29
2011
LHP Steven Matz, 2009 Mets Top Pick, Out For Season
An article by 
Mack from Mack’s Mets spoke to Steven Matz who will be shutdown for the rest of the 2011 season.
Matz: - Hey Mack, yeah, my season is definitely going to be over. I was back in simulated games in May, and I seemed to be fine. My velocity on all my pitches was back and even a little higher, but it started to hurt again. I got a second opinion from Dr Andrews and he said its just not 100% healed yet. I got a prp injection and have to rest six weeks. It’s beyond frustrating, but there’s really nothing else I can do.
Unfortunate, to say the least. We hope he returns strong next season and that the pain goes away soon. Here is an interview we did with him last month.
Interview With Mets 2009 Top Draft Pick, RHP Steven Matz
Back in 2009, the name “Steven Matz” was a popular topic amongst Mets fans. The second-round pick was dominant at Ward-Melville High School on Long Island and appeared to be a candidate to shoot through the minor leagues and contribute for the big club.
However, an elbow injury delayed the start of his career, so much so that he underwent Tommy John Surgery in May 2010.
I caught up with Matz, who is a terrific young man, to see how his rehab was going and to gauge his thoughts on what it was like being a Mets fans growing up who was then drafted by the Mets.
In his senior year of high school, more and more scouts began showing up at his starts after good showings at summer showcases. Matz only gave up two earned runs that entire season, which propelled his draft status. He was notified before the draft that the Mets were prepared to select him with the 72nd overall pick.
“It was pretty exciting because a lot of my family members are big fans too,” Matz said. “It’s pretty much every kid’s dream, especially getting picked by your own team.”
Growing up, Matz was a huge fan of lefty starting pitchers but mainly Johan Santana. Santana was playing with the Twins, but Matz emulated the crafty lefty, especially in developing a nasty changeup.
When the Mets acquired Santana via trade in 2008, Matz was super excited. Little did he know that he would be learning from Santana just one year later. Matz has absorbed Santana’s knowledge and will continue learning from the veteran hurler.
Matz fondly remembers that 2000 Subway Series World Series. However, we both agreed that we wish it could’ve ended differently.
As for his rehab, Matz has experienced a few setbacks that may prolong his minor league debut. He was facing hitters several weeks ago, but a scar tissue breakup has forced him to refrain from throwing.
“It’s been a little bit of a rocky road,” said Matz. “It [his arm] was finally feeling really good, and I guess I had a little bit more scar tissue, so hopefully I can get past that again.”
Still, Matz is only 20 years old, and the Mets brass has preached patience to him. He’s itching to see live game action, but he realizes that his patience will pay off.
“That’s the key really because I started when I was 18 and now I’m 20 and I still haven’t even thrown a professional pitch,” Matz said.
During his rehab, Matz has confided in former Met pitcher and current minor league pitching coordinator Randy Niemann. Niemann has been very supportive of Matz and has encouraged him to stay the course and good things will happen.
“He’s [Niemann] been real helpful to me along the way in reiterating that that you have to be very patient, and it will come,” said Matz.
Niemann has assisted Matz in developing a curveball. In high school, Matz was a fastball-changeup pitcher since he merely overpowered opposing hitters. However, He has realized that at this level, he needs a more diverse. When the pitch is properly developed, Matz will use his curveball as his strikeout pitch.
Though his 2011 debut remains uncertain, the next step for Matz is to get healthy. The little bumps in the road have been a nuisance, but Matz is willing to remain patient if it means returning at full-strength.
“I’ve done everything I possibly could, and if it’s not going to work out then that’s what it’s meant to be,” Matz said. “At the end of the day, you know you tried as hard as you possibly could to get back, and hopefully it will pay off.”
It’s this attitude that will allow Matz to recover from injury and embark on his professional career. His goal for the end of this season is to be fully healthy, whether or not that includes some live game action at one of the Mets short season Single-A affiliates.
“I’d like to end the season off on a good note, hopefully 100 percent,” said Matz.
If he continues along the path to recovery, Matz will be ready to compete in spring training next year to show he is ready. Just like he has been these last two years, we Met fans need to be patient with Matz.
After speaking with him, I can tell he’ll do whatever it takes to have a successful career. Good luck to Steven as he continues his rehab and prepares for his first professional start, which will hopefully be sometime this summer.
Follow me on Twitter @JMMancari.
About the Author: Jim Mancari
Jim Mancari hails from Massapequa, N.Y. He recently earned a Master's degree in Journalism at Hofstra University. He is a devout Mets fan and takes pride in his team, despite their lack of success over the last few years. Like all Mets fans, Jim has plenty of hope. He also writes as the sports reporter for the Brooklyn Tablet newspaper and the senior editor of metroBASEBALL Magazine. Click my name to view my personal website.
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Hope he gets healthy soon. He’s going to be a big part of the Mets future. Especially with Mejia’s future role being so uncertain.
I cant believe how young he looks. Nice job though, he sounds like a great kid who appreciates the opportunity the Mets gave him. Plus he’s a Mets fan, so two thumbs up!
Hope he can make it. My dad also went to Ward Melville, so this will please him!
K-Rod takes care of business in the 9th, gives the Mets a big win. Read about that and Reyes’ hot streak at Midwestern Met: tiny.cc/82rp0
He is far too young to be rushed back. Just let him ease his way back at a snails pace and if it means smipping the entire season, so be it. If he’s as good as everyone says he is, it will be worth the wait.
He should be better than before based on recent history of TJ surgery comebacks.
To all the Minaya bashers, this kid’s future being in our system is just another feather in the cap of a very under appreciated regime, which altered the course towards “the rocks” set by PHILLUPS,DUQUETTE, JEFF while making headline spending blunders, ultimately leading to his basllyhooed dismisal; but giving the devil his due. In retroaspect considering the shackles of Slotting, the needed MLB roster upgrading @ the cost of prime draft selections, the ownership refusal to offer arbitrtion.
DESPITE THESE ENCUMBERANCES SOMEHOW OUR FARM PRODUCE INCLUDES A STAGGERED MULTI-LEVEL RIPENING OF A CROP INCLUDING:
MATZ – D/L HAMPERING PRO-DEBUT
CAHOON – AAA
MEJIA – F/L, AAA
GAMILIA – AA
HOLT – AA
MOORE – AA
SCHWINDEN – AAA
HARVEY – ADV.A
MOVIEL – ADV A
MOREL – ADV. A
GORSKI – ADV A
While not all of these 11 quality pitching prospects are future stud aces in the Majors.
The existance of them in their numbers while shackled by poor scouting investment, slots, F/A compensation should be sufficient testimony of Minaya maximizing talent evaluation for the FUTURE as well as THE PRESENT, currently enabling Alderson’s charges to presently contend on the fringes(3rd place) despite minimum/diminished reinvstment by Ownership.
While there may not be a bona fide ACE(TOP BANANA) in this bunch of bananas certainly there’s enough quantity to provide the 2 through 5 + setup, closer quality pitching openings we would otherwise need to deal for. Having survived the entire 42 yr history of this Franchise, I believe myself qualified to evaluate that amount of ripening pitching fruit as superior to ALL; but a few of our GM office occupants.
While there may NOT be another Seaver or Gooden in their midst the odds certainly favor a fair amount of KOOSMAN,MATLACK,SWAN, McGraw, Allen levels to create an impressive, low cost staff of 12,13 young capable arms.
I will never understand the rationale behind hiring a talent evaluator as GM and then not allowing him to go over slot and extract the best high school arms out of the draft BEFORE they become 1st and 2nd round choices.
Sure your going to have busts but when you break it all down an ace and a #2 and 8 busts is far superior to having 5 #3′s and far easier to fill in around.
For Minaya to be able to build the 25 AND the entire minor leagues at the same time by forfeiting 1st, supp, 2nd and 3rd round picks he had to have the ability to go into rounds 8-20 and take some chances with guys we wouldn’t be able to draft three years down the road because they were going in the first and 2nd after successful college years.
The fact that Minaya was able to sign Mejia and Familla was huge and Harvey so far looks like a great pick even though he was considered an overdraft and had an agreement on bonus beforehand it still doesn’t excuse the overall philosophy of Met ownership.
Mulvey, Matz, Rustich, Niessen, Kunz, were all taken in the supp or 2nd round as the best choices that would sign for slot. That shouldn’t have been the overriding consideration. Best talent over the next 10 years should have been. After all Minaya had delivered record attendance from 2006-2008. Why wasn’t this money reinvested into the future? Why didn’t we wait a week before signing Alou and at the very least SEE if we could keep our #1 draft choice? Why dump two #1 picks for a DH when they were handed to us on a silver platter?
It’s such a short sighted philosophy that the Wilpon has continually handcuffed the GM with since 1998 and as well as Omar did the fact is pitching is a weakness for us going forward as the Braves have Teheran, Delgado, Vizcaino and Minor after already bringing up Beachy, Hanson, Venters and Kimbrel and the Phillies A+ Clearwater team has given up 100 less runs so far this year than we have and it’s not because of creative scoring either as they’ve only been charged with 9 unearned runs to date and both of these teams have much better starting pitching than we do right now and both of them project to be a lot better than us in 5-10 years as well and don’t forget Zimmerman and Strausberg.
The way you win pennants is through dominating performances by your best players and then fill in around them as need be. Mejia, Harvey and Familia may prove to be those dominant pitchers and with Niese (HS) and Gee fill 5 or the 12 spots on the roster but Coohon and Carson are at best LOOGY’s. Moore is 25 in AA. Schwinden a back end of the bullpen guy or AAA depth, Gorski suddenly an interesting prospect and Armando Rodriguez and Morel (a bullpen arm) and don’t forget about Urbina as well but Moviel, Rustich, Allen and Holt seem much closer to Tobi Stoner than the Majors.
I would love to have seen what Omar could have done without being handicapped by those ridiculous slotting guidelines and the need to draft pitchers capable of getting up here the quickest rather than the one’s who project to be the best down the road.
Just off what we have right now the 2014 pitching staff looks to me like Niese, Familla, Harvey, Gee, Urbina with Gorski, Armondo Rodriguez, 2 of Matz/Cohoon/Carson, Morel, Beato and perhaps Holt or Schwinden although we could have some of the 2011 draft class work their way in too.
The Braves three best prospects in their farm are from Colombia, Panama and the DR. The IFA signing period begins July 2nd. If we were to sign most of our draftees and pull a few top shelf talents out of the international market we could really begin to narrow the talent gap that exists between us and our biggest competitors in the NL East because despite how much depth Minaya produced we’re still behind and my best guess is we would have been ahead of everyone in this department if talent and projectability was the only consideration in the draft and the money wasn’t held back from the IFA market after the 2007 season.
So yeah Minaya didn’t produce any Seavers, Koosman’s, Gentry’s, Ryan’s, McGraw’s but he didn’t have a committed owner like Weiss, Devine and Murphy did in Ms. Joan Payson.
T, you’re harkening back to a time when every pimple faced kid with a flamethrowing pitching arm wasn’t professionaly represented, you may as well wish to smoke in public, indoors! As was said during those Salad days, “ROTS OF RUCK!”
The stakes are higher ’62, no question, but someone was taking those chances back then and that someone was us. It was the way to quickly build a farm system. Scout, sign and develop three hundred young players and wind up with 20 starting players or better all told throughout your entire system.
That’s whats called for here and now. We have to start throwing the law of numbers at our numerous weaknesses and taking chances on players with big upsides by extracting them from the draft and international free agency. That’s what a big market team SHOULD be doing.
Omar delivered the 3 best consecutive years attendance wise and yet we were still worried more about signability than talent in the draft and after 2007 limited ourselves to just one IFA (none last year.) That doesn’t make any sense.
We are not usually going to be in the position of picking in the top ten so we have no chance to get those top end players. They have to be identified ahead of time and selected with picks in the 10-20′s and then bought out. Sure your going to be wrong more often than not but combined with a good top three draft and the IFA market we can start a very talented prospect flow and keep it going.
Different era, but a very different philosophy by ownership as well. One was committed and at least in the middle of the curve, the other is primarally committed to selling tickets by bringing in another Bonzo every year instead of spending the money where it will do the most good as is continually behind the curve.
A big market team can and should be taking chances that cost money. It is an inherant advantage and yet we are lagging WAY behind teams who hopped on this 3 or 4 years ago like Pittsburgh, Tampa and KC. (Que the what have they won in the last 20 years or how has that worked out for them lately jokes) but their farms are producing big time players that will all be in their prime at the same time when they get up here. That’s what wins pennants. All star talent for 1/3 of your roster, capable average starting talent for the rest of it. That means 7 super players that will all be healthy and productive for the same 6 year period.
By drafting and signing Blake Swihart (like Boston did) they give themselves a great chance to have a switch hitting catcher with a lot of power and if he doesn’t pan out behind the plate he will most likely pan out in RF. Whether they can sign the guy is another story but that just comes down to cash and credibility as an organization. Even if they don’t sign him it is still worth taking the chance because the amount of production a guy like Swihart could potentially produce is 10 times what a Josh Thole might so even if you can’t sign or have 9 out of 10 bust your still far ahead on the field.
All good stuff agee, and I agree with you on nearly every point. One thing I don’t really agree with is I’ve read you before, saying you were hot and heavy for Swihart in the draft. At one time, pre-draft, I was on the Swihart wagon too. He was my first choice until I dropped him from my wish list, a week before the draft, for Taylor Jungmann. But now I’m not as sure. For one thing, Swihart did fall rather far in the draft, so the Mets were not the only team to pass on him. Also I have read that him becoming a power hitter, is far from certain, some scouts see him as a gap hitter only, with no power projection. And the biggest point I want to make is a man named Nimmo. Don’t sell him short. I admit I’ve never seen him play a lick, but I have a sneaking suspicion he might become two times the player Swihart becomes. Time will certainly tell.
How about common sense instead:
Don’t use #1 pick in draft on a 18 yr. old high school pitcher who needs “tommy-john surgery.”