Saving Steven Matz May Mean Shutting Him Down

In a season ripe with disappointment and underachievement, Steven Matz has been a steadying source of happiness. After his superb performance in the playoffs last year, all the chatter was that he would stand as the primary challenger to the Dodgers’ Corey Seager for National League Rookie of the Year honors. That race hasn’t quite materialized as we might have hoped, but Matz has, nonetheless, been a major reason why the Mets have been so dominant on the mound pretty much since Opening Day.

The big problem for the Long Island phenom is that it’s been a season of two clear halves. There’s been the healthy half followed by the injured half. Outside of an anomalous first start of the season, marred by seven earned runs in less than two innings, Matz was sensational from his second start through his 12th. But after that, from the time just before Matz was diagnosed with a bone spur in this left elbow, his season was suddenly in doubt. It wasn’t thought that rest alone would fix the issue, but Matz was determined to keep pitching as long as the Mets would allow him to do so.

Bottom line: The Matz we then saw earlier in the year is no longer the one pitching now.

Starts 2-12: 70.2 IP, 1.91 ERA, .232 AVG, .303 BABIP, 72/13 K/BB, 99 pitches/start

Starts 13-22: 60 IP, 4.20 ERA, .271 AVG, .323 BABIP, 56/16 K/BB, 100 pitches/start

Matz also allowed five taters in the first grouping, then nine after the bone spur. Unsurprisingly, his line-drive rate also went up from 20 percent to 28 percent. And those numbers in the second group are with the added benefit of this past weekend’s sterling start against the Padres, whom he no-hit into the eighth inning. It helped, sure, that the Padres have the third-fewest hits in all of baseball, but it’s more than the Mets have, so that’s something.

You can have a legitimate debate about the utility of continuing to let Matz pitch when the entire world knows that his health is compromised and the risk for further injury might go up with every pitch he throws. But that argument really only was genuine so long as the Mets were a viable playoff contender, and a team that has to start Jose Reyes at shortstop and Wilmer Flores at first base—to say nothing of starting Ty Kelly, Alejandro De Aza, and Rene Rivera at all—is not a viable playoff contender. That Terry Collins and Dan Warthen have actually allowed Matz to throw more pitches per start in the weeks following the bone spur disclosure feels like borderline malpractice. This is a pitcher that you’re counting on to be a cornerstone of next season’s (hopefully contending) club, and now you’re pushing him even harder than before even though the world knows he’s pitching in pain. This is archaic, old-school thinking at its most damaging.

The injury is even changing the fundamental way Matz is pitching, which surely can do no good for his future development. (Remember, this kid is 25. He’s still going to get better.) But since the spur was revealed, Matz’s four-seamers have dipped to only about 55 percent of all pitches. Changeups are also down considerably, which makes sense. (Your changeup is truly only as good as your fastball.) And so sliders and curves have filled the void. Matz is, in essence, learning how to pitch through the pain, which is drastically different from learning how to be a better pitcher.

And yet, despite Matz’s recurring struggles of late, the state of the Mets’ pitching has remained encouraging this season. They have the lowest FIP in baseball. They have issued the fewest walks and allowed the fewest dingers. They have the fifth-best cFIP And and seventh-best DRA. But the season is essentially lost and, with six weeks to go until the offseason, the time to start thinking about next season is now. That means shutting down Matz as soon as possible.

Matz won’t win Rookie of the Year, but the Mets know they have something special in him. They also know he’s pitching through a painful injury. The path to giving him a chance at a healthy and dominant 2017 isn’t all that complicated, so they better start down that road soon.

Photo Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports