San Francisco Giants Linked to Veteran Starter Cardinals Want to Trade

The San Francisco Giants could use some capital to try and swing a deal for a veteran arm on an expiring contract.

Sep 20, 2024; St. Louis, Missouri, USA; St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Steven Matz (32) pitches against the Cleveland Guardians during the seventh inning at Busch Stadium. | Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

The St. Louis Cardinals are looking to move a veteran starting pitcher to trim some payroll. The San Francisco Giants could use some veteran ballast for a relatively young rotation.

Could the two teams swing a deal for veteran left-hander Steven Matz?

MLB Trade Rumors linked the Giants to the 33-year-old, along with the Texas Rangers, as teams that might be interested in making a deal for the veteran. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the Cardinals are looking to move him in an effort to trim payroll.

That makes it sounds like Matz is due a significant amount of money. By baseball standards, he’s only due $12.5 million in 2025. Given that he’s a veteran on an expiring deal, he’s not likely to cost much on the trade market.

The vet signed a four-year deal worth $44 million with the Cardinals in 2022 and he’s only been marginally effective. In three seasons he’s gone 10-12 with a 4.47 ERA in 52 games (34 starts), with 185 strikeouts and 57 walks in 197.1 innings.

He’s won fewer games in three years with the Cardinals than he did in one season with Toronto in 2021, where he went 14-7 with a 3.82 ERA in the best season of his career. He hit free agency at the perfect time.

Before that, he spent six seasons with the New York Mets, where he went 31-41 with a 4.35 ERA.

With St. Louis he’s struggled with both control and injuries. He’s made no more than 17 starts in any one season with the Cardinals (2023), and last year he struggled to make 12 appearances (seven starts) due to injuries.

MLB Trade Rumors points out that Matz’s numbers are at the league average. So, when healthy he’s likely closer to the pitcher he was in New York in 2018, when he went 11-10 with a 3.97 ERA and threw a career-high 160 innings.

With a young rotation led by Logan Webb, Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong, a potential innings-eater like Matz would be a bonus in case a young pitcher like Carson Whisenhunt or Mason Black aren’t ready to go full-time next season.

MLBTR also pointed to one asset that the Giants could use and that’s Matz’s relief track record with the Cardinals. While he only threw 33.1 innings of relief in three years with the Cardinals. He does have a 2.43 ERA, which would be the lowest ERA of any season of his career.