Minneapolis – Minnesota Twins fans have long waited to see the Herculean starts Zebby Matthews has delivered in the minors carry over to Major League Baseball.
Matthews did what he did best, allowing no walks and only a couple of hits to the Washington Nationals. He threw 81 pitches, striking out seven on 12 whiffs in six innings of work.
“I mean, it felt really good,” said Matthews postgame. “I had some tough luck, tough outings here. To get that one in was a confidence booster. It felt really good.”
“It was great pitching,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. “It took even more than great pitching, and it was pretty great. We made a lot of great plays behind our guys in the field, and that’s how you hold any team down at this level. Zebby was lights-out.”
Matthews hadn’t produced a scoreless outing yet in his major league career, but he pitched four in the minors each of the last two seasons. To check that box off when Baldelli handed him the ball against the top of the Nationals lineup a third time was a great confidence boost, especially when he caught James Wood looking on a fastball at 97.8 MPH to end the night.
“It means a lot that he trusts me to go out there and get those last guys out,” Matthews said. “Obviously, if the leadoff guy gets on, maybe it’s a little bit of a different story. I had thrown well to those two guys up to that point, so I felt really good to be able to go out there and finish the inning.”
“I think that can be his normal,” said Twins catcher Ryan Jefffers. “I think he’s been getting some bad luck lately, but you can’t blame everything on that. The stuff was really crisp; his command was really good today. I think we can hopefully come to expect that from him because I think that’s the player and caliber of player he is.”
The run support looked as though it might have been a challenge for Minnesota’s lineup to get across early in the game. They were up against lefty MacKenzie Gore, whose 144 strikeouts are third-best in the National League.
It’s not as though the Twins didn’t create opportunities to score against him early. Gore had three walks in the first two innings. Two of those walks to Harrison Bader and Ty France started off the bottom of the second, but any chance of capitalizing on them came up short due to a Brooks Lee double play.
Gore’s command remained shaky all game, and the Twins would get another opportunity to capitalize on his mistakes in the fifth. Matt Wallner drew a two-out walk and advanced from first to third on two separate wild pitches from Gore. Lee drew Minnesota’s sixth walk against him to bring Byron Buxton up to the plate.
Buxton got his swing just underneath one of Gore’s four-seam fastballs to hit it deep enough to left field for an RBI sacrifice fly to score Wallner and give the Twins their lone run of the game.
Despite going 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position, the Twins would only need the one run to give Matthews his first quality start of the season. Minnesota’s hitters would have benefited from cashing in on more run-scoring opportunities. Still, with the Nationals getting only two runners in scoring position all night, it made the lack of offense easier to swallow.
“To be able to put together a full start where I felt like I was more or less doing what I wanted to do out there for a full six innings was something that felt good to do, and it’s something I obviously need to continue to do,” said Matthews. “It’s something I know I can do. I’ve seen it in Triple-A and spring training. To finally get results up here is big.”
“Any time a starter’s throwing 98, I think you feel good about that,” said Jeffers. “But you combine it with the touch that [Matthews] has and the offspeed options that he can go to, I think he can be a really, really good long-term big league starter.”
It was poetic for Twins fans to see the best version of himself in an old hat design, both he and the fandom hold dearly. Growing up in North Carolina, Matthews had never seen them before Friday night’s game, but he was ecstatic to get a win with the old M logo on his head.