Going to the Matz-resses
I got Dad jokes for days
The Cardinals have made a quick move to grab a starting pitcher to solidify their 2022 rotation as they agreed to terms with LHP Steven Matz on a 4 year, $44 million deal that will bring him to St. Louis in a move that made the Mets’ owner so mad he tweeted about it.
As always, the deal is pending a physical, but they do expect to have it finalized before any potential lockout begins at midnight on December 2nd due to the collective bargaining agreement expiring.
When I first heard the news last week, my first reaction was that the Cardinals acquired a solid left-handed starting pitcher who won double digit games in 2021 with a solid ERA for just $11 million in average annual value. That seems like Matz is going to have to work hard to make that a bad deal for the Cardinals. Especially when you consider that they’ve been paying Andrew Miller $11.5 million out of the bullpen the last two seasons.
Is this an offer Cardinals fans shouldn’t refuse? Yes and no.
To the yes, the Cardinals definitely needed rotation help for 2022 and I would have had it at the top of the priority list this winter. Behind the 40-year-old Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals have no other starting pitchers who did not spend a significant amount of time on the injured list this year. Wainwright was also one of four pitchers who threw over 200 innings this year, but he’s still just one pitcher. The Cardinals need another guy they can hand the ball to every fifth day and expect to give them a chance to win. Is Matz that guy? He can be.
In 2018, 2019, and 2021, Matz made at least 29 starts and pitched between 150 and 160 innings in each of those years. In today’s bullpen heavy game, that’s probably good enough. After all, there were only four guys who topped 200 innings this year. That’s down from 15 guys five years ago and 31 guys ten years ago. Like it or not, this is the trend in today’s game.
To the no, Matz does also come with some red flags. He has spent some time on the injured list in four of his seven big league seasons, three of them related to issues in his throwing shoulder.
But if Matz can remain healthy, which I hate qualifying statements with because it’s true for everyone, this is a pairing that should produce good results. Maybe even better than 2021.
As a ground ball pitcher, Matz will go from a Blue Jays team that ranked 15th in defensive runs saved at +22 to a Cardinals team that came in second at +81 and will be the first team in MLB history to have a defense featuring five reigning Gold Glove Award winners.
Matz’s ground ball rate last season was 45.5% and it ranked 41st in Major League Baseball among 129 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings last season. That notches in behind Wainwright (32nd at 47.5%) and Kwang-hyun Kim (33rd at 47.4%). Wainwright had a 3.05 ERA for the Cardinals while Kim had a 3.46 ERA. So the Cardinals infield knows how to capitalize on ground ball pitchers.
The only statistical red flag that really sticks out to me is the career best 12.3% HR/FB rate from last season, which also ranked 41st out of that same pool of pitchers. But Matz will be leaving a division that features the top-home run friendly ballpark (Baltimore) and played on home fields that ranked 2nd (Dunedin), 7th (Buffalo), and 12th (Toronto) in MLB. He’ll exchange that for a home field that ranked 31st (out of 34) and a division that also features the 34th (Milwaukee) and 29th (Pittsburgh) in home run friendliness.
To me that gives him a fighting shot at duplicating that mark. The odds are good that he’ll have an opportunity to improve on his 2021 season.
For me though, any problems I have with this deal are less about Matz and more about what it means about the Cardinals’ philosophy, a topic that has gotten a lot of coverage over the few weeks since they fired Mike Shildt. This is the same kind of mid-level free agency move that has gotten this team into trouble time after time. Instead of pursuing a pitcher who checks all the boxes and moves the needle like a Marcus Stroman and making sure you’re the best offer on the table, they play it safe with a player who purely checks the boxes and little more.
These are the kind of moves that raise a floor, but don’t lift the ceiling. These are the kind of moves that keep the Cardinals’ streak of consecutive seasons without a losing record alive, but don’t propel them into serious contender status. These are the kind of moves that I would have defended a few years ago, but don’t see as enough today.
But whether I like it or not, this is how John Mozeliak has chosen to operate his front office and will continue to operate it. They avoid the high profile free agents and focus on the mid-level ones, which I’ve always felt is a poor allocation of resources.
The Cardinals have proven very adept at drafting, developing, and producing solid MLB level players. They may perhaps be better at it than any other team. So, spending money on solid MLB level players becomes a problem for two reasons. First, it’s spending money on things you already have. And second, if those players struggle even a little bit, the pressure is on because there are a ton of similar caliber players behind them in the pipeline who can be just as good. So in my opinion, a team should be spending it’s money on things it doesn’t have. For the Cardinals, that’s top-level players.
The addition of Matz, along with a one-year deal to bring back RHP TJ McFarland, puts the Cardinals at an estimated $141.6 million payroll for their Opening Day 26 man roster. Based on an estimate of $165 million payroll budget, that leaves the Cardinals between $20-25 million to spend this winter, so it’s not like Matz prevents them from making other moves.
However, history has shown that these are likely to be the only major moves the organization will make this winter, though there is plenty of offseason remaining to prove me wrong. But I believe that Matz will end up being the biggest addition of the winter for the Cardinals.
