MIAMI – For much of his past nine starts over the last two months, Steven Matz was a stranger. The Long Island native looked unfamiliar, unlike the dominant southpaw who became an early favorite for NL Rookie of the Year.
Pitching with a bone spur in his elbow, Matz made it easy to wonder whether the brilliance would be able to return this season. Through his incomprehensible stretch of five straight losing decisions, the 25-year-old made it difficult to know when he would finally earn his next win.
It happened when the Mets needed it most.
Claiming his first victory since May 25, Matz threw six shutout innings to lead the Mets to a 3-0 win over the Marlins Sunday afternoon. With the rubber-game win at Marlins Park, the Mets now trail the Marlins by a half-game for the NL’s second wild-card spot.
Matz (8-6) entered having lost three straight starts, having gone 0-5 with a 4.76 ERA since beginning the season at 7-1 with a 2.36 ERA. In two previous starts against Miami this season, Matz had gone 0-2 with a 9.35 ERA.
“It’s great to really contribute to the win, for sure,” Matz said. “It was really good to go out there and put up some zeros. … I think early on I was really just focused on staying within myself and letting my mechanics take over and not trying to muscle up. That’s something I’ve been kind of fighting against … I think it really helped me out.”
For the fourth time this season, Matz did not allow a run, but it was his first scoreless effort since the May 25 win at Washington. Matz struck out six, walked two and allowed four hits, throwing 99 pitches (64 strikes).
“It was very encouraging,” manager Terry Collins said. “The fastball really had late life to it. You saw a lot of swings and missed on his fastballs. I thought his changeup and breaking ball he threw for strikes … I thought he had a great game.”
Multiple times, it seemed like Matz was veering towards the struggles that had defined his summer, but the southpaw skillfully avoided another repeat.
In the first inning, Marcell Ozuna grounded out with men on base. Then, with the Mets holding a 1-0 lead in the fifth inning – following a Jose Reyes triple – Matz surrendered a pair of two-out singles, but stopped Giancarlo Stanton, inducing a groundout from the slugger.
Miami had at least one baserunner in each of the first five innings, but ended up stranding seven.
“Stanton came up with runners on a couple times and it was just not giving in, not giving him that good pitch that he could crush,” Matz said. “I just didn’t want to miss fat. I didn’t want to make a mistake where he can extend his hands and hit the ball out of the ballpark with two runners on there.”
Marlins pitcher Jose Urena (1-2) nearly matched Matz pitch for pitch in just his second start of the season – 11th of his career – allowing just one run and four hits over six innings.
The majority of the Mets offense stemmed from a strikeout of Alejandro De Aza, who reached first on a wild pitch to lead off the eighth inning. Three batters later, Yoenis Cespedes drilled an RBI single, with James Loney following with another run-scoring single to secure the big series win on the road.
“We couldn’t lose any more ground,” Collins said. “They’re all big right now. This is crunch time for us.”