency, first with the Twins and then with the Rockies.
2022 represented the first time Colome failed to tally double digit saves since 2015, which was also the last season he was used partially as a starter. The Rockies chose to give their highest-leverage work and most save opportunities to Daniel Bard. Colome spent part of the summer as manager Bud Black’s third-most trusted reliever, but fell out of favor around August. His ERA stood at 3.20 on July 30th, and then he proceeded to allow 16 earned runs over his next 7 2/3 innings to close out his season. Those innings came over 12 appearances, as he recorded zero or one out in five of them. Perhaps on a related note, Colome had an IL stint in August for right lateral epicondylitis, also known as tennis elbow. He also spent some time on the bereavement list in September.
Colome has put together a ten-year MLB career with 159 saves, despite missing bats at an above-average clip only twice: in 2016 and 2018. His control, once pretty strong, has slipped into the 9 BB% range since he joined the White Sox. Around that same point in his career, Colome started abandoning his four-seam fastball for a cutter. That has at least allowed him to post a 54.2% groundball rate since 2020. There was a point when Colome was at least limiting hard contact, but last year 10% of the batted balls he allowed were barrels, which is not a good place to be.
Coming off the season he had, the most important factor in free agency is opportunity, and Colome chose the right team for that. The Nationals’ highest-leverage reliever from last year, Tanner Rainey, underwent Tommy John surgery in August. Holdovers include Kyle Finnegan, Carl Edwards Jr., Victor Arano, and Hunter Harvey. Some of those pitchers had better years than you might have realized, but the rebuilding Nats are a good destination for a veteran reliever trying to rebuild value.
The Nats also brought Sean Doolittle and Francisco Perez back on a minor league deals and retained Erasmo Ramirez on a $1MM contract, so their ’pen features surprisingly little turnover. Anthony Banda will also fight for a job in spring training, having signed a minor league deal after pitching for the Pirates, Blue Jays, and Yankees last year.
Perhaps working against a Colome resurgence, USA Today’s Bryan Kalbrosky has noted that he was one of the game’s slowest workers in 2022. With the implementation of a pitch clock at 15 seconds with bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on, Colome will have to speed things up to avoid getting penalized.
Struggled mightily is not a great description of his season with the Rockies. He was pretty decent the first half of the season, handled the 7th or 8th inning OK. Then the last 2 or 3 months he was horrible.
Rockies of course failed to trade him at the deadline when they should have been able to at least get salary relief.
I respectfully disagree – in my opinion, Colome’s struggles being uneven doesn’t really dampen the overall badness of posting a 5.74 ERA. Plus, I did explain the unevenness and potential injury effect.
I don’t understand what happened to him. In his two seasons with the Sox he rarely blew a save. Then he goes to Minnesota and he starts to decline. There seem to be a lot of players who are good with only one team. Hard to figure.
@avenger65 His time in Chicago seemed like it was absoutley fueled by batted ball luck. .213 BAbip in his two seasons there. In the three years prior, he had a .282 babip.
Why is BAbip attributed to luck? It would seem if a pitcher is throwing well and hitting his spots, BAbip would be low, and if he is missing his spots, it would be high. How is that luck? I would attribute it to skill.
Well, it’s not that he is/isn’t talented, but it was such an outlier more than anything. According to FanGraphs; “A high or low BABIP is not necessarily a sign of luck, but a BABIP that is substantially different from one’s career mark usually is”. Colome had a .211 BABIP with Chicago compared to .290 in the year’s prior. It’s also not necessairly talent based. Edwin Diaz was arguably the best RP last year, and had a .330 BABIP. Shohei Ohtani, Carlos Rodon, and Aaron Nola each had BABIP around .290.
I wrote the comment before the story was expanded. Now it properly conveys how he went from pretty good to terrible sometime in July.
To me it appears there was a tale of two seasons last year for Colome where as ahh shares his first half results were acceptable enough but his total, final results were not based on a brutal second half. We know what MLB GMs think of Colome today based on the minor league contract he signed with the Nationals.
First half he had a 2.86 ERA, but a 1.41 WHIP. He wasn’t getting lit up, but he was dancing through the raindrops.
Big fan. Very good with locating pitches and not giving in to better hitters while a closer with WSox. Really smart guy who knew what he couldn’t get away with in certain moments. Those who worship metrics a bit too much foamed at the mouth b/c he managed to be effective without wipe out stuff. Alas-it seems there may not be enough cunning or guile to overcome his current repertoire. Good luck Alex Colome!
I think it’s simpler: he’s demonstrated limited skill since 2019, and ERA is always prone to fluctuation in small samples.
Seems like a worthwhile gamble on both sides. Nats might catch lightning in a bottle and be able to flip him. And Colome must have an opt out date if he doesn’t get selected to the 40 man.
4 or 5 years too late.
Can’t hurt to see how he pitches in spring training since it is a minor league contract.
Tennis elbow. He’s been shot for the last few seasons. Has little left even if his arm is allowing him to throw the ball
“Some of Colome’s best work came with the Rays.” That can be said by almost every pitcher that has spent any time with the Rays.
Great signing. If he has good first half they dump him for prospect. If not, nothing much lost.
Great signing. If he has good first half they trade for a mid-level prospect. If not, little lost.