Boyd changes course, keeps Royals in park

KANSAS CITY -- The last time Grayson Greiner caught Matthew Boyd in a game, the Tigers' ace was putting together a first half worthy of All-Star consideration. They faced the Royals on a mid-June night in Omaha, Neb., and struggled against an aggressive Kansas City lineup.

As Greiner prepared to catch Boyd for the first time in nearly three months, he had an idea on how to change up his recent home run struggles.

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“I haven't caught him in a while, but I've always loved his changeup,” Greiner said. “I was trying before the game to be a little adamant about it: 'Let's throw this a little more than normal. We've got nine righties in there.'”

The result was a very uncharacteristic outing. Boyd retired just six of his first 15 batters, yielded seven balls in play with an exit velocity of 102 mph and up, and allowed the leadoff batter to reach base in five of his 6 1/3 innings. The left-hander also completed just his second homerless outing since the end of July. And as Boyd celebrated a 6-4 Detroit victory and his first pair of back-to-back wins since early May, he reaped the benefits of keeping the ball in the park.

“I gave up the most hits I've given up all year today,” Boyd said of his 10-hit outing. “Just find a way to win. They hit a lot of singles off me. You just make pitches. That's just the way the game played out today.”

After a summer of feast-or-famine swings, high strikeouts and high home run totals, Boyd had a near-opposite outing. When he has been on his game, he has usually yielded long balls but survived by limiting the baserunners he allows around them. Boyd won his last start with four homers allowed -- all but one of them solo -- but 11 strikeouts.

Boyd's last meeting with the Royals four weeks ago featured three homers among six hits and three walks over just 2 2/3 innings. But while Kansas City tested him with traffic all afternoon, it never picked up the big home run.

“I think he controlled the game,” manager Ron Gardenhire said.

Boyd at least controlled the damage, which allowed his defense to go to work. Two first-inning runners were retired on the bases -- one trying to advance to third on a ground ball, the other on a pickoff. Two leadoff baserunners were retired on double plays. Jorge Soler, who has 10 home runs off Tigers pitching in his 40-homer season, not only went homerless against Detroit for the first time in six games, he went hitless off Boyd with two strikeouts -- one on possibly Boyd’s best slider of the afternoon -- and a hit-by-pitch.

If Boyd was going to have an outing like this, this was the place to do it. Though he entered the day leading the Majors with 36 home runs allowed, with a real chance at becoming the first Tiger to allow 40 homers in a season since Jack Morris in 1986, Boyd had allowed just two homers over 45 2/3 career innings at Kauffman Stadium, despite a 2-5 record and a 7.49 ERA here.

Perhaps conscious of patterns, Boyd mixed in his changeup alongside his usual combination of high fastballs and low sliders. Those offspeed pitches didn’t do much, but they forced a young Royals lineup to be aware.

“There were times when we got a little too predictable,” Boyd said. “The changeup has been my best pitch up until these last few years when my slider got a lot better. I was just getting back to that.”

Though Boyd struck out six batters, he garnered just 11 swings and misses, a relatively low total for him. Half of his strikeouts came in a three-run second inning in which Royals hitters attacked him early in counts. Three hits on three consecutive pitches fueled the rally, punctuated by Adalberto Mondesi’s two-run double off a hanging slider.

“The slider was just moving left and right a little bit there,” Boyd said of that inning, “so we made the adjustment to go up and down. You just have to be aware of it.”

Up came Soler with a chance to break the game open. Wary of his slider, Boyd started off Soler with a curveball for a called strike, setting up a fastball for a swing-and-miss, then changed speeds back and forth hoping to get a whiff. He threw one slider, which Soler fouled off.

After Soler took a fastball off the plate to run the count full, Boyd went back to the heater and busted it inside, drawing a called third strike.

It marked the last time the Royals put a runner in scoring position off Boyd (8-10), who tweaked his slider as he warmed up for the next inning. From there, he erased leadoff singles on double plays in the third and fifth innings and ended three innings with strikeouts.

“He made a slight little adjustment with his hand on the ball and started getting it to go down again,” Gardenhire said. “Once he did that, he was fine.”

By limiting the damage, Boyd set himself up to actually benefit from home runs. Brandon Dixon, Dawel Lugo and Jordy Mercer all homered in a four-batter span of the fourth inning off Royals starter Glenn Sparkman (3-11) to put Detroit in front for good. Willi Castro ’s pinch-hit two-run single provided critical insurance runs that helped Joe Jiménez withstand a ninth-inning rally for his fifth save.

“We played the game really, really well today,” Boyd said.