The last time we saw Matthew Boyd, he was wheeling his bags out of the clubhouse on the South Side of Chicago, the end of the 2019 season but far from a stopping point.
He was looking forward to jetting back to Seattle, hanging out on the couch with his wife, his daughter and a newborn son. And like Matthew Boyd so often does, he had big plans. They centered on his foundation, Kingdom Home. This offseason, he took Tigers teammate Spencer Turnbull with him on a trip to Uganda and showed charitable investors how their operation has grown so much in so little time. Boyd?s plans also centered on his workouts and his recovery, always turning the dial forward. Boyd talked of putting an infrared sauna in his garage and installing a whole-house water filtration system, anything to get an edge. At the Athletic Training Institute in Bellevue, Wash., he worked with former Seattle Sounder Ben Dragavon, focusing on things like glute activation and how to translate that to his pitching delivery.
Boyd also talked about his pitch repertoire, which for him, has always been a fascinating, ever-changing study.
?If I can get my strength up and make (the curveball) a better pitch, I like to think that I could be someone different showing up in spring training, a better version of myself,? he said in September, a pretty bold statement by Boyd standards.
Now here he is, at an event for season-ticket holders in Toledo, Ohio, home of the Tigers? Triple-A affiliate. He?s sitting at a round table. His skin is glowing. Boyd looks happy and healthy as ever. It makes you wonder if he can actually be better, too.
He says he loved his offseason, just getting to be a dad. He?s a fascinating person who can talk about many subjects. But because he is a baseball player, it?s hard to avoid the thing that was a huge part of his past four months. Reshaping his curveball, maybe even his changeup, diving deeper into his journey toward becoming a complete pitcher.
This offseason, Boyd put in work at Driveline, a data-driven baseball training facility. He also bought his own Edgertronic camera, able to watch himself and his release in slow-motion. Whether it was playing catch or tinkering with a curveball, Boyd sought to understand every little detail that shapes every single pitch.
He arrived at this juncture through a varying set of circumstances. He had a tremendous start to the year and a rough, rough finish. His strikeout rate jumped to among the game?s very best, but he allowed more home runs (39) than any pitcher in baseball.
Over the past two seasons, Boyd?s 66 homers allowed trails only Dylan Bundy?s 70 for the most in the game (Justin Verlander is actually third, so it?s not the worst company).
Boyd also doubled down on the slider that brought him success in 2018, throwing the pitch 36.2 percent of the time, the fifth-highest slider usage of any qualifying pitcher.
The deep, sweeping pitch was dominant. Opposing batters hit only .192 against it. But looking back now, perhaps that success came with some unintended consequences.
?I fell in love with maybe a few pitches, if you will,? Boyd said in Toledo. ?That might have made me a little more predictable, given the hitter a little more of a chance because I was predictable. I don?t know.?
Pardon all the numbers, but pitching gets scientific. That stats are unbiased. Boyd threw his curveball, changeup and sinker a combined 14 percent of the time in 2019, down from 34.9 percent the year before. He threw his fastball almost 50 percent of the time.
