Blue Jays starter Steven Matz didn’t have his best stuff against the Angels on Saturday.

Maybe that was caused by a rain delay that pushed back his outing more than two-and-a-half hours. Maybe it had to do with his offense’s early rampage, which is great for the scoreboard, but bad for one’s rhythm. Maybe it was a lack of feel for a certain pitch, or something else altogether.

The reason doesn’t matter. What matters is that Matz worked through it and shone once again.

“Making important pitches in important times when maybe your stuff isn’t as sharp, that’s part of the process,” Matz said after tossing six innings of five-hit, one-run ball to earn his second win in as many outings.

Keeping the somewhat arbitrary nature of the win stat in mind, consider this: Matz has now won his first two starts of a season for the first time since he was a rookie (2015), and he’s won consecutive outings for the first time since two Aprils ago.

For a guy who placed in the bottom 5% of MLB pitchers in several categories last season -- including barrel rate, average exit velocity, weighted on-base average (wOBA), hard hit rate and expected batting average (xBA) -- that’s a feat worth celebrating. Especially when it’s coupled with a 1.46 ERA in a pair of starts that lasted through the sixth inning.

The Blue Jays are facing injuries across all position groups, and the rotation has three of its would-be starters on the injured list (Nate Pearson, Robbie Ray and Thomas Hatch). Matz, who was acquired in a trade with the Mets in January, was once on the bubble to crack this group of starters.

Matz has clearly played his way into a more concrete role now, though, even as Ray nears his return from an left elbow bruise (manager Charlie Montoyo said on Saturday that there’s a “good chance” Ray will return during the upcoming Yankees series).

That’s thanks to performances like Saturday, when some situational factors worked against Matz. Rain delays can wreak havoc on a pitcher's routine, but he was ready.

“Going into the night, I knew there was some weather coming in early on,” Matz said. “So my mindset was to just mentally stay there, to drink some coffee a little bit later than normal, just kind of mess with the routine a little bit.”

There’s no way to prepare for the type of inning Toronto had in the second, which included a double-replay review, 11 plate appearances and seven runs scored. When that happened, Matz worked on “dry deliveries” in the dugout to keep his throwing arm loose, and he hustled out to the mound as soon as his offense’s half-inning was over.

When the lead ballooned to seven in the second, and then 10 in the third, it might’ve been easy for Matz to pitch to contact and take his foot off the gas a bit. He knows the dangers of doing that.

“I think that’s where you can get in trouble, is when you steer away from your game plan,” Matz said. “My main focus was to just stick to the game plan, attack these hitters, [stick with] what me and [catcher Danny Jansen] had going into the game.”

Matz stuck to his plan, and he should probably continue doing that. It’s working.