DENVER – Tyler Matzek made his major league debut against the Braves Wednesday night, 10 days after the Rockies left-handed prospect gave up nine hits and nine runs in 4 1/3 innings in a Triple-A game against New Orleans.
If you’ve followed Braves teams of recent vintage, you can probably guess how things went against the young pitcher they had never seen before.
Matzek took a perfect game to the fifth inning and worked a two-hit shutout through seven innings of an 8-2 Rockies rout at Coors Field. Braves ace Julio Teheran was charged with a career-high seven runs in 6 1/3 innings as his four-start winning streak ended with a thud, raising his ERA from a majors-leading 1.89 to 2.41.
“It wasn’t my day from the first inning,” said Teheran (6-4), who gave up 10 hits, matching another career high. “Couple of mistakes. It just wasn’t my day.”
It was most definitely Matzek’s day.
The Braves trailed 8-0 before scoring two runs in the eighth, when a tiring Matzek gave up three consecutive singles including a run-scoring hit by Andrelton Simmons that broke up the shutout and ended the lefty’s night. The second run charged to Matzek scored on B.J. Upton’s infield hit off reliever Franklin Morales.
Matzek finished with a line of five hits and two runs allowed in seven innings, with seven strikeouts and no walks.
“His fastball was a little sneaky to me,” Simmons said of the lefty, who relied primarily on an 94-96 mph fastball and 84-85 mph slider. “I felt like we were a little late on his fastball; I mean, he was throwing hard, it had a little extra to it. He was pretty good. But we didn’t do a good job of hitting the strikes.
“He didn’t do much. He threw a fastball and slider the whole game pretty much, and we didn’t hit. Got to give him some credit, but we’ve got to take some blame, too. We’ve got to be better.”
The Braves are 3-3 on a seven-game trip and fell a game behind surging NL East leader Washington, the first time since May 8 that Atlanta didn’t have at least a share of the division lead. The Braves need a win Thursday to avoid splitting the four-game series against injury-riddled Colorado, which was 1-11 with a 7.17 ERA in its past 12 games before Wednesday.
The last of Teheran’s seven runs scoring after slumping reliever David Carpenter replaced him in the seventh. The hits matched a career-high allowed twice previously by Teheran, who gave up three runs in the first inning on four hits including Drew Stubbs’ RBI double and Corey Dickerson’s two-run triple.
Several of the Rockies’ hits were bloops in front of Braves playing deep in the spacious expanse of Coors Field outfield. Others of the extra-base variety were to the deep gaps, permitting Rockies base runners to dash around the bases.
“This field is so big it’s kind of tough to know where to play,” center fielder B.J. Upton said. “But it seems like they (Rockies outfielders) kind of pinch the gaps pretty well; they kind of give you a lot. Maybe that’s the approach we’ll take. I don’t know, it’s just so big out there it’s tough to get a gauge on where to play.”
In Tuesday’s 13-10 Braves win, Mike Minor allowed eight runs and 11 hits in four innings to match the career-high eight runs he allowed in a 2012 start at Coors Field. Minor and Teheran both pitched splendidly in the Braves’ sweep of“icebowl” doubleheader at Coors Field in April 2012, with the temperature at 23 for the first pitch and 27 for the nightcap.
Teheran allowed eight hits and one run allowed in seven innings of that win. But the Colombian struggled mightily Wednesday, in 63 degrees with unusually high humidity (75 percent) for Denver after a light rain that moved batting practice indoors.
Teheran didn’t walk anyone but hit Josh Rutledge with a pitch that caromed off his left shoulder and knocked off his helmet in the fifth inning. Rutledge stayed in and came around to score on a rundown executed poorly by the Braves on Troy Tulowitzki’s single, pushing the lead to 5-0. Back-to-back doubles by Stubbs and Dickerson in the sixth made it 6-0.
“He didn’t really get hit hard,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “Yesterday was balls flying, and today was balls in front of our outfielders, it seemed like, a couple of times. Couple of bloop singles and they kept putting the pressure on, running the bases well and taking the extra base, going first to third.
“You just never know. You don’t know where you’re going to play here in the outfield, it’s so big, so spacious. Sometimes you play too deep and the ball falls in front of you, sometimes you play normal and the ball goes to the cap or over your head.”
Matzek, 23, wasn’t ranked among the Rockies’ top-10 prospects before the season and had a 4.05 ERA in 12 starts at Triple-A Colorado Springs, where he gave up 70 hits including eight homers in 66 2/3 innings.
But the Braves didn’t have a runner reach base against him until Justin Upton’s one-out single in the fifth inning. Chris Johnson followed with another single, but Tommy La Stella struck out and Simmons popped out to end the inning with the Braves trailing 4-0.
“He pitched well,” B.J. Upton said. “It’s just tough to have an approach against somebody you’ve never seen before. But yeah, (velocity) was up there. I didn’t really see much off-speed from him. He threw a couple of good sliders.”
The Braves didn’t muster anything else until the eighth inning against Matzek, whose bad outing against New Orleans wasn’t even his worst in Triple-A this season. On May 5 against Memphis, he got whacked for 13 hits and 11 runs (eight earned) in five innings.
Against the Braves, he retired the first 13 batters.
Teheran was 4-0 with a 1.23 ERA in his past four starts before facing the Rockies. The winning streak began after his loss at San Francisco when he had problems gripping the ball in the dry air and gave up seven hits and five runs (four earned) in a career-low 3 1/3 innings.
What made the degree of the Braves’ hitting woes surprising was that Matzek was a lefty. While they’ve struggled this season against right-handers, the Braves’ .480 slugging percentage against lefties was the league’s second best before Wednesday, trailing only the Rockies’ .487. They came in ranked fifth in batting average against lefties (.274) and third in OBP (.343).
But again, give them a young pitcher and/or a pitcher they’ve never faced before – even a lefty — and Braves teams of the past several years will, more often than not, make him look good.
Matzek wasn’t even the first choice among Rockies prospects to start Wednesday. Eddie Butler had been scheduled to make his second start but he was disabled with shoulder soreness after his debut last week. Butler is the Rockies’ No. 2 prospect as rated by Baseball America in the spring.
Matzek wasn’t on Rockies’ top-10 list, but looked absolutely elite against the Braves.
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