Matthew Boyd's Same Old, All-New Arsenal Has Him Tapping Familiar Brilliance with Novel Consistency

First things first, no one throws harder than ever at 34 years old, but here's Matthew Boyd, throwing harder than ever at 34. His 93.1 mph average fastball velocity is a full tick faster than he was throwing last year, and 0.5 mph better than his previous career high, achieved in both 2017 and 2022. Whether he'll be able to hold onto that heat for a whole season is a fair question with mostly pessimistic answers, but he's throwing hard—especially for a lefty whose profile has always depended more on things other than velocity, anyway.

That brings us to the things other than his fastball, which are even more impressive feats of late-career engineering. Here's a snapshot of Boyd's arsenal from 2024, which was broadly in keeping with the way it looked for most of his career to that point:

As I wrote over the winter, that did mark a slight departure from the past in a couple of ways. Boyd's slider had unusual two-plane depth last year; he threw his changeup more often, especially when behind in counts; and he'd rarely used the sinker to right-handed batters the way he did in 2024. Broadly speaking, though, this is what he is: a funk-over-firepower southpaw whose breaking balls always kept him around. Note that the slider is in the velocity range where most pitchers' curves live, and that the changeup is hovering arounf 81 mph here.

Now, here's what we've seen from Boyd in 2025:

The fastball velocity stands out, but so does the fact that the slider velo came with it—while the change got even slower. He's now pulling the string on opposing hitters to the tune of a 14-mph speed differential. A bit paradoxically, that leads to less swing-and-miss, because hitters do have a chance to adjust when the gap is that large and make contact, but that contact is less dangerous than ever. Meanwhile, the slider is easier to command, and that fastball plays up tremendously.

Extra velocity is always valuable, but the tighter shape of this slider and the way Boyd has improved the spin efficiency on his fastball have helped his whole mix improve in ways that run deeper. Here's what a right-handed batter saw from Boyd in 2024, taking the average trajectory of each of the pitches he used regularly against righties last year.

Obviously, his curveball popped out of the hand in a way batters could readily spot. That wasn't necessarily bad; that pitch is meant to confuse and freeze a hitter to induce a called strike. However, you can also see the way his slider differed in early flight from his other three offerings, and the way his changeup tended to fall off the line on which he threw his fastball before the commitment point for a hitter (shown here in pink). 

Here's what a righty sees in 2025:

Partially because of the change to his slider movement, and partially because he's letting his fastball ride more (high and away from righties), all three of his main weapons against opposite-handed batters now tunnel gorgeously. He's not using the sinker or curve nearly as much this year, at least so far, but that's been a feature, not a bug. Hitters have a much tougher task in identifying his stuff.

Here, by contrast, is what lefties saw in 2024.

And here's what they're seeing this year:

No such gains in deception from this side. What Boyd seems to have discovered, at an advanced age, is that while he has to fool righty batters in order to avoid giving up damage to them, his funky angle and his raw stuff is good enough to beat lefties. That's liberating; it has allowed him to shape his primary pitches with the way they tunnel to righties at the forefront. 

Boyd will start Wednesday in San Diego, the second time he'll have to navigate the dangerous Padres lineup in this first month of the 2025 campaign. It's a tall order, and the pressure on him has increased in the wake of Justin Steele's season-ending elbow surgery. Boyd, however, is equal to the task. He, too, will spend some part of this season on the injured list, but until that time comes, he looks capable of being a very good mid-rotation starter. His blend of power and finesse has never been more nimble, and while he's not throwing all-new stuff, his arsenal has been transformed by a little bit of added velocity, some new locations, and a small change in how each of his old, familiar offerings interacts with the others.