The St. Louis Cardinals do not have a scheduled off day until next Thursday so they are using today’s series finale against the Houston Astros as an opportunity to move Steven Matz to the rotation. This move will leave the Cardinals with seven relievers on their roster and are expected to add some depth to that group with Roddery Munoz looking to be the most likely pitcher to head back down to Memphis.

In Spring Training, Matz was in an open competition for the fifth spot in the rotation with Matthew Liberatore and Michael McGreevy. As the exhibition season progressed and all three of these pitchers performed well, the Cardinals said that they were weighing the option of moving to a six-man rotation, at least temporarily. At the time, this was assumed to be a way to get both Matz and McGreevy in the rotation while moving Liberatore to the bullpen where had seen success in his career to this point.

However, at the end of spring, the Cardinals announced that McGreevy had been optioned to Triple-A Memphis, Matz would be the long man out of the bullpen, and Liberatore won the fifth starter job. This decision was made with this week in mind, the team stating that they planned to move to a six-man rotation with Matz grabbing the starter role when there was a long stretch of games such as this.

Matz, a 33-year-old in the last year of his deal with the Cardinals, has been successful in his long relief role so far in 2025, throwing 11.2 innings with a 2.31 ERA. All but one of his appearances so far have been more than one inning but Matz is still expected to be on a 60-pitch limit his first time through the rotation. It is unclear how long the Cardinals plan to stick with the six-man setup but it is likely that Matz will get another start next week when the Cardinals head to Atlanta to end their stretch of games with no days off.