A game of catch with teammate Chad Bettis, there at the Rockies spring training facility. It was something else he could barely feel and could not see, something that popped up just a few days later, in a game of catch, when Tyler Matzek, major league pitcher, found that all of a sudden he could not throw a baseball on target at all. He went through his workouts, received treatment from Colorado’s trainers, and continued, for a few days, to throw as he’d always thrown. “It just stressed me the hell out,” he says. Never mind that he’d rolled that same ankle before, had always played right through it. The ankle might lead to other problems, he told himself. Suddenly, he says, “I saw it all slipping away.” Failure devastated him, but success brought no joy, only relief. “We had visions of him at the top of our rotation for years.” Matzek had risen steadily through the minors, and when he made his big league debut at 23 in June 2014, he didn’t even celebrate. “He looked the part,” says then-Rockies manager Walt Weiss. He’d been a first-round pick in 2009, straight out of high school, the second left-handed pitcher off the board. At 24 years old, this felt like the inevitable unfolding of his life’s plan. Ace, All-Star, the man who could carry a mediocre Rockies team toward contention. He’d been solid as a rookie but felt he needed to be spectacular as a sophomore. In Matzek’s mind, he didn’t have time to spare. He just needed some tape, some ice, and a little time.
One afternoon in February 2015, just a few months after his rookie year in the majors and the year before he’d fall completely out of the game he loved, Tyler Matzek rolled his ankle.
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