Yuki Matsui on Fri, Jul 24, 2026

Matsui steadies with 1.1 scoreless innings as his slider does the heavy lifting

Matsui Yuki took the mound against the Braves on July 24, working 1.1 innings with 1 hit, 0 earned runs, and 1 strikeout to close out the game. That's a clean bounce-back from his July 22 outing against the same Braves, when he allowed an earned run in just two-thirds of an inning, and it continues a pattern in which his rough outings tend to be followed almost immediately by a scoreless one.

Looking at the pitch mix, four-seamers (41% of pitches, averaging 91.7 mph) and sliders (41%, averaging 84.7 mph) were thrown in almost equal proportion, with a couple of splitters and a lone sinker mixed in. The slider was clearly the putaway pitch of the day: its 86% strike rate and two whiffs dwarfed the four-seam's 43% strike rate, suggesting the slider did the heavy lifting both for stealing strikes and for missing bats, while the fastball was used more to change the batter's eye level than to finish at-bats. The season-long platoon split reinforces that same idea of a pitcher who works better once he's ahead in the count: opponents are hitting just .174 with a .608 OPS against him from the left side, compared to .218 and .788 from the right, a clear reverse-platoon-friendly profile for a left-handed reliever. Measured against his season averages of a 2.68 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and 40 strikeouts, the last ten outings have shown some real volatility, a dominant two scoreless innings with three strikeouts on July 20 sandwiched between runs allowed on July 12, July 10, and July 3, but the last two appearances, both scoreless or single-run with a strikeout apiece, point to him settling back into a more consistent rhythm heading into the next series.

Unico's take: as long as the slider keeps setting up favorable counts early, Matsui should stay hard to hit from either side of the plate, and the next few outings will show whether this stretch of consistency holds.