ATLANTA _ Long before anyone discussed OPS or WAR and eons before there were exit velocities and spin rates, there was Bartolo.
Big Bart or Big Sexy, call him whichever nickname you prefer. But call Bartolo Colon a legitimate big-time big-league pitcher still, with his 44th birthday just around the corner in May.
The oldest pitcher in baseball was on his game again Sunday in his first Braves home start, limiting the San Diego Padres to one hit, one run and one walk with six strikeouts in seven innings of a 9-2 win that pushed Atlanta's winning streak to four games and improved its record to 3-0 at new SunTrust Park.
Tyler Flowers put the Braves ahead to stay with a two-run single in the fifth inning, Brandon Phillips had three hits and three RBIs and Ender Inciarte homered for the fourth time in four games.
Nick Markakis extended his hitting streak to 10 games with an RBI double in the eighth inning and rookie Johan Camargo added an RBI single _ the first hit of his major league career _ to cap the three-run inning.
The Braves will try to complete a four-game sweep of the first-ever series at SunTrust Park when Braves left-hander Jaime Garcia faces the Padres' Jered Weaver on Monday night.
Colon gave up a one-out homer to Ryan Schimpf in the second inning, then recorded 17 outs in the last 17 batters he faced. He induced a double-play grounder by Hunter Renfroe after a leadoff walk in the fifth inning by Schimpf, the only Padre to reach base against Colon.
Phillips, whose sixth-inning homer drove in the winning run Saturday, came up big again Sunday with a two-out, two-RBI hit in the sixth that turned a one-run lead into a three-run cushion for Colon.
Padres starter Trevor Cahill, the second recent Braves pitcher to start for San Diego in the series, didn't allow a hit until Phillips' one-out single in the fifth. The only Brave to reach base before Phillips was Inciarte, who walked in the fourth inning and was erased when Dansby Swanson grounded into a double play.
But things came apart quickly for Cahill after Phillips' hit in the fifth. Before Cahill finished walking the next batter, Adonis Garcia, Phillips stole second base and went to third on a wild pitch. Another wild pitch to Flowers allowed Garcia to advance to second, and Flowers lined a 2-2 pitch up the middle for a two-run single and 2-1 lead.
Inciarte sparked a two-run sixth inning with a leadoff single against Cahill, who left the game after Phillips' two-run single pushed the lead to 4-1.
The Braves put together a third consecutive two-run inning in seventh after a leadoff double from Flowers. A wild pitch and passed ball let in one run and Inciarte's two-out homer gave the center fielder more homers in his past four games (four) than he had in his first season with the Braves in 2016 (three).
For Colon, it was his second outstanding start in three for the Braves, sandwiched around a rough one in Miami. He limited his former Mets team to two hits and one run in six innings of his Braves debut for no decision in a Braves win in the second game of the season, and was knocked around for seven hits and six runs in four innings in an 8-4 loss Tuesday against the Marlins. On Sunday, he was back to being the vintage Colon of his improbable post age-40 career surge.
Pitching for his ninth major league team, Colon has again endeared himself to the home fans through the combination of a wry smile, playful personality, improbable athleticism (for someone 5 feet 11 and 285 pounds) and, most of all, highly effective and efficient pitching.
If he wasn't still a quality pitcher, the rest wouldn't matter nearly as much, if at all. But he is, and it does. And in the first day game played at SunTrust Park, Braves fans liked all they saw from Big Sexy.
