Harmony now exists in the relationship between Cubs left-hander Matt Boyd’s slider and changeup.
Both pitches come out of the same slot at about the same velocity, his slider averaging 81.1 mph this season and his changeup 78.4. But before they get to the plate, their paths diverge. Boyd’s slider breaks in on right-handed hitters, while his changeup hovers the opposite direction.
“I’ve had the changeup at points in my career, I’ve had the slider at certain points in my career, but having them both as effective offerings, it hasn’t really been there,” Boyd told the Sun-Times this week. “It’s fun to have both those pitches and still have my fastball in positions that I can just kind of let it rip.”
That has been one of the keys to Boyd’s success in his first year with the Cubs, and his first full season after Tommy John surgery in 2023. In addition to an uptick in velocity, which Boyd and Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy attribute to heath and cleaner mechanics, Boyd has been able to lean on his slider and changeup equally as his secondary pitches.
“Anytime you have that and hitters can’t just key in on one area,” Hottovy said, “you have multiple pitches that play off each other, it’s usually a recipe for success.”
Scheduled to make his third start of the season Friday to open a three-game series against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, Boyd has yet to allow a run.
“I’m very grateful for it, and it’s been great,” Boyd said. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to have success, but I know what I’m going to do when that ball’s in my hand.”
That’s a feeling he finally regained late last season with the Guardians, pitching with a stable elbow for the first time in about four years. That injury history, in turn, intersects with the tangled relationship between Boyd’s changeup and slider.
In the yearslong push and pull between the two pitches, the slider had pulled way ahead by 2019. After throwing a four-seam changeup in the upper levels of the minors and much of his major-league career, Boyd said he learned a new changeup that offseason.
This new two-seam version relied on pronation, or rotating toward the inside of the ball.
“I’m not a natural pronator,” Boyd said. “I’m naturally loose-wristed. And that started putting a strain on my forearm, and it also made me come through the ball differently on my slider, on my fastball. So I lost something unique in those two pitches that were so successful the year before.
“You fast-forward thousands of reps and get into ’21, well, I’m doing that even more, and that starts hurting.”
Boyd is careful not to fully blame that pronation-focused changeup, which he threw as much as his slider in 2021, for the series of elbow issues he encountered.
“You’re not going to know,” he said. “There’s a variety of factors. That’s one that contributed probably more than others.”
Boyd underwent flexor tendon surgery in September 2021, and the Tigers non-tendered him. He signed with the Giants the next spring while still working back from surgery, although he never played for them.
“The blessing about going to San Francisco in 2022 is them teaching me a changeup that would work well with the best version of me on the mound, with my slider and my fastball,” Boyd said. “So in ’22 and ’23, it was like, when I’m healthy, this is what I’m going to be.”
Now he gets to put that vision into action.
Boyd’s slider, which he’d started over-manipulating in 2020, was already feeling more natural when he returned last season. But with a full healthy offseason finally, he had time for pitch-refining reps.
And his changeup, the one he learned with the Giants, is closer to what he threw in -college and early in the minors. It relies on seam effects to create depth, rather than pronation and spin. Through Boyd’s first two starts this season, it had an impressive 40.9% whiff rate, according to Statcast.
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be like other people — trying to learn a pitch like another person and whatnot,” Boyd said. “It’s like, well, maybe that didn’t work best for me. Let’s be the best version of myself and go take that against the best version of somebody else.”
NOTE: The Cubs acquired left-hander Tom Cosgrove from the Padres for cash, the team announced, and optioned him to Triple-A Iowa. To make room on the 40-man roster, the Cubs designated right-hander Caleb Kilian for assignment.
