Boyd throws sixth straight QS in win over Royals

DETROIT -- Slowly but surely, the weather is warming in Michigan. Matthew Boyd’s chill on opposing bats shows no sign of letting up.

With each start and each new set of small numbers, the latest coming with seven quality innings in Friday’s 4-3 win over the Royals, the Tigers left-hander is reinforcing the notion that last season was more of a breakthrough, not an anomaly.

The secret is getting out. Whether it makes Boyd a trade target for contenders seeking starting pitching this summer or a long-term piece for Detroit to fit in amongst its bevy of pitching prospects on the way, the work Boyd has put in has made him a presence on the American League pitching scene.

“It’s all about location with him,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He’s a smart pitcher. He really studies the game.”

Boyd took the mound Friday leading AL hurlers in Wins Above Replacement, according to FanGraphs, as well as Fielding Independent Pitching, while his strikeout rate ranked him in the top five. Nothing he did Friday took away from that. His line -- seven innings, five hits, two runs, a walk and nine strikeouts -- looked almost identical to the one he posted last Sunday in a hard-luck loss against the White Sox, but with one additional inning. There was no Reynaldo Lopez gem to topple him this time.

• Box score: Tigers 4, Royals 3

The outings every five days or so are looking so consistent, they’re almost lacking in suspense. Boyd has posted six straight quality starts since his season-opening loss in Toronto, and even that one wasn’t a thrashing, not with 10 strikeouts over five innings. Whether Boyd gets a win or loss these days is more a question of whether the Tigers offense posts runs, a question Detroit answered quickly Friday with three first-inning runs off Royals starter Jorge Lopez.

The big innings that plagued him his first few seasons, he knows now how to limit. Even in last Sunday’s loss, his 35-pitch opening inning produced just two White Sox runs thanks to three strikeouts. The same went for the Royals’ two-run rally in the fourth inning Friday, when Boyd followed Kelvin Gutierrez’s RBI triple with back-to-back strikeouts of Chris Owings and Martin Maldonado.

“He’s able to pitch effectively on the outer half of the plate and the inner half of the plate,” Gardenhire cited as a difference from last year. “I think this is probably as good as he’s located the ball, really getting it where he wants to consistently. He would fly off the ball every once in a while last year, and you don’t see that very much this year.”

Three consecutive leadoff baserunners from the second through fourth innings produced a lone run on Jorge Soler's sacrifice fly. The lone walk, a leadoff pass to Billy Hamilton in the third, was nullified by a pickoff throw two batters later.

While Friday’s win came against a Royals offense that ranks in the bottom half among American League teams in categories not involving baserunning, it’s a Kansas City squad that has tormented Boyd for most of his career. His five meetings with the Royals last year produced one win and two quality starts, and a second-inning exit in his final outing last September.

“These are big, strong guys,” Gardenhire said. “They’ve got some young hitters out there, and if you make mistakes with them, they’ll whack you. He did a real nice job of not really giving in to them and not really giving them too much to hit.”

Friday’s version of Boyd could’ve taken the mound with a different name. Royals batters swung through seven fastballs, topping out at 93.5 mph, took 10 more and fouled off 25. By getting more extension in his release, Boyd said, the pitch becomes tougher, an adjustment he credits to pitching coach Rick Anderson.

“When I stay with the pitch, it explodes,” Boyd said. “That’s something Andy has been working with me with. Today, I stayed with it a little longer. That’s when you get the good life on it.”

Gutierrez’s triple, Kansas City’s lone extra-base hit, came off a hanging slider, a pitch Boyd located plenty more times for seven swings and misses -- including the strikeout of Maldonado to end the threat.

"Man, his slider, the bottom just dropped out of it,” Royals manager Ned Yost marveled. “It would come in the strike zone and the bottom would drop out. He got a lot of swings and misses."

There’s a relationship, Boyd said, between the two pitches. When Boyd was worried about his slider last year, he said Anderson focused him on the fastball.

“Instead of focusing on getting the shape back on the slider, Andy said, ‘We need to get you back to your fastball,’” Boyd recalled from last summer. “That’s something I never would’ve realized. He started getting me back out front more. My extension went up in the second half of the year because I started getting back out front. And consequently off of that, I started getting more depth on my slider, being able to command it better. And then the curveball and changeup came along with it.”

The more Boyd keeps this up, the more this becomes the expectation, and the further Boyd settles in as the ace of this Detroit staff at a time when the injury-plagued Tigers arguably need one.