The right-hander left Target Field to a standing ovation after flirting with history.
With the Minnesota Twins facing a sweep at the hands of a division rival on Sunday afternoon, Zebby Matthews had plenty of reasons to get caught up in the pressure of the moment.
A perfect game was still intact into the sixth inning. He carried a shutout into the ninth. By the time the right-hander walked back to the mound for that final inning, the crowd at Target Field had already decided it was watching something special.
Matthews didn't seem particularly interested in any of it.
“I tried to take it each pitch at a time,” Matthews said postgame via Twins TV.
That mindset ended up defining his best outing of the season.
Matthews retired the first 17 batters he faced and didn't issue a walk all afternoon. He wasn't piling up strikeouts or getting a huge number of swings and misses, either. He threw 103 pitches and generated only nine whiffs, but he kept the White Sox from consistently putting themselves into good counts.
“I feel like I mixed pitches really well and was able to attack the zone,” Matthews said. “Got away with some stuff there, I think, in the middle of innings, but overall really good.”
That last part is worth paying attention to.
Matthews wasn't pretending the afternoon was flawless. There were balls hit hard. There was the perfect-game bid that disappeared when Drew Romo singled in the sixth. Even then, Matthews didn't seem to let the possibility of a historic outing change how he approached the next hitter.
“They swung early, so I’ll take early outs,” Matthews said. “They had some loud outs, but we’ll take those.”
That is probably a more useful snapshot of where Matthews is right now than the eight-plus innings or the five strikeouts.
He has now won five straight starts, and over his last three, he has allowed three runs across 21 innings with a 16:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. The Twins have needed that kind of stability, particularly with their rotation depth taking another hit during August.
Matthews also had to navigate a few moments that could have easily made the outing feel different.
In the sixth, he escaped after the perfect game ended and a runner reached second. Later, he bobbled a slow roller and admitted there was “a little panic” before he gathered himself and completed the play.
Then came the ninth.
Matthews returned to the mound to an ovation, something he said he had never really experienced before. After allowing two singles, he was removed with the shutout still within reach, but the crowd gave him another ovation as he walked off.
“It was really cool,” Matthews said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had an experience like that.”
For a pitcher who began August in the minors and finished it by throwing 8 1/3 innings in a much-needed 5-1 victory, that moment seemed to matter.
After taking something out of this White Sox series, the Twins will look to carry that over for another rivalry series at Target Field. They'll kick off a three-game set against the Detroit Tigers, handing Taj Bradley the ball for Monday's opener.
