{"id":333880,"date":"2025-12-09T05:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333880\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T05:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:05:07","slug":"report-rays-sign-left-handed-pitcher-steven-matz-to-two-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333880\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Rays sign left-handed pitcher Steven Matz to two-year deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/tampa-bay-rays\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"tampa-bay-rays\" data-league=\"mlb\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> have added a versatile arm to their pitching staff. <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"sn-player-post-link\" data-player=\"03fda22a-f8a3-45e8-80dc-bf8190a22020\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/baseball\/mlb\/players\/steven-matz\/03fda22a-f8a3-45e8-80dc-bf8190a22020\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Steven Matz<\/a> and the Rays have agreed to a two-year contract, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/1998249010096910522?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reported<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was first to report the news.<\/p>\n<p>Matz, 34, recorded a 3.05 ERA with 59 strikeouts and 11 walks over 76.2 innings split between the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox last season. <\/p>\n<p>The left-hander started only two of the 53 games he appeared in, but has often operated as either a swingman or full-fledged starter throughout his career. Matz has started 172 of his 246 career games pitched.<\/p>\n<p>Matz has a 4.19 career ERA over 11 seasons split between the Cardinals, Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets.<\/p>\n<p>The Rays traded away Taj Bradley to the Minnesota Twins for Griffin Jax at last season&#8217;s trade deadline. Tampa Bay does have a number of promising young starters, however, Matz provides a potential insurance option if one of their unproven arms doesn&#8217;t pan out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Rays have added a versatile arm to their pitching staff. Steven Matz and the Rays&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-333880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}