As expected, Freddy Garcia came off the DL today and will face the Orioles tonight, his first start since August 7 against Boston. Hector Noesi was sent down to Triple-A Scranton to make room for him on the 25-man roster. September call-ups are eligible to start coming up on Thursday, though Noesi must wait the ten days to come back up to the big league club.

Amidst all of the hullabaloo between the Orioles and the Yankes about this weekend’s scheduling mess, here’s a simple solution to prevent something like this from happening again: Don’t let the home team make these decisions. Frankly, I don’t understand why the rules are what they are now, where the home team has authority over weather postponements and so on (except when they don’t, as we found out when Tampa Bay was allowed to veto a proposed doubleheader in New York during the DJ3K chase). We’ve certainly seen teams accused of using the weather to their advantage (Tony LaRussa just this season in a game with Cincinnati) and for the life of me I don’t see why the league doesn’t control this. They’re supposed to be the neutral arbiters in the game, let them get input from the teams and then make a decision based on the best interest of baseball. And then we won’t see more situations like this one, or have to worry about the home team engaging in weather related funny business.

Recently, much has been made of the idea that Bartolo Colon might be wearing out, succumbing to the fatigue of pitching deeper into the season than he has in years while not exactly being in peak physical condition. In the first game of yesterday’s doubleheader, however, Colon seemed to assuage some of those fears with a terrific performance against the Orioles. Colon logged 7.2 innings of efficient ball, giving up just 2 runs on 7 hits and no walks while striking out 4. And the line might have looked even better if Joe Girardi hadn’t tried to stretch him through the 8th inning, but with another game the next day and a set in Boston looming it’s understandable why Girardi would want to keep his bullpen usage to a minimum.

So everything is back to what we’d come to expect from Bartolo then? Well, maybe. According to Pitch F/X data via Brooks, this wasn’t quite “vintage Bartolo.” He threw just 10 two-seam fastballs out of 103 total pitches, compared to a whopping 78 four-seamers (though that number seems rather low, so I wonder if maybe there’s some classification error going on?). And he continues to not miss many bats, getting just four swing-and-misses all afternoon (though of course his bread and butter this season has been freezing batters with that two-seamer). Still, the results were there, Colon was efficient with his pitches, and certainly proved that there’s still something left in that ample tank.

All of which bodes well for the big guy as the Yankees prepare to trim the starting rotation to five starters. It’s probably still too early to guarantee anything for the postseason, but given the way A.J. Burnett has continued to pitch in each successive outing, there’s very little question that Colon is still one of the Yankees’ best options as September nears. Raise your hand if you predicted that back in March.