A change in approach is turning Matthew Boyd into a cornerstone for the Detroit Tigers.
The Detroit Tigers find themselves in the midst of a rebuild after they attempted to correct course by trading franchise cornerstone Justin Verlander. Miguel Cabrera and others became less effective as age caught up to them. The main objective of a baseball team is to win games so during lean times like this, there isn’t much to be excited about right now in Detroit.
There are fun parts of rebuilds, however. The Tigers have playing time to give and that allows them to find guys like Niko Goodrum.
There is someone else to be excited about for Tigers’ fans though. He trudges to the hill every fifth day and his name is Matthew Boyd. Boyd is an LHP who was acquired from Toronto in the David Price trade a few years ago and proceeded to be a solid but not exciting pitcher. He pitched to a 5.27 ERA in 2017 and a 4.39 in 2018, he was better by fielding independent numbers but not exactly a pitcher you get super excited about in a rebuild.
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Well folks, this season Boyd is someone you should be excited about. How excited? If you look at the leaderboard of pitchers in 2019, you see Max Scherzer at the top amassing 2.1 WAR, then you’ll Matt Boyd right next to him with 1.8 WAR of his own. I would note that before his clunker on Monday, Boyd was at 2.1 and tied with Scherzer for the lead.
Pitchers are just under ten starts in the season but when you are sitting next to Scherzer on a leaderboard, its time to pay attention. Boyd has now been as valuable in 50 innings as he was in 170 innings last season. So what has made him so successful? He’s keeping things simple and throwing his best pitches more.
This season, Boyd has thrown 54.1 innings with a 3.15 ERA and an even better FIP of 2.85 for the Tigers. More impressive, is that Boyd has struck out 29.7% of hitters while only walking 5.9%. That K% is top 10 in all of baseball and so is his K-BB rate, meaning Boyd has hit the sweet spot of striking guys out and limiting walks. So what is Boyd doing to pitch like an ace this season?
Looking at his stuff, he features a fastball in the low 90s, a slider, a curveball, and a change-up. His stuff doesn’t exactly light up the radar gun, but Boyd has been able to use all four pitches to keep hitters off-balance. That brings us to 2019. After an offseason of working out at the revered mad science factory, Driveline Baseball, Boyd was able to develop a more effective and consistent slider to pair with his fastball. And develop he did, checkout out this NSFW pitch right here. Downright filthy. With his nasty slider and high spin fastball, Boyd decided to lean on both of those pitches and mow down hitters.
In 2018, his fastball and slider usage rate were 49% and 31% respectively with his curveball and change-up making up the next. This year, Boyd has decided to throw his two best pitches as much a possible, throwing his high spin fastball up in the zone 54% of the time and his slider 36%. This change in repertoire has greatly benefited Boyd as his GB rate is up ten percentage points from 29% in 2018 to 39% in 2019.
This increase has also led to Boyd being a top 15 pitcher by expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA), which takes into account batted ball quality. Boyd’s contact management has produced an xwOBA of .280, which is remarkably similar to Jacob deGrom‘s .277 mark. So overall, Boyd is inducing more ground balls, throwing his best pitches more, and the results have delivered the best numbers of his career.
One clunker aside, Boyd has been one of the best pitchers in baseball in the 2019 season. The Tigers have to be encouraged with his step forward as this could make him an attractive trade chip come the July 31st trade deadline. Pitchers are always one tweak away from excellence. Boyd has gone from an unexciting backend starter to looking like an ace this season. If there’s an area of concern for a team who would be interested, he does give up a ton of fly balls but so long as he continues to manage contact, he should be fine.
Matthew Boyd will likely continue to lean on his two best pitches to continue his breakout season. If he pitches for the Detroit Tigers come August 1 is a different question.