Baseball Beginnings

By John Klima
May 4, 2009

Considered the top high school left-handed starting pitching available in the 2009 draft, Tyler Matzek is ready to see what happens next. At this stage of the spring, most high school pitchers getting ready for the draft are pitching more to show they are healthy than to simply light-up radar guns. 

Yet at the same time, the prospects have to make the guns happy. The end result is that their high school games become glorified bullpen sessions. That reality might be tough to fathom for readers outside of professional baseball, but at this point, these games are more job interviews than anything else.

The window from amateurs to the big leagues narrows every year. For a left-hander considered very desirable for raw power and stuff, Matzek is balancing the desire to pitch for outs with the need to throw hard and maintain his draft status.

Baseball Beginnings caught up with Matzek after a recent start. The Capistrano Valley High and University of Oregon recuit discussed what it is like to experience struggle when dominating has been routine, how to pitch to win when scouts only want to see pure gas, and what happens when high school umpires get in the way of auditioning. At the big league level, pitching coaches want command, control and movement. Before the draft, light it up, please.

Baseball Beginnings: If you were to self-evaluate yourself for you, not for the scouts, how do you think you’ve been this spring?
Matzek: I’ve been alright. I think I could be better. I’m still throwing too many balls out of the strike zone. I’m trying to get away from that. Everything else I think I’ve been alright.

Baseball Beginnings: Are you talking about an overall lack of command by your standards?
Matzek: Yeah, lack of command by my standards, and flying open a little bit. I just try to work on that and keeping the ball down a bit more. Today it was tough. I thought I got squeezed.

Baseball Beginnings: When you go from level to level to amateurs and dominate, how do you anticipate dealing with struggles for the first time as a professional, which is a process all minor league pitchers go through?
Matzek: You just have to adapt. You deal with it. Today, this (umpire) wasn’t calling anything but right down the middle so I just started trying to throw stuff down the middle and keep some speed and some movement so they couldn’t get good contact off it, even though some of them did. Whatever the game throws at you, you have to throw right back.

Baseball Beginnings: What do you expect to be in five years?
Matzek: Hopefully, pitching in the big leagues or at least knocking on the door. Whatever road I take, whatever road happens.

Baseball Beginnings: How do you see yourself then?
Matzek: For sure, I have more in myself. I’ve been down in my velocity from what I can be. With time, I think there’s more there.

Baseball Beginnings: They had you at 93 mph a couple of times today.
Matzek: I wasn’t on today.

Baseball Beginnings: Was this more you working things out today than going all-out?
Matzek: I was trying to throw these hitters more off-balance than trying to overpower them. You can’t overpower a guy if he’s going to expect it right down the middle. You need to throw more off-speed and change speeds.

Baseball Beginnings: A lot of guys who can throw hard at this level lose track of trying to locate and pitch with off-speed. Is that something you’re always cognizant of?
Matzek: For sure. You’re not throwing. You’re pitching. It’s two completely different things. A closer is a little different, you want to come in and throw. A starter has to be a little different, you have to pitch a game and not throw a game.

Baseball Beginnings: Do you consider yourself to have a starter’s mentality more than a closer’s mentality?
Matzek: Definitely.

Baseball Beginnings: Is it easy to get away from developing other aspects of pitching when you climb through the amateur cycles simply because you have to light up radar guns to be noticed?
Matzek: Yeah, it is. You always want to throw your hardest, but you have to have the mentality that it’s not what (scouts) are looking for all the time. I think if you throw 95-96 and people are still hitting it because you’re not mixing in off-speed, what good is it? You have to think about the outcome of what that pitch is actually doing.

Baseball Beginnings: Toughest hitter you have ever faced?
Matzek:  I couldn’t say. I don’t really pay attention to names. I try to find each guy’s weakness.

Baseball Beginnings: Are you getting to the point where you’re ready to see what happens?
Matzek: Yeah, I want to get there. I’m excited to see the draft.

Read Matzek’s first interview after he signs with Rockies
Matzek hits 97
Watch Tyler Matzek Scouting video
Watch Tyler Matzek April Scouting video
Read Tyler Matzek Scouting report
Matzek Makes Final Start One to Savor
Colorado Rockies Select Tyler Matzek

Categories: '09 Meet the Player
Tags: Tyler Matzek, University of Oregon