DUNEDIN, Fla. – Whatever nerves Quinn Mathews expected to feel prior to his first start in an MLB Spring Training game got buried under a painfully early wakeup and a torturous commute across the state of Florida on Tuesday morning.
As it turns out, those factors proved oddly calming for the 24-year-old Mathews -- baseball's No. 45 overall prospect, according to MLB Pipeline -- and they paved the way for a stellar two-inning debut outing.
“To be completely honest, nothing that crazy [in terms of nerves] because it was a long day with a 5:30 a.m. breakfast, and it was supposed to be a 3-hour, 45-minute bus ride, but it turned into almost five hours,” Mathews said following the Cardinals’ 3-2 loss to the Blue Jays at TD Ballpark. “So, all the nerves that were going to be there got taken out of me by the situation, which was probably for the best.
“I woke up this morning at 4 o’clock and I didn’t want to oversleep my 5 a.m. alarm and basically, I didn’t sleep after that. So, I slept not so great, but it’s OK because it was just first-day nerves.”
Whatever jitters Mathews might have been feeling, they didn’t affect an outing where he struck out three without allowing a run. He breezed through his first inning, getting Bo Bichette to pop up on one pitch and striking out superstar slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a bit of trickery. After topping out at 95.1 mph earlier in the opening inning, Mathews twice sped up Guerrero before fooling the All-Star with a diving 81.1 mph changeup for a strikeout.
“I definitely saw Vlady’s eyes light up on [a first changeup] because it was more so up and I was like, ‘OK, I don’t think I can afford to do that again,’” Mathews said with a chuckle. “If I was going to go back to [the changeup] it needed to be a little more down to make sure that he didn’t see the same pitch again.”
Mathews retired the first two hitters of the second inning, including a strikeout of Will Wagner with a four-seam fastball. Following two soft singles and a walk, Mathews got a visit from pitching coach Dusty Blake to give him a breather. Showing the analytical approach he often takes to pitching, Mathews deftly pitched around Davis Schneider with a bevy of changeups while knowing that No. 9 hitter Nathan Lukes was on deck. Mathews then calmly rallied and struck out Lukes on another electric four-seam fastball to leave the bases loaded.
Of Mathews’ 33 pitches, he threw 15 fastballs, 11 sliders and seven changeups. He induced 19 swings and got six whiffs.
“I thought he looked really good today with an impressive outing the first time out there because he has poise to him and the stuff to go with it,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said of Mathews. “The fastball had good life, the hop was on it and the off-speed stuff was there as well. He got the bases loaded in that [second] inning and he was able to show what he’s capable of.
“You want to see him do well and you want to see him get out of some stuff and he did both.”
Because he was in such a good rhythm, Mathews said he ignored the temptation to step off the rubber and try and soak in the environment in his first MLB Spring Training game. Oddly, he said he felt much better out of the windup than he did from the stretch – the opposite of the way he has felt much of Spring Training thus far, he said.
“I found a good rhythm early, so I didn’t want to take that moment [to savor the environment] to possibly throw myself off,” the Stanford product said. “I felt like I was in a good rhythm, and throwing strikes early was a big thing for me. The conversations I’ve had with our organization for the last week and a half have been to get ahead early and attack, and then trust the stuff late.”
To try and hype him up, Mathews said several family members sent him screenshot pictures of the MLB.com pitching panel that featured him and likely future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer facing off. In terms of advice, he talked to Cardinals veteran Sonny Gray and Rockies rookie Chase Dollander, who made his MLB Spring Training debut Monday against Justin Verlander.
“Chase ran me down with what he felt [in his debut] and gave me a heads up [about the nerves] and just told me to go and do what I do,” he added. “If I do that, then I can live with what happens at the end of the day.”