On Wednesday, Mets pitcher Steven Matz made his first rehab appearance with the Binghamton Mets, the club’s Double-A affiliate. On Thursday, Sandy Alderson announced that Matz would return to Binghamton for a final rehab start on August 31.
Wednesday’s effort was yet another step for Matz, who is working his way back to Queens after partially tearing his left lat muscle — an injury that landed him on the Disabled List in early July after only his second career major league start.
Matz shutdown the Erie SeaWolves on Wednesday, allowing only one hit. He was slated to throw no more than 60 pitches during the start, but only needed 56 pitches to get through six scoreless innings, retiring the last 16 batters he faced in the process.
After the game, Matz told reporters that he felt no pain from the lat injury that has sidelined him for nearly two months.
“I feel nothing anymore,” he said. “Yeah, I felt really good. [Catcher Xorge] Carrillo was calling a great game. I didn’t shake him off one time. We were pretty well together, so it was just filling up the strike zone.”
After the game, Matz continued to reiterate the fact that out of the three rehab starts he has made so far, including two with the Class-A Advanced St. Lucie Mets, it was during Wednesday’s start that he felt the most comfortable.
“Last outing I felt like I was pretty far off the mark, but today I felt a lot closer,” Matz said when asked how he felt compared to his two major league starts prior to the injury. “I felt a lot more comfortable on the mound, so that’s a big thing for me — just feeling comfortable out there.”
The young lefthander acknowledged that his off-speed stuff isn’t exactly where he would like for it to be just yet, and that it’s a work in progress.
“I would still like to feel a little bit better with it,” he mentioned. “But it was a lot better than last time, so I’m going to take what I had right here and build off that.”
Throughout the game, Matz took advantage of Erie’s aggressiveness at the plate, striking out five batters in a row at one point between the third and fourth innings.
“That’s what I really wanted to do, was just, you know, command the fastball the first couple of innings,” he said. So I was just going after them with my fastball, getting them on a fastball, and then we started pulling the strings after that.”
Matz’s fastball was consistently clocked at around 95 miles per hour. At one point in the sixth inning, he threw his fastball by a batter, and followed it up with a 76 miles per hour curveball, getting his sixth and final strikeout of the day in the process.
But the question remains. Is Matz ready to return to the big leagues in order to help the Mets in their quest to reach the playoffs? If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he feels ready, but the Mets are going to give him one last rehab start.
It’ll be Monday with Binghamton, and he’ll be facing off against the Reading Fightin Phils. And if all goes as planned, Matz will be activated the following day when major league rosters expand to 40 players.
