Article: Blue Jays Trade Deadline Target: Steven Matz

[Leo Morgenstern]

Steven Matz has pitched 11 big league seasons, none of which was more successful than his lone campaign with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021. In 29 starts and 150.2 innings, the left-hander won a career-high 14 games, while pitching to a 3.82 ERA. He racked up 2.7 FanGraphs WAR, putting him among the top 20 starting pitchers in the American League. 

Matz’s performance that year earned him a four-year, $44 million pact with the St. Louis Cardinals the following winter, and he is currently playing out the final season of that contract. His tenure with the Cardinals has had its ups and downs, to say the least, marred by several trips to the injured list and frequent shuttling between the starting rotation and the bullpen. 

In 2025, however, Matz has taken on a primary relief role for the first time in his career, and he’s thriving. He has pitched in 31 games, including two spot starts and 29 bullpen appearances. Over 54 innings, the veteran southpaw has a 3.17 ERA, a 3.10 xERA, and 1.2 fWAR. The Cardinals have gone 22-9 in his outings. Best of all, he has, to this point, avoided the injured list entirely for the first time in his 11-year big league career. 

Entering play on Tuesday, the Cardinals are 55-53 and only 3.5 games back of a Wild Card berth. However, with the trade deadline two days away, they seem more likely to be sellers than buyers. Several Cardinals players have come up in trade rumors in recent weeks, including utility player Brendan Donovan and closer Ryan Helsley (who has been linked to the Blue Jays). Helsley went so far as to say that the “likelihood is probably as great as it’s ever been” that he will be dealt before Thursday (per The Athletic’s Katie Woo).

Matz is another name that has been caught up in the rumor mill. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently reported that “a handful of teams” have expressed some degree of interest in Matz, in part due to his versatility. The lefty has proven this season that he has the chops to succeed as a high-leverage reliever, but he also has 172 career starts under his belt, including two as recent as this past April. 

After Matz’s struggles in 2024 – he pitched to a 5.08 ERA in 44.1 innings on either side of a four-month IL stint – the Cardinals may very well have come into 2025 thinking of his $12.5 million salary as all but dead money. That's no longer the case. Still, if they’re selling at all, they would surely be happy to get the $4.17 million they still owe him for the final third of the season off their books. 

Meanwhile, Toronto should be more than willing to take that salary on. As The Athletic’s Mitch Bannon pointed out earlier today, a swingman type makes a ton of sense for the Blue Jays right now. They need bullpen help, no doubt about it. As for the rotation, if they’re not going to make a huge splash and add a frontline starter, they still need extra depth to survive the final two months of the season. Matz would instantly upgrade the bullpen, and he’d give the Jays a solid backup plan for the rotation. Bannon identified Matz and Michael Soroka (whom Jim Scott wrote about as a potential trade target last week) as two strong examples of this type of player. 

Matz doesn’t come without his downsides. The fact that he has stayed healthy so far in 2025 does not erase his injury-prone reputation. And while he has been outstanding this year, 54 innings make for a tiny sample compared to the 927.2 innings he threw before this season. Regression in the wrong direction is a very real possibility.

With that said, there’s no such thing as a risk-free trade, especially for a pitcher. The Blue Jays should absolutely be playing at the top of the market, competing to land difference-makers like Helsley, David Bednar, and others of their caliber. However, the Blue Jays shouldn’t only be shopping for stars, and Matz is exactly the kind of complementary piece they need. He’s a versatile veteran pitcher enjoying a terrific season, and it certainly helps that we have seen him succeed in Toronto before.

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