Yankees’ rehabbing reliever looks sharp in latest MiLB outing

Tyler Matzek mixed in some sinkers to go alongside his four-seamer and slider, a new pitch that can be devastating on left-handed batters when executed properly. While Statcast hasn’t properly tagged Matzek’s sinker, pitch plots display a fastball with more run and vertical drop, the kind of pitch that can work well against left-handed hitters by coaxing double play balls for the infield to convert.

He raved about this new sinker on MLB Radio before he signed with the Yankees, and got a double play on a sinker at 95.1 MPH with 18 inches of lateral movement. It works well off of his four-seamer because the velocity isn’t different at all, yet there’s a massive gap in vertical and horizontal movement coming from the same arm slot. Tyler Matzek’s four-seamer had good ride in this Triple-A outing, but he seemed to better balance his pitch usage, an early trend in rehab.

While this could just be a matter of Matzek getting comfortable using his entire repertoire, the left-hander has found himself being overly reliant on his four-seamer at times. He’s using it between 50-55% of the time through his first 3 MiLB innings of work while in 2024 he used it 67% of the time and in 2022 he used it 76% of the time. Batters have become better at hitting four-seamers over the years and teams have begun throwing those pitches less often.

The Yankees have pushed guys away from being overly reliant on a fastball and have helped them expand their arsenals more to get other weapons involved. It’s a trend that’s gone league-wide, with rivals like the Red Sox being extremely aggressive with pushing four-seam avoidant approaches on any pitcher in their organization. Sam Briend and Matt Blake have been known to innovate and experiment, and Matzek’s new sinker gives them a lane to do so with the veteran.

If he’s ~50% four-seam with his slider as his secondary pitch and the sinker as a solid tertiary pitch, we could see Tyler Matzek get more whiffs and groundballs. The pedigree here is excellent; Matzek has been an above-average reliever for his entire career outside of 2024, but after elbow surgery, he hasn’t quite been the same. If these tweaks can result in outings like the ones we’ve seen on this rehab assignment, this Yankee bullpen could get even scarier.

Clarke Schmidt is scheduled to make a rehab start today and the expectation as of now is that he’ll re-join their starting five on either April 15th or April 16th. Jonathan Loaisiga and Jake Cousins are still not ready to appear in rehab games, but both of their timelines are around a late-May or early-June return. The Yankees have also begun ramping up Luis Gil as he’s being cleared to start his throwing program any day now, and they could desperately use him right now.