NEWSLETTER
The Chicago Cubs reportedly agreed to a deal with lefty Matthew Boyd in the wee hours on Monday, and we discussed the signing here yesterday. There was more to get into, though, so I’m gonna run through it in bullet style …
- The price tag on Boyd’s deal may seem quite large for a guy whose recent success was just eight regular season starts and three postseason starts, but the two-year, $29 million deal is just about in line with projections (MLBTR was at 2/$25M, Kiley McDaniel was at 2/$33M).
- The structure of the deal is relatively conventional, with a small bookkeeping caveat:
Breakdown on Boyd, per the AP (apnews.com/article/cubs…)
— Jon Becker (@jon-becker.com) December 2, 2024 at 11:53 AM
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- It all counts in a very normal way toward the luxury tax calculation – i.e., 2025 is $14.5 million in AAV, 2026 is $14.5 million in AAV – but by spreading around the payments, the Cubs will have some internal accounting flexibility. You kinda wish this stuff didn’t matter, but my read on that structure is that baseball operations could put some or all of that $5 million signing bonus on the books for 2024, then you have salary in 2025 and 2026, and they could (if wanted/necessary) put the $2 million option buyout on the 2027 books. None of that matters for any external purposes whatsoever. It is only about fitting signings into the internal budget given to baseball operations, if necessary. There are also some personal tax benefits for Boyd, I reckon, and some mild time-value-of-money savings for the Cubs on the buyout.
- Though it is not the focus of Michael Baumann’s Boyd piece at FanGraphs, I did find his mention of 2015 Rich Hill to be pretty funny. Not so much in terms of a straight up pitcher comp on style/ability/pitches/etc., but just in terms of how a guy’s career trajectory can play out. Hill, as we all remember, was a notable Cubs pitching prospect, and actually did have some nice seasons in the big leagues. Then a years-long stretch of injuries, ineffectiveness, and a bullpen conversion kind of took him off folks’ mental radars as a plausible starting pitcher. So when he re-converted to starting in 2015 and dominated for the Red Sox over a tiny sample, it was pretty hard to buy that it was legit. After all, the guy was 35, and hadn’t held together a high-quality season of starts in nearly a decade. But wouldn’t you know, Hill wound up kinda being an awesome starter until he was 40 years old. Injuries were still an issue, and you can’t discount that entirely when it’s an older guy. But when he could get on the mound, he was just great (2.92 ERA from 2015 through 2020!).
- So that’s kind of the dream trajectory for someone like Boyd: always had the talent, some success in younger days, then a bunch of years in the wilderness, then a return in a small sample of starts even better than before, and then multiple years of being awesome. That last one is the part that hasn’t happened yet, and is the kind of thing the Cubs are hoping for.
- Not that you would expect any different, given how well he pitched, but Boyd has said that this year was the best he’s felt physically since 2019. He’ll be turning 34, but maybe he’ll feel a little fresher than that, having pitched such a low load the last five years and also having had multiple issues addressed surgically?
- Of note in Baumann’s piece, although Boyd is a third lefty in the Cubs’ rotation, his style is very different from that of Justin Steele and ShÅta Imanaga (who are distinct from each other, too), so you’re not going to see batter familiarity within a series being a real problem. Boyd has a very diverse pitch mix with all kinds of different movement, and he throws almost all of it against both-handed batters. A lot to play with.
- As for the rotation, you figure it would currently line up something like Justin Steele, ShÅta Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd, and then Javier Assad. But it remains possible the Cubs add another starting pitcher (probably a trade or a short-term, high-risk, high-upside type), and you will otherwise still see Jordan Wicks and Ben Brown expected to make starts in 2025. Caleb Kilian, Hayden Wesneski, Cade Horton, Brandon Birdsell, and Connor Noland will all also be in the mix, as need/opportunity/etc. arise. The aggregate group is pretty good – a whole lot of flexibility within the depth, which not a lot of organizations have – but it does feel like it’s missing one more sure-fire impact arm. I just don’t think the Cubs are going to get it this offseason, unless a trade (Mariners? Crochet?) presents itself.
- Bryan is effectively offering a word of caution here on the regression side of things:
It would be just about impossible to land your best two pitches in better locations than Matthew Boyd did in Cleveland last year. On the one hand, I’m excited to have that level of command artistry around. On the other, is it really possible to repeat THAT?
— Bryan Smith (@cubsmith.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 8:41 AM
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- Bryan is right that those charts are just about as perfect as you can get, and since we’re talking about a small sample, you do have to worry about what happens if he can’t replicate that extreme level of pristine command. Then again, I suppose you’re already not projecting him to repeat as a 2.72 ERA/3.10 FIP guy, and that’s baked into the price tag (otherwise he’d be getting a heckuva lot more).
- To that point, Steamer projects Boyd to be a 4.00 ERA guy in 2025, which would be a few percent better than league average. You’re hoping for better results when you sign a deal like this, but honestly, getting 100-120 innings of slightly-better-than-league-average results from Boyd in 2025 would make him very much worth the signing.
- Highlights from Matthew Boyd’s 2024 season, which kicked off with him dominating the Cubs:
