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General manager Sandy Alderson took command of the New York Mets after the 2010 season, with the franchise in financial flux, and began a long process of shedding bad contracts and revitalizing the team’s farm system in the hopes of building a sustainable winner behind a slew of promising pitching talent. But with those moves looking like they could finally pay dividends in 2015 thanks to electrifying young arms in the rotation and in the high minors, the Mets gave the ball to Bartolo Colon on opening day.

Colon, who will turn 42 in May, is the second oldest man in the Majors. He is the only former Montreal Expos player to appear in a Major League game in 2015. He earned the win in the All-Star Game in 1998. He has faced both Cecil Fielder and Prince Fielder, and two generations’ worth of Eric Youngs. In his earliest seasons in Cleveland, he was briefly teammates with both Dwight Gooden and Kevin Mitchell — two members of the Mets’ last world championship team in 1986.

And yet despite his advanced age and his atypical physique, the 5’11”, 283-pound right-hander remains about as effective as he was in his prime years, back in the early part of the last decade. Colon started the 2015 season 3-0 with a 2.25 ERA. By ERA+, a park- and league-adjusted pitching stat, Colon has been about exactly as effective in parts of five seasons since missing all of 2010 with arm problems — for which he received stem-cell treatment in his elbow and shoulder — as he was in the 13 seasons prior.

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“Being a more veteran guy, I don’t have the power that I used to have,” Colon said in Spanish, through translator and Mets bullpen coach Ricky Bones. “But now I’m a better pitcher because I can command, and I can go with the situation a lot better than I used to.”

In many corners — this one certainly included — Colon often draws attention for his efforts at hitting after spending all but a half-season of his first 18 campaigns in the American League. But Colon’s pitching is at least as remarkable.

Colon does not throw especially hard, at least not by Major League standards, averaging about 89 mph with his fastball. But no starting pitcher in the sport throws fastballs more frequently.

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Armed with the impeccable command he developed in his later years and at least three distinct versions of the pitch, Colon threw 88.6% fastballs over his first three starts of 2015 according to Fangraphs.com. Through Sunday’s play, no other starter in the Majors threw more than 80%. Colon also threw the highest percentage of fastballs among Major League starters in 2013 and 2014.

“This guy throws one pitch,” said manager Terry Collins. “He throws it to every quadrant of the strike zone and knows what it’s going to do. He cuts it, sinks it, and four-seams it.”

“On any given day, he’s got a slider and a changeup that we can use,” said catcher Anthony Recker. “But the thing with him is he’s got three different fastballs, so in essence, those are three different pitches.”

Few pitchers in baseball throw more pitches in the strike zone than Colon, and few induce fewer swinging strikes. In an era in which fireballing young pitchers — like Colon’s teammates Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom — rack up gaudy strikeout totals, Colon represents the increasingly rare type of starter that works to weak contact, limiting free passes and reserving his energy to work deep into games and gobble up innings.

“That’s one of the main things I’ve worked on, to attack the zone and not walk people,” Colon said.

(GIF via GFYcat.com)

“He’s reinvented himself quite a bit,” said teammate Michael Cuddyer, who first faced Colon in 2004. “He throws a lot of strikes, so you can afford to be aggressive on a guy like that. But it can also get you in trouble, with the movement that he has. I think he tends to rely on guys’ aggressiveness. He knows what he’s doing.”

The approach yields plenty of hits when balls find holes in the defense, and some home runs when his fastballs catch too much of the plate. But Colon, both to the eye and by his teammates’ accounts, is utterly unflappable on the mound.

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“When someone hits a homer off him or something, he just knows it’s part of the game,” said catcher Travis d’Arnaud. “He just forgets about it and goes right after the next hitter.”

“The biggest thing that he does well is he trusts himself and he trusts his movement, and his ability to beat guys just with his natural stuff,” said Recker. “So he doesn’t have to try to trick them or try to be perfect.”

Colon is known for giggling at himself in the middle of at-bats or while running the bases, but his behavior on the mound is similarly entertaining, if a bit more subtle. Sometimes he grabs a baseball and stares at it as if he’s never seen one before, not quite like it’s a new discovery but like it’s a mild curiosity he has been aware of but never actually examined. He is always chewing gum, pumping his jaw in a steady rhythm. If he benefits from a great defensive play or works his way out of a jam, he’ll slap his hand in his glove a few times with a deliberateness reminiscent of a windup toy.

(GIF via AmazinAvenue.com)

All of it serves to distract a bit from his effectiveness and the unique way he achieves it. But at 41 years and 11 months old, Colon’s April success has played a huge part in putting the Mets atop the NL East in the early part of the 2015 season. His largely futile efforts at the plate, thrilling though they may be, should never overshadow his incredible craftsmanship on the mound. He is one of the game’s oldest pitchers and one of the game’s strangest pitchers, but ultimately, he’s just a good pitcher.