In the aggregate, the results of Steven Matz‘s start last night were as frustrating as they were expected: 4.1 innings, six runs (all earned), five hits, and a homer in a dismal 6-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.
He is now winless with four losses to his name and his ERA sits at 9.00 – the second-worst among 60 qualified starters (a run ahead of Detroit Tigers’ lefty Matthew Boyd). His 23 earned runs are the most of any starting pitcher in all of baseball.
Perhaps those who watched Matz at Citizens Bank Park last year, when he combined for just 9.1 innings and allowed 15 runs on 21 hits and six homers (.404 average, 1.331 OPS), saw this debacle coming all along. The lefty had already been on thin ice in the wake of back-to-back disasters against the Washington Nationals, though what may have hurt the most this time around was just how much more abruptly things seemed to unravel on him.
Whereas Matz had already allowed five runs by the end of the third in the prior go-around and couldn’t even record a fourth inning out in the start before that, he’d entered the fifth inning of last night’s contest having allowed just one run on a Jean Segura solo homer, one walk to Rhys Hoskins, and no other baserunners. He’d thrown 34 of his 56 pitches for strikes, and had strung together five punchouts on a medley of changeups and curveballs on the way there.
From the very first at-bat in the bottom of the first, Steven appeared to make a point of avoiding his fastball – a pitch that, in each of its three variations, had given him pronounced issues in his two duds against the Nationals. His three-up, three-down first included a pair of strikeouts and just four total sinkers across a 14-pitch spread. His first punchout of Andrew McCutchen came on a 3-2 changeup before he got Bryce Harper fishing on a curveball away.
The second inning saw a few more fastballs and some harder-hit offspeeds, and Matz ultimately hit his first snag with the homer to Segura on a loose changeup that ended up a couple of feet beyond the left field wall. Even then, the lefty made quick work of his next two hitters, ending with a fastball on the inside corner to ring up righty Phil Gosselin.
He maintained the tempo in the third inning, inducing a groundout to third and a popout to second before striking out McCutchen on another good changeup off the plate.
Philadelphia eked out a five-pitch walk courtesy of Hoskins to lead off the bottom of the fourth and moved him to second following a sacrifice bunt from Harper, but Matz again kept a lid on it: he forged ahead of J.T. Realmuto with a 95 mph 1-1 fastball before fluttering a 1-2 curveball to the backfoot for a swinging strikeout. Up against Segura for a second time, Matz kept the fastball inside to extract a routine flyout to center and escape trouble.
“I just wanted to slow the tempo down a little bit, and establish that down and away fastball – which I feel like I did,” Matz told reporters following the game.
“Even on some of those pitches that were balls that missed early on – and I was even throwing my fastball in, like I wanted to… It’s just [about] moving that fastball around and working off that with my changeup… I feel like I was able to do that today, honestly.”
Unfortunately for all parties, the game plan Matz had otherwise followed successfully began to fade in the fifth, and this time, the lefty couldn’t get out of trouble on his own accord. For all the credit Matz deserves for keeping a consistent tempo and executing early on, the roof really caved in once the Phils’ order came around for a third time, and it came to change the tone for the rest of the night altogether.
Things began with a stroke of bad luck, when Didi Gregorius‘ check-swing on a curveball away got the better of a shifted Met infield. Gosselin proceeded to lace a low changeup into shallow right, putting two on for rookie third baseman Alec Bohm. Bohm laid off a handful of harder fastballs (96-97 mph range) off the plate before coming away from his eight pitch at-bat with a walk, taking a 3-2 changeup inside to load the bases.
An F9 off the bat of Scott Kingery failed to move anyone up, though the veteran McCutchen came back to the plate smarter. In a tightly-contested 2-2 count, Matz proceeded to miss with two more low fastballs – the last in the dirt – to bring home a second run and keep the spot warm for Hoskins. One middle-away fastball later, the ball had rolled its way to the wall in right-center field.
“I look at that fifth inning and [they] got an infield single, [I] executed a pitch on 0-2 [to Gosselin] – single. Bohm fights me on a tough at-bat and I end up walking him, same thing for McCutchen,” Matz offered.
“I made a few good pitches, he fouled me off, I walked him, and then I made a bad pitch to Hoskins.”
All it took was just two bad fastballs in a row from Matz, though it still took a tense situation amidst a one-run deficit and melted it into a 5-0 Philadelphia lead. Team skipper Luis Rojas gave the lefty one more chance against Harper, but the line just kept moving, as Bryce scorched a middle-in changeup off the right field wall to score Hoskins and add a sixth run to the docket.
The ball came off the bat at 115 mph, and Matz promptly came out of the game to end a 28-pitch (17-strike) frame. In his stead, Jeurys Familia recorded two outs, stranding run number seven and stopping the bleeding.
“The first four innings, he was able to talk and tell the pitching coach what he was able to do,” Rojas indicated in the postgame roundup. “Nothing [concerning] as far as the emotional part… It’s a tough outing for him. We’ve had a few of those before the start tonight.”
The tough breaks that opened matters in the fifth are par for the course whenever Matz seems to have his worst innings, but the lefty’s continued inability to stay on an even keel and execute pitches this year seems to have officially hit its crescendo.
Even after cruising through four innings and seemingly a few more hitters from turning the page on a rough patch, the lefty couldn’t recover a feeling in time for the top of the batting order, and the five-batter span in which things escalated from safe to tumultuous to borderline unwatchable continued to weigh on a visibly unnerved Matz in his postgame discussion with reporters:
“It’s really frustrating. It’s really, really frustrating for me. I don’t know… I’m trying to stay positive. I’m trying to take the positives out of it. I just gotta execute better, and I gotta give the team a better chance to win. It’s just unacceptable.”
On taking the positive developments from each of his starts and moving on from the more damning aspects of these starts, Matz didn’t sugarcoat: “It’s very difficult… when you have results like this a few outings in a row, in your head you’re like ‘I gotta change something. Something’s gotta be different.’ That’s the battle for me.”
The good news for Matz, at least for now, is that the organization has virtually no pitching depth to reach back to, meaning what may otherwise call for relegation to the bullpen may just need to be resolved with more mental reps against more hitters.
Rojas voiced a similar sentiment, albeit much more supportively of the lefty:
“This just happens. As a staff, like we’ve done in the past, we’re gonna get together and we’re gonna talk and see what’s best for Matzy and see what adjustments he can make when he gets the ball again.”
Matz has come a long way from his days as a physically vulnerable arm with a quick temper, and his status as the team’s number two behind Jacob deGrom has solidified that. Unfortunately, in a strange season that has continued to spiral out of the Mets’ grasp, the future of the Mets’ rotation doesn’t appear so clear anymore.
If he wants to remain a part of the picture beyond the next two seasons, Matz will need to find a better way to work around the luck factor and eight-pitch walks. Pitchers failing to last five innings on a competitive ballclub with the season a third of the way through is, in fact, nothing short of unacceptable, no matter how dominant or back-to-form their first four innings of work.
