Maton was the other reliever besides Coulombe acquired at the trade deadline for the Texas Rangers. He was a solid piece for team as he closed some games.
Let’s see if he should be brought back.
Performance Last Year
With the St. Louis Cardinals he posted a WAR of 1.1 with one win and three losses. He had a 2.35 ERA in 38.1 innings with 48 strikeouts against 15 walks. Like Coulombe, his stats did get a bit worse when he arrived in Texas.
He had a 0.2 WAR with three wins and two losses. His ERA did increase to 3.52 in 23 innings with 33 strikeouts against eight walks. He took on the closer role when he arrived in Texas and had mixed results as he went 3 for 6 in saves opportunities.
Maton had games where he looked untouchable and other ones where it looked like he couldn’t throw a strike and that is notable with his save percentage.
His baseball savant looks great with all the red on it. The only two stats in the blue are his fastball velo with it being under 90 miles per hour at 89.6 and his walk percentage which is 9.6 percent.
Walks were something that plagued him as when he started to lose control of his stuff is when he would walk guys and start to let up runs.
His highest stats were in the 99th percentile were avg exit velo and hard hit percentage. His avg exit velo was 84.8 and his hard hit percentage was 30.7 percent. The stats trailing right behind that are his whiff percentage and barrel rate which are 36.2 percent and 3.2 percent.
These are just out of this world with how highly this stats rank compared to the rest of the league. His other stats are all ranked extremely highly around the league.
These stats show that Maton seems much better than what the base level stats say and the eye test of most people.
Pitch Mix
He throws a four pitch mix with a curve, cutter, sweeper, and sinker.
He threw a curve 38 percent of the time. It generated the highest whiff percentage of his arsenal at 41.6 percent and highest put away percentage of 29.8 percent. This pitch also generated the lowest batting average against it with .136 batting average. It also generated 53 of his 81 strikeouts on the year.
Next up is his cutter which is nearly the same as the curve at 36 percent. It is his second best pitch with a whiff percent of 32.9 and a put away percent of 20.5 and a batting average of .215 against it. The expected batting average is .197, so it shows that he was getting a bit unlucky. It also got the majority of the rest of his strikeouts with 24.
His third pitch is his sweeper at 14 percent. This was the pitch that he made the most trouble with as hitters hit .400 against it. However, the underlying numbers should that this pitch should have been better, the expected batting average is .266. The whiff percent was nearly the same as the cutter with it being 32.8 percent. The put away percent came in at 18.2. It did not generate many strikeouts with only two.
The final pitch is his sinker at 12 percent. It’s whiff percent was 21.2 percent and the put away percent came in at 11.2. Hitters had good results against the sinker with a .278 batting average and an expected batting average of .362 which shows that pitch was getting hit hard and Maton was getting lucky. This pitch only racked up one strikeout.
Verdict
I think that if the Rangers won’t go after a big fish for the closer role like Edwin Diaz then they should think about bringing in Maton to be the closer.
He is supposed to get $7.1 million AAV according to Spotrac. That price tag is a bit steep, so I could understand being hesitant to bring him back. Shawn Armstrong could be another option to take on the closer role and he would be cheaper than Maton.
I think that I would try to bring Maton back if I am the Rangers, but if it gets into a bidding war or goes too high for their liking than they should pivot to Armstrong.
