{"id":78131,"date":"2024-06-27T15:13:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T19:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=78131"},"modified":"2024-06-27T15:41:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T19:41:24","slug":"matthew-boyd-cleveland-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/27\/matthew-boyd-cleveland-guardians\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Guardians Add Pitching Depth, Sign Former Tigers Starting Pitcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ScottyMitchTSN\/status\/1806403399581049270\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jon Heyman of the <em>New York Post<\/em><\/a>, the Cleveland Guardians and left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=boydma01,boyd--002mat&amp;search=Matthew+Boyd&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matthew Boyd<\/a> have agreed to a major league deal. The Guardians will need to open spots on the 40-man roster when the deal becomes official after a physical. Boyd, now 33, has long intrigued teams thanks to his ability to post high strikeout rates as a left-handed pitcher. He remained unsigned just under one year after he underwent Tommy John surgery last season, ending his season with the Detroit Tigers.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><strong>Matthew Boyd<\/strong><\/strong>, Guardians, In Agreement on Major League Deal<\/h2>\n<p>Boyd struck out 30.2 percent of batters faced <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2019\/05\/11\/matthew-boyd-cy-young-candidate\/\" target=\"_self\">for Detroit in 2019<\/a> but dealt with injury issues, including flexor tendon surgery and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/johnto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tommy John<\/a>. The injuries to Boyd limited him to 163 innings in the majors since 2021, but the results were decent at best. Boyd posted a 4.36 ERA across 40 appearances (30 starts) but struck out 22.1 percent of batters faced while walking them at an 8.1 percent clip.<\/p>\n<p>On June 8, Heyman reported that Boyd threw for 17 of MLB&#8217;s 30 clubs. He also noted that the left-hander was throwing in the 92-93 mph range during his showcases. However, it&#8217;s understandable why clubs viewed Boyd as a caution, given his lengthy injury history and dismal 2023 season. Before his surgery, Boyd posted a 5.45 ERA in 15 starts with Detroit.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear how much more rehab work Boyd needs to do, but the Guardians are comfortable enough with his progress to offer him a major league deal. The addition of Boyd should help the Guardian&#8217;s rotation, which has been facing challenges by its current rotation. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/biebesh01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shane Bieber<\/a> is <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/04\/06\/cleveland-guardians-ace-to-miss-rest-of-2024-season\/\" target=\"_self\">recovering from Tommy John surgery<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=williga01,willia002gav&amp;search=Gavin+Williams&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gavin Williams<\/a> is currently on a rehab assignment, even though he has not thrown a major league pitch this season.<\/p>\n<p>Right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mckentr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Triston McKenzie<\/a> is coming off a year of elbow and shoulder injuries. Left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=allenlo01,allenlo02&amp;search=Logan+Allen&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Logan Allen<\/a>&#8216;s reliability is questionable, as he has shown signs of inconsistency start after start. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/livelbe01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-06-27_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ben Lively<\/a> has had great success. He hasn&#8217;t struck out more than five batters in any of his last five outings, but he&#8217;s good at limiting damage, as he&#8217;s given up two or fewer runs in nine of his 12 starts.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Junfu Han \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the Cleveland Guardians and left-hander Matthew Boyd have agreed to a major league deal. The Guardians will need to open spots on the 40-man roster when the deal becomes official after a physical. Boyd, now 33, has long intrigued teams thanks to his ability to post [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":78132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1071,35],"tags":[28587,85,3736,3623,2094,3452],"class_list":["post-78131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guardians","category-mlb","category-news","tag-ben-lively","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-gavin-williams","tag-logan-allen","tag-shane-bieber","tag-triston-mckenzie"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}