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Steven Matz: Another Example Of The Dysfunctional Mets

By Steve Contursi

May 25, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; New York Mets starting pitcher Steven Matz (32) pitches against Washington Nationals starting pitcher Tanner Roark (57) in the fifth inning at Nationals Park. The Mets won 2-0. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
May 25, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; New York Mets starting pitcher Steven Matz (32) pitches against Washington Nationals starting pitcher Tanner Roark (57) in the fifth inning at Nationals Park. The Mets won 2-0. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports /
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The loss of Steven Mat for what is being diagnosed as “shoulder discomfort” is yet another example of how not to handle a pitching staff. Once again, the New York Mets are revealing themselves to be a dysfunctional organization. 

Preface: After writing the piece below, I noticed that the NY Daily News is reporting that Steven Matz is penciled in to make his next start following his removal from the DL list. I’m telling you, you can’t make this stuff up. Read on……….

According to Brooks Baseball, Matz has thrown 2,886 pitches in a Mets uniform over the last two years, with most of them coming in 2016. These are just the pitches thrown in game situations where arm stress is highest and does not count the in between start tosses during bullpen sessions.

A major league pitcher is expected to handle this. Clayton Kershaw, according to the same source has thrown 27,656 pitches from 2007-2016. for an average of about 3,100 pitches per year. But the problem occurs when a pitcher tries to “work through” an injury.

It’s like when you go to work with a cold. You don’t feel quite right so you do things a bit differently. Maybe you stay in for lunch when you normally go outside to eat. Or maybe you leave an hour early to go home to rest. But the point is that you are breaking the routine. And for a pitcher, routine rules.

What happened with Matz is that he developed some bone spurs in his left elbow. Normally, a major league pitcher can pitch through them and continue on. Ron Darling, for instance explained in the New York Daily News, “You just try to manage the pain. I got cortisone shots.”

The ineptitude of the way the Mets have handled the  injury to Steven Matz is not an accident. Nor is it atypical of the way they do business. It’s another example of a dysfunctional Mets organization

With Matz, the Mets announced that he would try to pitch through the pain and they would monitor him closely. Granted, this happened when the season hadn’t yet developed into a train wreck. But still, it now raises the question of whether or not the Mets lived up to their end of the bargain.

By and large, most major league pitchers have what you might call a “football mentality” when it comes to remaining in a game or taking a competitive stand against an opposing hitter. We can still recall, for instance, the battle in the Mets dugout between Matt Harvey and Terry Collins for Collins to send him out for that fateful ninth inning in last year’s World Series.

But lest we forget too that Harvey was lost earlier in the season after the Mets inexplicably kept sending him out there to take another pounding from the opposition when it was obvious to almost everyone, save for the Mets, that something was “off” with Harvey.

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So too with Matz. He agreed to and in fact did pitch with pain. But along the way, he almost assuredly did things on the mound to compensate for the pain. He threw a pitch that caused more pain in order to get a batter out. Or, maybe he adjusted his arm angle here and there to reduce the pain. We don’t know. But the point is that the Mets should  have known. Who on the Mets should have known? Well, the most likely target would have to be the pitching coach, Dan Warthen.

But it doesn’t matter who individually is responsible as much as it collectively makes a statement about the Mets organization as a whole. I mean if the average fan watching could see it, someone somewhere in the Mets vast organization should have been able to see that Matz was struggling against himself, and then have taken steps to shut him down before further and more serious injuries occurred.

No doubt, Matz will recover from this setback and be back next year as good as new. Or, at least we hope so. But if anything demonstrates what is fast becoming a fact that the Mets don’t have a clue in handling a pitching staff, there’s enough that’s happened this year to prove it.

Next: 5 Reasons The New York Mets Will Miss The Postseason

Matz is only the tip of the iceberg. Harvey went down, Jacob deGrom looks “off” and about ready to go down, and Noah Syndergaard continues to pitch despite the fact that he’s been pitching with the same bone spur issue as Matz.

You can’t make this stuff up. But it’s gotta stop. Otherwise, all those dreams about the Mets dominating baseball forever because of their front line starters will soon become nightmares instead of dreams.

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