MILWAUKEE — Before he had a galaxy of data points at his fingertips and access to everything from the axis of spin on his pitches to the break he was creating without the aid of gravity, Phil Maton had a bespoke way of building the break on his pitches: see it to believe it.
“If I don’t see it move, in my mind they’re not moving,†Maton said. “I’ve always chased big shape on pitches.â€
The result is a curveball that has become his career.
“Elite, different,†said pitching coach Dusty Blake.
“Unique,†said several teammates.
The one game the Cardinals won this past weekend in Milwaukee hinged around Maton’s work in the eighth inning Saturday and his ability to slip free from a bases-loaded jam with a lead that would become an 8-5 victory. His curveball led the way. The right-hander struck out the top two batters in the Brewers order with the bases loaded. He set up one strikeout with a curveball that clipped the edge of the strike zone, and he finished the other strikeout with a curveball, the third Jackson Chourio saw in his at-bat.
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This season, Maton has thrown more curveballs than any other pitch, and its origin and evolution as one of the most effective pitches out of the Cardinals bullpen connects eras of pitching development for the Cardinals, a club known for a few curveballs in its history.
He shaped it with the help of the Cardinals’ former pitching director.
He focused on it at the urging of a team the Cardinals are drawing inspiration and intellect from.
“I feel like I’ve always had a good feel for spinning the ball — and it’s just the shape has changed through the years,†Maton said. “It’s the progression of a slider that I’ve always had in the minor leagues. I’ve kind of always had a horizontal tilt on it, and it’s gotten slower and slower as the years have gone past. By creating more depth, it slows it down.â€
Maton had a breaking ball somewhere between a slider and a curve — or a “slurve†— when San Diego traded him to Cleveland. Receptive to whatever the new organization wanted, Maton was eager to follow the advice he got: throw the curve more. Cleveland had a reputation in the game for its strong pitcher development program, similar to the highly regarded programs the Brewers and Dodgers have. They could show Maton the numbers on how the curve from his arm angle with his ability to spin set it apart. But he also saw the big break of it, too.
See it. Believe it.
As part of the Cardinals’ expansion and reboot of their player development, they’ve drawn from Cleveland’s organization — hiring Rob Cerfolio from the Guardians to be the new assistant general manager in charge of development and performance. They also want to adapt some of the approaches.
“Historically, a really good pitching development organization,†Maton said. “Whatever they were going to ask me to do, I was going to do.â€
From Cleveland, he went to Houston, where Brent Strom was the pitching coach. Early in the Cardinals’ heyday of pitching prospects and the arrival of higher-end velocity in the system, Strom was the team’s director of pitching in the farm system. He left to join the Astros’ big league staff just before Houston’s long run of playoff success. With Maton, Strom introduced the sweeping slider — the pitch that’s all the rage — but also helped the right-hander keep both the sweeper and the curve distinct. That added more depth to the curve that plays now.
“It’s one of a kind,†starter Andre Pallante said. “I don’t think there is anyone who gets as good of a curveball as he does. The way it comes out of his hand, the way his arm slot is, the way hitters are swinging at it.â€
This season, Maton has thrown the curve more than any other pitch, and his sense that he’s struck out more batters with it is true — 20 of his 34 strikeouts. Opponents are batting .159 against the curveball, and the expected slugging percentage on it based on rate of contact and angle is .181. It’s one of the more effective curves in the majors, all while humming along at an average speed of 75.8 mph.
That’s up slightly from last season.
Which was Maton’s focus.
He wanted to throw the curveball harder, with more force behind it, and the cue he’s following this season is to increase his hand speed as he delivers the curve. That’s adding the movement that the metrics measure — and he can see.
In the eighth inning Saturday, he wasn’t all that comfortable with the curveball. He would say later he had a “horrible feel for it†and that a few times he “was lucky to get it in†the strike zone. That only underscores how effective the pitch has been for him.
Even with it’s not behaving, he can throw it with confidence.
“I’ll roll the dice sometimes,†Maton said, “and throw it anyways.â€
Sibling revelries
In the ninth inning Saturday, Willson Contreras and his younger brother William achieved a feat no other baseball brothers had since 1933 at Fenway Park.
The Cardinals’ Willson homered in the top of the inning, and William hit a solo shot in the bottom of the ninth to join only Rick Ferrell and his brother Wes as siblings who have hit home runs in the same inning but for opposing teams. The Ferrell Brothers did it on July 19, 1933, for Cleveland against Boston, according to Elias research.
The Contreras brothers have homered on the same day eight times in their careers, including once earlier this season.
The Cardinals media relations department dug into the box scores to determine William and Willson are the 11th pair of brothers to homer in the same inning since 1900. The most recent to do it were Josh and Bo Naylor when they homered in the same inning for Cleveland in April 2024 on National Siblings Day and also in July 2023. (The homers were off current Cardinals starter Erick Fedde.) The only other time it happened in a Cardinals game also involved a club from Milwaukee. Tommie Aaron slugged a pinch-hit homer in the same inning his brother, Hall of Famer Hank, hit a walk-off grand slam for the Milwaukee Braves at County Stadium.
Kudos to umps, etc.
Crew chief Vic Carapazza, who was behind home plate Saturday, and his crew of umpires received compliments from several corners for how they handled the hit batters and peppery exchanges during the third game of the series. Carapazza issued warnings to both dugouts after Willson Contreras was struck by a pitch, but when a ball got loose from Maton and hit a batter, he was not ejected because the umps, rightly, knew there was no intent.
By Sunday, temps had cooled in part because of the umpires’ approach.
- The next time the Cardinals will consider upshifting to a six-man rotation is June 24 as the Cubs visit Busch Stadium.
- The Cardinals have not had a home game on Father’s Day since 2019. With Sunday’s loss, they are 23-30 since President Nixon recognized Father’s Day as an official holiday in 1972.