“I didn’t know Matos could keep it together like that, to be honest with you,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said after his 21-year-old rookie outfielder drew three walks in his first game…
LOS ANGELES — Giants manager Gabe Kapler didn’t think his 21-year-old rookie outfielder would be shaken by the bright lights of Dodger Stadium. But Luis Matos showed a level of poise — and swagger — Friday night in his second MLB game that even Kapler didn’t see coming.
“I didn’t know Matos could keep it together like that, to be honest with you,” Kapler said a day later. “It’s not that I doubted his ability to keep it together like that. But there was a confidence and a poise that we saw last night that was really encouraging.” Matos, the second-youngest position player in MLB, didn’t even need to take the bat off his shoulders to make an impression in his introduction to one of baseball’s most storied and heated rivalries, with the screams of 49,074 fans on top of him in center field.
Matos worked walks in all three of his final plate appearances, including one to lead off the Giants’ three-run rally to take the lead in the eighth inning. After drawing another free pass to lead off the ninth, Matos flipped his bat and attempted to fire up his teammates the first-base dugout. “I love that moment,” Kapler said. “The reason it’s most encouraging is because he understood how important it was. Players who celebrate walks get it. They get that the name of the game is to not make an out. … Most players don’t celebrate that. They do celebrate the base hits. They do celebrate the home runs. And they rarely celebrate a big take. It’s just not something that you see very often, especially from a young, in this case a 21-year-old, player.
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