Brian Matusz did his running and met with the media a few minutes ago. He said he was very pleased with his performance, particularly the percentage of strikes that he threw (28 of 36).
"It was great,'' Matusz said. "I came out of the gates. My game plan today was...I was excited, I really wanted to pound the zone and throw strikes. I was able to do that today. I came out today and threw a lot of fastballs. I didn't go off my gameplan at all, even with that at-bat with Longoria, where it was long. He kept fouling pitches off. I still continued to go in hard with fastballs and did what I wanted to do."
Matusz said that in a regular season game, he might have mixed up his pitches more to get the at-bat over with one way or the other and keep his pitch count down, but he was working on his hard stuff and stayed with it.
"I was trying to pound him in a little bit,'' he said. "I didn't want to put the ball out over the plate where he could reach out and put it up into that wind in right field. I think in a different situation I might have mixed in a breaking ball or something like that. It probably would have been different in the regular season but I continued to pound it in with the fastball in."
Though he only completed 1 1/3 innings and needed 36 pitches to get that far, Matusz had no complaints.
"It was fun,'' he said. "It was a good battle. I know my pitch count got up today, but I threw a lot of strikes...and I was able to do what I wanted to do."