Better Matz

I didn't see much of Wednesday night's game, which isn't an unusual occurrence, and what I did see wasn't exactly action-packed. I'd missed the Mets come out and attack curly-haired boyfriend Jeff Locke for 3 early runs, 2 of which came on Asdrubal Cabrera's 2-run Home Run, his first since putting his employer on notice. From there, the game was basically the Steven Matz show. In his 4th start of the season, Matz came out and put the Marlins in their rightful place, shutting them out for 7 innings and generally looking very good in leading the Mets to an 8-0 victory.

It's nice to see Matz come out and look really strong as he did, and among other things he was working his slider back into his repertoire. He hadn't been throwing it much, if at all, to this point because of that whole elbow problem that keeps cropping up, so it's understandable. But if he's feeling good enough that he wants to start throwing that 4th pitch, I have no issue with it. Matz's career, which in fact began two years ago today, is known more for the fact that he's constantly missed time with some sort of ailment, but what we tend to forget is that when he pitches, he's generally very good and when he's pitching and he's healthy, he can be really good. Give him a game against a flagging opponent and it could look like a mismatch (the flipside of course being what happened to him against Washington and LA, which probably was the catalyst to get him throwing the slider again in the 1st place). Now, of course, we have to hold our breath and see how he responds to an outing like this, but I would say if nothing else that this is an encouraging performance. I didn't have to watch the whole thing to be able to say that.