‘Dream come true’ as Matz ready for big-league debut

IT WAS the perfect metaphor. At the moment Steven Matz got the call that would send him to the top of the baseball mountain, the highly touted lefthander was on top of a real one.

With Triple-A Las Vegas playing at Salt Lake City on Thursday, Matz was scouting out the views in nearby Park City when the Mets were trying to reach him, telling him he was being promoted to the majors.

“I had a lot of messages when I finally listened,” Matz said Saturday as he sat in front of his locker in the home clubhouse at Citi Field, his No. 32 jersey hanging inside. But he said he learned of the promotion when he arrived at Smith’s Ballpark for the 51s game against the Bees.

Matz will make his big-league debut on Sunday against the Reds, with the Mets going “all in” on their plan for a six-man rotation they hope will limit the innings of their blue-chip arms.

A Stony Brook, L.I., product, Matz will be pitching for the team he grew up rooting for. Though he won’t be at Shea Stadium where Endy Chavez made his spectacular 2006 NLCS catch — “probably the most vibrant memory I have” of the Mets, he said — he still called pitching at Citi Field “a dream come true.”

Matz, 24, was mostly dominant this season for the 51s in the hitter-happy Pacific Coast League, going 7-4 with a 2.19 ERA and 94 strikeouts in 90.1 innings. This start may not be the oasis in the desert that Mets fans relished when Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler were brought up, but there is plenty of buzz. In fact, Matz has been hearing about the anticipation for a long time.

“It was hard not to, especially because I am from New York and have a lot of friends and family that are Mets fans,” he said.

And he expects a whole lot of them to be in the park on Sunday.

His arrival means that all of the ballyhooed Mets pitching prospects will have made their ascent (although Wheeler is out for the season). Speaking of Harvey, Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Matz, Terry Collins said “it’s a great step forward for the organization to know all these guys are up here now.”

The road to the big leagues wasn’t always a smooth one for Matz. He was taken in the second round of the 2009 draft and inked for an $895,000 bonus right before the deadline to sign. It was so late in the process that Matz was prepared to go to college, and there was no opportunity to play any Single-A ball.

Matz was barely out of spring training, and hadn’t thrown an official pitch, when he felt discomfort in his left elbow at extended spring training. The Mets sent him for an MRI that showed a torn UCL and resulted in Tommy John surgery. Setbacks in Matz’s recovery caused the Mets to shut him down in 2011 as well, meaning he was out of the game for two years.

“(This) seemed pretty far off — that’s for sure,” Matz said. “You’re in it to make it to the big leagues and that’s what your goal is; it didn’t seem completely out of the question but it did seem really far away.”

“He kept a good outlook on it,” said deGrom, who was rehabbing from his own Tommy John surgery at the same time and became a close friend. “He stuck with the program, and I think it worked out for him.”

Only one day away from the debut, Matz seemed happy that he would be spending the day with the club before pitching for it.

“I am going to soak it in today and go to work tomorrow and try to help them win,” he said.

He was attentive when Harvey, Wheeler, deGrom and Syndergaard finally got their cracks at the big leagues. He hopes to have learned from it, and replicate the success.

“I’m a big baseball fan so I do pay attention to that stuff. . . . It was really cool to watch those guys live up to their hype and transition from the minor leagues to the major leagues,” Matz said. “I’m definitely go- ing to pick their brains while I am here and see if they can give me any tips about how they did it.”

Collins said Matz will be getting the same talk that all the others got before their debuts. “They all have to hear the same message . . . what got you here will keep you here,” he said. “There will be adjustments you have to make along the way, but don’t become somebody you aren’t.”