Cardinals Option Nolan Gorman, Select Blaze Jordan
The Cardinals have optioned slumping third baseman Nolan Gorman to Triple-A Memphis and selected the contract of corner infielder Blaze Jordan, as first reported by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jordan’s first game for St. Louis will be his MLB debut. Injured infielder Ramón Urías has moved to the 60-day IL to make room for Jordan on the 40-man roster. In other moves, right-hander Hunter Dobbins is heading to Memphis, while the Cardinals have recalled righty Chris Roycroft.
Gorman, 26, made his MLB debut in May 2022 and has spent most of the past five seasons with St. Louis. The former top prospect showed promise in his first full season, hitting 27 home runs and finishing with an .805 OPS and a 118 wRC+ in 464 PA. His 31.9% strikeout rate was high, but that wasn’t hard to ignore when he was walking at an 11.4% clip with a hard-hit rate near 50% and one of the highest barrel rates in the league. He also held his own with the glove at second and third base, finishing with 2.3 FanGraphs WAR.
Unfortunately for Gorman, the swing-and-miss has become an even bigger problem, while his power has trickled away. In just over 1,000 plate appearances from 2024 to ’26, he owns a 34.9% strikeout rate, a .653 OPS, and an 83 wRC+. The Cardinals surely hoped that trading Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan this past offseason would give Gorman the consistent playing time he needed to figure things out. Yet, while he has appeared in 62 of his team’s 66 games this season, his .598 OPS and 69 wRC+ are the worst marks of his career. His ninth-percentile xwOBA (.279) doesn’t suggest things are about to get any better, nor does his 3-for-43 (.070) stretch over the last three weeks.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Cardinals are right in the thick of the National League playoff picture in 2026; with a .561 winning percentage, they’d be the NL’s top Wild Card team if the season ended today. So, they seem to have decided they can’t afford to give Gorman any more rope to work on his issues at the major league level. Instead, they’ll see if Jordan can offer the thump that Gorman wasn’t giving them. Third base is the rookie’s primary position, so he should be able to slot right into Gorman’s old role.
Jordan isn’t a top-ranked prospect. The Cardinals acquired him from the Red Sox last summer in exchange for rental arm Steven Matz. However, the 23-year-old has put up strong numbers at Triple-A this year, with 11 home runs and 31 extra-base hits in 57 games. Thanks to an excellent 11.5% strikeout rate, he is hitting .313, while his power has propelled him to a .921 OPS and a 137 wRC+. Some of that success might reflect good fortune in a small sample, but the Statcast numbers show he really has been hitting the ball significantly harder this year.
Dobbins, 26, pitched 13 innings over three appearances in his latest stint in the majors, striking out 15 and walking only two. He gave up four earned runs, three of which came in his outing yesterday. His demotion says less about his performance and more about his team’s roster needs. He was acting as a pseudo sixth starter, and evidently, the Cardinals decided they’d prefer a fresh, more traditional arm for the bullpen in Roycroft, rather than a bulk arm like Dobbins.
Urías has been out since May 5 with elbow issues. The veteran infielder will now be out until at least early July.
Red Sox Acquire Steven Matz
July 31st: The trade has been officially announced by the Red Sox. Righty Hunter Dobbins has been transferred to the 60-day injured list to open a 40-man roster spot. Dobbins suffered a season-ending ACL tear earlier this month.
July 30: The Red Sox and Cardinals have agreed to a trade that will send left-hander Steven Matz to Boston, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Corner infield prospect Blaze Jordan is headed to the Cards in return, according to the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier. The deal will become official once both sides sign off on the medicals of the players involved.
Matz is a pure rental for the Sox, as the veteran southpaw’s four-year, $44MM contract is up at season’s end. St. Louis inked Matz to that free agent deal on the heels of his successful 2021 season as a starter with the Blue Jays, but Matz has only started 36 of his 84 career games with the Cards. Injuries and ineffectiveness have hampered his time in St. Louis, leading the Cardinals to move Matz into more of a swingman role, and he came essentially a full-time reliever this year (save for two spot starts in April).
While Matz didn’t live up to the expectations of his contract, he pitched pretty well in both 2023 and during this season, as the southpaw has a 3.44 ERA over 55 frames in 2025. Typically a good control pitcher, Matz has taken it a step further with an elite 4.0% walk rate this season, and his 5.3% barrel rate is also excellent. This ability to limit mistakes and keep the ball on the ground (44.3% grounder rate) has helped balance out more ordinary strikeout and hard-contact rates.
Left-handed batters have only a .442 OPS against Matz this season, while righty hitters have a much more productive .814 OPS. The gap in splits will be somewhat hard for manager Alex Cora to work around since Matz has so much value as a multi-inning reliever, yet that same durability will help out a Boston pen that has logged a lot of innings bailing out its shaky rotation. It’s possible the Sox could even turn to Matz again as a part-time starter, though the Red Sox are expected to land more significant starting help prior to tomorrow’s deadline.
Matz is now the fifth left-hander in Boston’s pen, along with Aroldis Chapman, Justin Wilson, Brennan Bernardino, and Chris Murphy. This depth could give the Sox some flexibility in swinging a trade to a team in need of relief help, with Boston then addressing another need in return.
Chaim Bloom was Boston’s chief baseball officer back when Jordan was selected in the third round of the 2020 draft, and now that Bloom will be taking over at the Cards’ president of baseball operations starting next season, this familiarity undoubtedly helped pave the way for tonight’s trade. Jordan ranks 17th on MLB Pipeline’s list of Boston’s best prospect, and MLB Pipeline had the corner infielder 24th in their ranking.
Jordan struggled at the Double-A level in both 2023 and 2024 before hitting well this season, and earning his first promotion to Triple-A. This transition went more smoothly, as Jordan has hit .289/.333/.476 over 177 plate appearances with Worcester while seeing a lot of time at both corner infield slots (primarily third base). Scouts feel first base is his better position, so Jordan’s future potential will hinge on how well he can keep developing at the plate. His production in 2025 is a step in the right direction, as the 22-year-old has been much better at turning his raw power into results.
This is the second big bullpen trade of the day for the Cardinals, after Ryan Helsley was shipped to the Mets. Both deals have brought more young talent into the St. Louis pipeline, which seemed to be the organization’s stated goal heading into last offseason, yet Bloom and current PBO John Mozeliak chose to retain almost all of the Cards’ veteran talent. In Matz’s case, he wasn’t generating much trade interest given his $12MM salary and his rough 2024 production, so at least Matz’s bounce-back year rebuilt some of his value.
As for future trades, Phil Maton and JoJo Romero have both been rumored to be generating interesting, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see St. Louis move at least one or both relievers before the deadline. While the Cards are in sell mode, the Red Sox are pushing for at least a wild card slot and hope to make a run at the AL East title, with pitching known to be Boston’s primary target.