The Phillies falling behind the Braves might be partly undone by adding Detroit lefthander Matthew Boyd, but he needs to be very carefully considered.
For the Philadelphia Phillies, the month of July will be pivotal in their chase of the first-place Braves. This is, first, because of three series against those Braves, the Nationals and the Dodgers by July 18. The only breakup of that tough stretch is provided by the Mets, who are sure to be in a nasty mood, having just been swept in four by Philadelphia in the last week of June.
Atlanta and Washington just finished June with the two best records in baseball while the Phillies stumbled to an 11-16 finish. Their biggest problem, as Todd Zolecki notes, has been iffy starting pitching, including, unexpectedly, Aaron Nola’s efforts.
If it weren’t for losing outfielder Andrew McCutchen to injury for the season, the next biggest problem would likely be called a tie between spotty relief pitching and the lack of a left-handed starter.
Two of those problems could conceivably be addressed by one trade – for Tigers lefthander Matthew Boyd. This move, however, should not be made before seeing what the southpaw does this month in advance of the trade deadline, although the Phillies will likely make their interest known well before that.
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Boyd is having a season that seems to be at some sort of tipping point. His WHIP, as of July 2, is 1.092, well below his career mark of 1.309 over four-plus seasons. His WAR (3.0 or 2.6, depending on whether you believe Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs) suggests he might be breaking out of a pack of middling starters for a move to the top of MLB.
However, as Craig Edward notes for FanGraphs, at the beginning of June, “Boyd’s ERA and FIP were both 2.85 and his 2.5 WAR ranked third for pitchers behind only Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg.”
As July begins, though, his ERA and FIP are 3.72 and 3.57, which Edwards calls “solid.” (For comparison’s sake, in 2018, when Nola was lighting up the NL while going 17-6, his ERA and FIP were 2.37 and 3.01.)
Clearly, then, Boyd is being hit more, and he is giving up more home runs in particular. His monthly totals for ’19 have gone from two homers surrendered in April, to five, then ten in June. Obviously, this sort of trend could not continue if he were to start pitching half his games at Citizens Bank Park.
Matthew Boyd, however, has undergone at least a promising change. He lowered his arm slot early this season, which gave him a higher spin rate on his fastball, which he coincidentally began throwing a little higher. At the same time, he began throwing a lower slider and nearly stopped using his two-seamer.
If the Phillies are to consider him, though, he may need to make another adjustment of some sort, and Phillies fans would probably prefer he do that in Detroit’s uniform this month.
Maybe all Matthew Boyd has to do is drop that faster-spinning fastball a little in height, and reintroduce the two-seamer. It would certainly be nice if the Phillies could add another breakout young pitcher – he’s 28 – a year after Nola’s breakout.