KANSAS CITY -- The last time
“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.”\n\nAfter 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.\n\nBoyd'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.\n\nBoyd 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.
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.\n\n“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.”\n\nThough 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
“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.”\n\nUp 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.\n\nAfter 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.\n\n“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.”\n\nBy limiting the damage, Boyd set himself up to actually benefit from home runs.