It’s been a long time coming for Steven Matz, but he finally came away with a win, his first since May 24th, in last night’s gutsy performance. Against the Diamondbacks no less, who surprisingly only staked Met pitchers to seven runs the day before, Matz tossed 6 2/3 innings, throwing 67 of his total 103 pitches for strikes.
While he only notched three strikeouts, the lefty made up for it by allowing just one earned run on six hits and one walk. Matz now has a 1.55 ERA on the road this season (the second-best figure in the National League), and with just six earned runs allowed in his last five starts, he has now lowered his ERA to 3.31.
Things got off to a bumpy start in the first inning, when Matz walked leadoff man Jon Jay on four pitches. He proceeded to miss with his first pitch to Nick Ahmed before recording a sharp first out on a flyball to center field, and again – a single and pop out later – with a David Peralta flyout to left that looked like trouble off the bat, still keeping things scoreless.
Ahead 3-0 in the second inning thanks to a three-run blast by Michael Conforto, things took a foreign, but nonetheless very welcome turn in Matz’s favor. After a Chris Owings single, Matz dispatched a changeup to induce a Deven Marrero flyout and floated a curve by opposing pitcher Patrick Corbin to resourcefully stand his ground and protect a lead he squandered in his last start against the Yankees a week prior.
The next three innings represented a peak in Matz’s quality start, as he threw 31 strikes over his next 44 pitches, allowing just two hits out of the infield – one a single and the other a weak lineout to a sliding Jose Bautista – while striking out two hitters. A conservative 43% usage of the sinker spoke volumes about Matz’s ability to adapt and trust his offspeed pitches.
When asked about his approach, particularly as the night progressed, Matz admitted that he could tell right off the bat that he did not have great command and that he really needed to buckle down to get through the start.
“Coming into the first two innings, I had no fastball command, and in the past, that’s snowballed on me quick… it’s just realizing that the inning is over and that I have another ahead of me, I just focused on the task at hand and it all clicked for me… the changeup got me out of it. That’s been a good pitch for me.”
The adjustments Matz has made in his starts, now on a regular basis, have not gone unnoticed by his manager, Mickey Callaway, who added that his mentality has made the difference for the left-hander.
“The mentality part of it is allowing him to use the stuff he wants to. When you can relax and not focus on mechanics, it allows your body to do exactly what it naturally wants you to do… sometimes it just didn’t translate in the game, and it was all in the mentality locking his body up. Now, we’re seeing a free-flowing athlete executing his pitches.”
While the Diamondbacks were able to scratch out a run in the sixth inning, a subsequently routine groundout from Paul Goldschmidt (whom Matz had fanned in the third on a wicked changeup) and two more painless infield putouts offset the triple by Ahmed (who scored on Goldschmidt’s 6-3 dribbler), which was the lone extra base hit Arizona managed in the contest.
Two quick outs to open the seventh inning, unfortunately, fell by the wayside, as Matz was beaten by a dunk hit from Marrero and deflected grounder by pinch-hitter Daniel Descalso, cutting things short. True to the mindset he’s been trying to incorporate as the season has worn on, Matz did not throw or bang anything in the dugout out of frustration, even he seemed to be a split hair away from ending matters on his own accord.
While it would be nice to look into his game logs and find more than one seven-inning effort to his name (a June 3rd start against the Cubs, which still ended in a loss), it’s important to remember just how well Matz managed to work around a formidable lineup. With the tying run on-deck, it made sense to call a bullpen cart for Robert Gsellman.
This wasn’t the same Arizona lineup that sputtered in Queens a few weeks ago, nor was it the same Matz who yielded homers and limped through five innings during the early part of the season.
