SHIELDS COUGHS UP HOME RUN TO COLON
James Shields led the majors with 40 home runs allowed in 2016.
All he could do about the last one he surrendered on this date — May 7 — in 2016 was laugh.
At least in time.
To be fair, a lot of people were laughing — a lot — at the sight of 285-pound Bartolo Colon slowly trotting around the bases after his first career home run, while nearing his 43rd birthday.
The pitcher’s pace didn’t upset Shields in the least.
“Absolutely not,” Shields told the Union-tribune a day after yielding the home run. “I think if I hit a home run, for my first home run, I’d be trotting pretty slow myself. I’m not a very fast guy, either. Like I said, I’m happy for him and his career. I’ve always respected Bartolo.
“I definitely didn’t think it was going to happen to me, but it’s all good.”
A four-year, $75 million deal — then a franchise record — brought Shields to the Padres in the winter of 2015 and he put forth a decent first season in San Diego, going 13-7 with a 3.91 ERA and 216 strikeouts in 2021⁄3 innings.
But the wheels came off in Year 2 in San Diego, and Colon’s blast didn’t help matters.
A 34-year-old Shields allowed four home runs through his first six starts but posted a 3.23 ERA, limited hitters to a .246 batting average and pitched six or more innings each time out.
But on May 7, Yoenis Cespedes’ first-inning homer staked the Mets to a 2-0 lead. The next inning, Colon followed batterymate Kevin Plawecki’s two-out double with a high home run that settled just below the first deck of the Western Metal Supply Co. building beyond the left-field wall.
Colon picked out a 90-mph fastball and in doing so became the oldest player to ever hit his first home run. He had an .089 career batting average at the time of the blast, but saw just one more straight pitch while striking out in each of his two ensuing at-bats against Shields.
“I threw him one fastball,” Shields said a day after dismissing a Colon conversation with a “next question.” “Then I threw him a slider and two curveballs. In his third AB, I threw him all curveballs. When you give up the first home run to Bartolo Colon and he’s 42 years old, you try not to give up the second.”
Shields didn’t give up another run in the game and pitched six innings, but was still saddled with his fifth loss in seven starts on the young season.
He followed that effort with seven shutout innings in Milwaukee to earn his second win and turned in three straight quality starts before coughing up 10 runs in 22⁄3 innings in Seattle in what turned out to be his last start in a Padres uniform.
“To have a starter like Shields perform as poorly as he did (in Seattle),” Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler said in an ensuing radio interview on The Mighty 1090, “is an embarrassment to the team, an embarrassment to him.”
Shields was traded three days later to the Chicago White Sox for left-hander Erik Johnson and a teenage shortstop who’d yet to play an inning of affiliated ball. The Padres ate roughly half of the $58 million left on Shields’ contract because they were fairly confident in what they were getting in Fernando Tatis Jr.
Meantime, Shields went on to lose 12 more games in a miserable return to the AL Central (6.77 ERA), a three-year stay that saw Shields go 16-35 with a 5.31 ERA with the White Sox.
The 2018 season was the last for both Shields and Johnson, who required Tommy John surgery shortly after the trade.
Tatis debuted for the Padres on opening day in 2019.
Also on this date
2003: 2B Mark Loretta set a franchise record with 13 assists in a 12-9 loss in 10 innings at the Montreal Expos.
2006: SS Khalil Greene went 4-for-4 with two doubles and four RBIS in a 6-3 win over the Chicago Cubs at Petco Park. The victory was the Padres’ eighth in a row.
2010: In his second year, RHP Mat Latos struck out nine over eight shutout innings of two-hit ball in a 7-0 win over the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park.
jeff.sanders@sduniontribune.com