The Steven Matz contract predictably stinks, carrying a Mike Leake scent of regret

He’s the reason that Jordan Montgomery isn’t a Cardinal.

Creator: Steph Chambers | Credit: Getty Images

The St. Louis Cardinals would be a better baseball team without Steven Matz, the same way they were a better team once Mike Leake left the building. Soft free agent pitcher contracts don’t cripple a team, but they slow down the process of winning.

Now, before you bemoan my post with a “it’s the hitting” grenade strike, understand that I get it. The St. Louis Cardinals are a bad hitting club at the minute, a weak group of slow starters and missing in action swingers who need to get going. Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado aren’t anywhere near where they should be. Think about that before celebrating his OPS climbing over .700. Furthermore, young sluggers like Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker didn’t exactly fly out of the gate. Tommy Edman may be more of a lineup glue than he’s given credit for.

Here’s the thing. Some of that will turn itself around, hopefully by the end of May. Some of it will not, and change will be necessary. Steven Matz isn’t turning anything around anytime soon. Heck, he can’t even turn his body around freely at the moment due to back discomfort. Coming off my own pedestrian, truck driver back soreness stint, I can tell you that throwing 100 pitches in a game would be lunacy. Somehow, Oliver Marmol and Matz thought it would be a fine idea. Narrator: It was not.

Then again, any naked eye could see Matz pitching the other day in Detroit was a mistake from the jump. He couldn’t fool a blind person with his offerings. He got hammered by the Tigers and couldn’t finish four innings, one shy of his usual amount. This is where some fans point out that Matz had a nice string of starts last season before vanishing from play at the end of August. That’s like pointing out the nice 10-15 minutes in a very long, shitty movie.

Let’s call this movie the Matz Experiment, a discomforting experience that has already run its course inside three seasons. Has it really been that long since the Cards swiped the wrong way on Marcus Stroman and any other available arm with a steady pulse? What started off shipwrecked in 2022 and found kinder shores last season in a smaller dose has run into turbulence again. There’s few ways out with a guy who hasn’t been sharp in a few years. Do me a favor and don’t celebrate a 3.86 ERA too hard. It’s barely above average in today’s game. That’s like hanging onto your son’s participation trophy when he’s over the age of 30.

Matz is “meh” to the highest degree, just like Leake, the pitcher the team paid even after he was sent out doesn’t even pitch anymore. It’s a good thing he made enough from St. Louis on a five year contract that it’s okay if he threw his last pitch in the same year as the last time the team won a playoff series: 2019.

Leake was the epitome of unremarkable. The kind of pitcher you talk about his hitting in order to cover up the smell of his mediocre pitching. He pitched for a year and a half with STL before being shipped to Seattle with cash. The ERA, strikeouts per nine, and WHIP all sat below average. He’d stun with a good stretch, and then get stuck in crap.

Matz is either a dull, largely ineffective pitcher or he’s hurt, which became official Friday afternoon with a IL stint and Memphis recall. He’s a better reliever than a starter, something the team briefly used in 2022. He owns a 4.58 ERA with St. Louis, including just 33 starts in two plus seasons. When he comes back, there won’t be much change.

The same guy who can’t handle a lineup the third (second?) time through will struggle again. There’ll be a start where he blows us away, and then another three where he blows the chance of winning away before half the game can reach its end.

Just remember, he’s the reason, the real one, why the Cardinals didn’t sign Jordan Montgomery. The media shame in publicly declaring the Matz starter trial would be too much, and there’s the $11 million going his way. Still, they could have made the deal and switched the spots. John Mozeliak either had his balls clipped by Bill DeWitt Jr., or he’s a guy who makes bad deals. For every Sonny Gray, there’s three Matz-type contracts.

The bad thing is repeating mistakes. Doing them over and over. Stroman was there, and they chose Matz. Montgomery was there, and they kept Matz as a starter.

Big mistake. That’s why it’s mildly infuriating when Mozeliak tells a media member this week that he likes where the ballclub is at, and has faith in them. Like a proud parent of a kid with a D- grade-point-average who just smacked a student at recess, he’s doubling down on his chaos. It’s his beast that we’re watching, one with both uplifting aspects (SONNY!) and underwhelming (Matz, Miles Mikolas sometimes) elements.

As of Friday late afternoon, St. Louis is 14-17, good for fourth in the N.L. Central. They’re preparing to face the lowly Chicago White Sox, who enter play with six wins to their name. If the Cardinals don’t sweep, it’s a crime. If they get two of three, it’s disappointing yet fitting.

Signing Matz, when there were better options out there, was disappointing yet fitting for a franchise that stumbles a lot these days. Hitting wasn’t a problem last year until Brendan Donovan went down and the team waved a large white flag. This year, they’re unable to hit and that places a huge scope on the pitching.

Mozeliak must have thought the Cardinals would hit better, hoping his incomplete offseason pitching mission was going to work. Per usual, he does just enough right to get your interest and eventually piss you off. He could have put a nice bandage on his Matz contract by tapping into his strengths, and getting the team better pitching to cover up his mistake.

Instead, Matz will return after his back heals. Bet on it.