4-30-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Rough game on both sides of the ball yesterday but Pirates will look to end a bad month on a high note against veteran lefty, Matthew Boyd.
The long-time Tiger has a career 4.78 ERA over 11 years in MLB, totaling 936.2 innings and is in the first of a 2-years deal with the Cubs, entering play today with a 2.54 ERA over his first 28.1 frames this season.
Boyd has struggled to stay on the field the past few years, missing time due to injuries in each of the last four seasons. When healthy, his main focus is missing barrels and generating weak contact.
His 34.5% hard hit rate is tied for 14th lowest in MLB while his barrel rate of 3.4% ranks behind only Paul Skenes and Clay Holmes among all qualified starting pitchers.
Boyd has a five pitch mix including a 4-seamer and sinker in the low-90s, a low-80s slider, high-70s changeup and mid-70s curve. He has a nearly sidearm delivery on his pitches that creates slightly more inverted vertical break on fastballs but considerable deception on his breaking balls.
He has been primarily leaning fastball/ slider/changeup for his arsenal early on in the season, typically working up in the zone for his heater and staying down with his slider and change.
Boyd has struggled with locating the slider this season, frequently hanging it in the middle of the plate and resulting in a .524 oSLG against the offering while his curve has been extremely effective, with an xwOBA of .083.
In a fairly small sample size, lefties have been experiencing success against Boyd, posting a .772 OPS over 36 plate appearances compared to .682 OPS for right handed hitters over 87 trips to the dish; however, over his career, those numbers have been flipped and likely revert to the mean over the course of the season.
In the game today, Pirates hitters will need to be wary of his breaking stuff – low sliders and big, loopy curves – and try to stay up in the zone hunting the elevated fastballs or hanging breaking stuff. Boyd gets a lot of chases on his junk under the zone so keep the eye level up and look for something high enough to make solid contact against to get more than zero runs tonight.
Steel City Pirates 