LOS ANGELES – Nobody told Tyler Matzek it would be easy. He had no reason to think it wouldn’t be.
At Capistrano Valley he struck people out at will, hit home runs, won a CIF championship at Angel Stadium.
He returned there Monday, five years and a lifetime later, to make his second major league start for the Colorado Rockies. Nobody had to tell him it would be hard.
Matzek caught the Dodgers on one of their $200million nights. When Matt Kemp and Yasiel Puig are both cooking, this is no country for a left-hander, and the Dodgers had Matzek in trouble in all five of his innings.
Still, Matzek was only down, 3-1, when he left, before the Dodgers cleaned up a 6-1 victory. He stranded six Dodgers in scoring position, and he wasn’t helped by Charlie Blackmon’s two errors in left field, one of which allowed Dee Gordon to circle the bases.
“The slider wasn’t really there, and I was falling behind hitters,” he said later. “Those were the two Achilles’ heels for me. Ten hits are pretty disappointing, I don’t want to minimize that, but I tried to keep runs off the board.”
It did not erase last Wednesday, when Matzek became the 13th starting pitcher in Rockies history to make his debut in Coors Field and the third to win. It was 8-2, in fact, and Matzek dictated from the beginning, beating Atlanta ace Julio Teheran and going to 3-ball counts only twice against the 26 Braves he faced.
“We’re telling guys, hey, be patient, this guy sprays it around a little bit,” said Fredi Gonzalez, the Atlanta manager. Instead, Matzek threw 71 pitches in his first seven innings, and walked nobody.
Run that one past the folks in Modesto, who covered their eyes when Matzek took the mound in 2011.
He walked 46 in 33 innings and basically had to take an 8-count. Actually, it was a two-week sabbatical to work with mentor Lon Fullmer.
Pitching for Modesto and Asheville that year, Matzek had 96 walks in 97 innings. Some in the Rockies organization wanted to change his delivery. Some didn’t. It was not a casual disagreement, because Matzek was the 11th player picked in the 2009 draft and got a $3.6million bonus to keep him from attending Oregon.
Matzek throws “as if the ball is coming out of his head,” as Fullmer once described it. He pronates his wrist and follows the tenets of Dr. Mike Marshall, the kinesiologist and long-distance relief pitcher who put up astounding numbers – 2081/3 innings in 1974, for instance – with the Dodgers and others.
“If you took a picture of Tyler in high school and took a picture of him now, you would see a few differences, like you would with any pitcher,” said Darryl Scott, the Double-A pitching coach whom Matzek credits for stabilizing him. “But basically, it’s about the same.
“He just had to quit thinking about mechanics. He didn’t start throwing 95mph in high school because he was thinking about mechanics. He was thinking about getting people out and throwing good pitches. He was frustrated, but he didn’t let it get the best of him. If you’re going to fail, it’s better to do it in the minor leagues. Then you can handle it when it happens again.”
Matzek toyed with high-end competition at Capistrano Valley. He was 13-1 with a 0.96 ERA his senior year. He beat Edison, 1-0, in the championship game and hit a home run. He beat Riverside Poly, 1-0, in the semifinals and had the only RBI.
“He did everything but take out the trash,” said Capo Valley coach Bob Zamora, at the time.
The plate’s dimensions didn’t change when Matzek became a pro, but something did.
“I had never had to deal with anything like that,” he said. “That was some pretty bad failing. I just had to realize it was just a game. Mechanically I had to find a way to pitch downhill again, to find that straight line. The delivery is a little bit different, but I still pronate, and the arm action is the same.”
Scott helped reset Matzek, as did Andy McKay, a “mental skills” coach. McKay gave Matzek books by Dr. Bob Rotella, famous for mental techniques that keep top golfers from hurling themselves into water hazards.
His walk rate at Modesto two years ago was 12.5 every nine innings. This year at Colorado Springs, the Triple-A club, it was 4.2.
“The key is always simplifying,” Metzek said. And when the key breaks off, keep knocking.
Contact the writer: mwhicker03@gmail.com
