One by one, like returning warriors, they took the mound, first Jacob deGrom, then Matt Harvey and finally on Monday afternoon the last of the surgically enhanced triumvirate Steven Matz had his chance to show off his preseason form. And what a fine form it was.
Matz tossed two scoreless innings allowing three hits and striking out one. He threw 24 of 39 pitches for strikes, was living in the 92-94 mph range, and more importantly, no discomfort.
“I definitely had some nerves going into it, since it’s been such a long time since I’ve been out there,” Matz said afterward. “I had to make sure I had my cleats on, my hat on when I was first out there. It felt kind of awkward for a second, but once I started throwing it felt good.”
The lone lefthander in the Mets rotation, Matz had what team doctors called a massive bone spur removed from his pitching elbow last October and also received a platelet-rich-plasma injection in his left shoulder.
“I thought he was okay,” Terry Collins told reporters. “It’s been a while. He didn’t throw many changeups today. He wanted to focus on locating his fastball, but he was free and easy. I liked that. I liked that he threw a couple breaking balls that looked okay. For a first step, pretty good.”
While he was out there, Matz was also working on holding runners at first base, an area he is focused on improving after 20 of 26 baserunners were successful stealing on him last season. You can read more about that on NJ.com from Abbey Mastracco.
Matz’s performance comes a day after Matt Harvey gave some people the heebie jeebies after he failed to get his fastball over 93 and had an inning he would like to forget, getting charged with four earned runs in 1.2 innings. Jacob deGrom pitched on Saturday and dazzled, retiring six straight batters and striking out three.
The good news is that none of this hardly matters and what will be more telling is how deGrom, Harvey and Matz are pitching about a month from now. But if you’re one of those blokes who want to agonize over such small sample sizes and are super concerned with Harvey’s performance I’ll leave you with this. “Oh don’t be sad… ‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad.”
