WORCESTER — Chris Colabello can still throw the ball.

That was obvious from the heater he delivered to his old friend and manager, Rich Gedman, on one of the ceremonial first pitches before the Worcester Red Sox game at Polar Park Friday night.

But can he still hit? The bat is what got him to the major leagues after playing college ball at Assumption and a seven-year apprenticeship with the Worcester Tornadoes of the Can-Am League. So six years after his big-league career came to a sudden and disheartening end with a positive test for PEDs, and at age 38, can Colabello still hit?

“I’m not retired yet,” he said Friday. “If somebody wants to hire me, I’m ready to go out and get three hits tonight.”

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It’s not so much that Colabello has moved on from pro baseball as much as pro baseball has moved on from him. As it turns out, probably unfairly.

He was suspended in 2016 after testing positive for a substance commonly known as Oral Turinabol. Colabello said at the time he had no idea how he wound up testing positive and maintained his innocence. Subsequently, others have had the same result — Red Sox prospect Michael Chavis being a notable one — with the same reaction.

In all, 23 players have been suspended for testing positive for that drug. Nearly unanimously, those players have maintained their innocence.

A recent story by Ken Rosenthal in The Athletic said that sources told him changes to the Joint Drug Agreement in the latest labor agreement support those claims, which would mean that Colabello was right all along.

“I’m happy that it will never happen to another player,” Colabello said of the new developments. “Vindicated? It’s the most infuriating thing to know that you’re right and try to explain yourself, and nobody wants to listen. So do I feel vindicated? Not really.

“Nobody has handed me the extension the Blue Jays were ready to give me. Nobody’s given me my at-bats back. I had a goal. I wanted to win a World Series, most of all. I wanted to be an All-Star, be one of the best hitters ever to play the game, to be the best hitter on the planet, and I know if I set my mind to do something, you’re not gonna stop me.

“I feel like my career got taken away from me, yeah. There’s nothing anyone can ever say or do to fix that. ... I got put in baseball jail, and I can never get that time back.”

Colabello’s suspension early in 2016 was right after he hit .321 with 15 homers and 54 RBIs in 101 games with the Blue Jays in 2015. With knowledge of the upcoming suspension on his mind in ‘16, he was just 2 for 29 in 10 games. His last major league game was April 20.

He continued playing at various levels and for various teams through 2019, but it was a emotional struggle.

“It was impossible to play that first year,” Colabello said. “Everything about the game was negative to me. I couldn’t go to the field and see light. It was all dark. If I struck out, or got a bad pitch called against me, it took me down.

“I didn’t know what depression was. I saw a psychiatrist after the 2016 season, and he told me I was clinically depressed, but what did that mean? I didn’t wear it in my everyday life. I was trying to get away as far from the game as I could, but it kept pulling me back in.”

Colabello has indeed stayed in baseball, and in the area.

He and wife Alison Connor own a home in Marlborough, and Colabello co-owns a player development software company called Pelotero, which is the Spanish word for ballplayer, along with former Worcester Tornadoes teammate Bobby Tewksbary.

“We try to help baseball merge old school and new school by learning how to leverage data for instruction as opposed to collecting data for data’s sake” is how Colabello describes the business.

He and Gedman have remained in close contact through the years. One reason he looks back fondly on his seven years with the Tornadoes is the relationship he built with the former All-Star catcher.

“It provided me with the distinct luxury to be around Rich Gedman,” Colabello said. “Without that guy, I had no chance. He taught me everything about being a pro. I’m forever indebted to that man in ways I can’t even explain.”

Marrying the old and new methods of analyzing and teaching baseball is an evolving process, and Colabello’s company is at the forefront of that.

“I tell people all the time that the game is a living organism,” he said, “and because it is, any time you try to use past performance for predictive analysis, you’re missing an input in the data. You try to think about things in the game that will never change. Hitting a line drive will never be bad. Getting hits will never be bad.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s a disservice being done to the game. We’re trying to devalue the human opinion.”

Colabello has not been a stranger to Polar Park since it opened and sees the place through a player’s eyes, mostly.

“This is an 1A ballpark,” he said. “I’m blown away by this place. And the wind blows out to right-center all the time — a good place for me to hit.”

If somebody wants and needs him to hit, Colabello is ready.

“I can still play. I believe that 100 percent,” he said. “I’m better now than I’ve ever been physically. I take better care of myself now than I did when I was playing. My mind is that much clearer ever since I had to deal with the negatives surrounding my (PED test) situation.

“Learning how to deal with that has taught me to be very tough mentally.”

The odds may be against a return for Colabello, but if he beats them, it won’t be the first time.

—Contact Bill Ballou at sports@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillBallouTG.