It’s a sad state of affairs when Tyler Matzek hits the injured list with elbow inflammation and a fair question is whether there’s a bit of IL manipulation in play. Matzek hasn’t just been bad this year; he’s been bad in every language. The ERA traditionalists (few of whom read this site, I assume, but if you’re one of them, welcome!) have the gaudy 9.90 ERA. The batted-ball-inputs people point and grimace at Matzek’s 7.42 xERA. And the FIP/xFIP folks look at a 5.94 FIP/3.87 xFIP and murmur, “He’s better than he’s looked, but he’s not exactly great.” It seems that everyone - Brian Snitker included - agrees that Matzek has no business in high-leverage situations, but even for the last guy out of an major league bullpen, there has to be some minimum level of effectiveness. Matzek hasn’t met it so far.
And don’t tell the ERA traditionalists I said this, but Matzek hasn’t really been any good since 2021. His 3.50 ERA in 2022 would suggest a soft decline from his 2020 and 2021 form (2.79 and 2.57 ERAs in those campaigns), but what’s under the hood - 4.23 xERA, 4.49 FIP, 5.59 xFIP - told a much more dire story. Matzek was getting way fewer whiffs without commensurate improvement in command and was primarily being saved by an extremely low HR/FB percentage. This year, the walks have gone down, but the homers have gone up and the whiffs remain elusive.
I want to start by looking at a big difference between 2021 Tyler Matzek and the diminished versions we’ve seen in 2022 and 2024.
Do you remember precisely where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing the last time Tyler Matzek hit 98 on a radar gun?
You do, even if you don’t realize it. Roll the tape.
November 2, 2021. Freddie Freeman at first base, Joe Buck on the call, God, America, and that one Astros fan with the iconic Soler home run reaction looking on. Matzek pitched the 7th and 8th innings, and he had his best stuff working. 9 of the first 10 pitches he threw were fastballs. While he ended up at a less dramatic 16-12 fastball-slider split on the day, it certainly wasn’t because the fastball lacked juice. Every single one of Matzek’s fastballs was a minimum of 95.8 mph. Five were at least 98 mph.
And that’s more or less who Tyler Matzek was in 2021. This wasn’t just playoff juice. His 96.0 mph average fastball velocity in the regular season put him in the 87th percentile of pitchers, and 160 of his regular season pitches - or 15 percent of his total pitches - were fastballs sitting at a minimum of 97 mph. And it’s not like he built up over the course of the season; Matzek hit triple digits in a game on April 4th! (Or another way of putting it: Matzek threw a 100+ mph fastball before the Braves won a game in 2021.)
Since that fateful day in November 2021, Tyler Matzek has thrown 668 fastballs at the major league level. Two have been above 97 mph. And zero have been above 98 mph.
This isn’t that surprising in the sense that we’ve all watched Matzek and we’ve seen his velocity trend down. But zero pitches above 98 mph? Kyle Wright threw 4 pitches in that velocity band during that span; Max Fried threw 10. Even at his most amped up, Matzek hasn’t gotten back into the upper ends of his old velocity range.
Has it affected the quality of his fastball? You bet. After recording a .298 xwOBA against with his fastball in 2021, that ticked up to a more pedestrian .330 in 2022 and an awful .508 so far this year. The question, “who are you taking, 2001 Barry Bonds against a league-average pitcher or a league-average hitter against Tyler Matzek fastball?” is extremely close right now. In a small sample, the slider remains as effective as ever, but Matzek has always been a fastball-dominant reliever, and the fastball is a bad pitch at this point.
There are a couple of things to be said in defense of Matzek’s performance. The first is that all post-2021 data is either from 1) the season that ended in Matzek getting Tommy John surgery and 2) the season immediately following that surgery. It’s still early in the year and maybe Matzek will get stronger as the season goes on. The second is that Matzek was extremely effective in 2020 with a fastball averaging 94.3 mph; while it’s still a tick above the 93.6 mph he’s averaged so far this year, it suggests there’s hope for a non-fireballer Matzek. (The counterpoint is that the 2020 season provides a short, weird sample.)
But let’s be honest. The track record of 33-year-old relievers coming off major injury and having lost fastball velocity is not good. Maybe Matzek’s velocity is down because of Tommy John; maybe it’s just down because of the 116.1 innings he pitched between July 2020 and November 2021. There’s a decent chance Matzek fired his last effective bullets in November 2021.
That’s why, even though I never thought the Matzek contract extension was great business from a cold wins-per-dollar standpoint, it struck me as perfectly acceptable patronage. For less than a million dollars, Matzek was one of the best relievers in the sport for two straight seasons. He was a critical cog in the 2021 World Series team, and though it’s largely forgotten, he was nails during the 2020 postseason run as well. The least the Braves could do - or at least, should do - was pay him in his rehab season and give him another chance.
On Thursday night, a 29-year-old left-handed reliever who endured a long, winding baseball journey made his Braves debut. He quickly erased three hitters with his high-90s fastball and a nasty curveball. His name is Ray Kerr, and if you noticed parallels with 2020 Tyler Matzek, it’s only because I attempted to draw them out in the most heavy-handed fashion possible. Kerr is Matzek’s roster replacement during Matzek’s IL stint, and he may well be Matzek’s replacement in a broader sense, too. So goes the circle of life for relievers. There’s always a new model waiting in Triple-A biding his time.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate Tyler Matzek for who he is - or at least, for who he was in 2020 and 2021. And if the last time Matzek threw a 98 mph pitch was in front of the entire baseball world, less than an hour before the Braves clinched a World Series, then maybe there’s some poetic justice in it all.
This newsletter is free. If you enjoy it, please consider donating to the Equal Justice Initiative (eji.org).
ncG1vNJzZmiZoqKwqa3Iq5ilnahjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89ooGabn6KybsDOZpmuqqliwbq4xKtkppmkr7KsecGuq2aZnKi8