The Chicago Cubs entered this offseason targeting a front-of-rotation starting pitcher. They are ending the offseason with only rehabbed left-handed veteran Matthew Boyd– signed to a two-year, $29 million deal– added to the rotation.
With an unwillingness to enter into bidding wars for elite-level free agent starting pitching and an inability to pull off rumored big trades for starters, the Cubs will have to do a lot of hoping for the best. They’ll have to cross their fingers that their established starters perform true to previous form and that Boyd, as the lone addition to the crew, will stay healthy and productive.
Will Matthew Boyd Be The Comeback King The Cubs Need Him To Be?
The big question, though, is whether Boyd has it in him to be the headline-making comeback player the team needs him to be in 2025. Coming in as, essentially, a replacement for a flat-lining Kyle Hendricks, his success or failure will take on an exaggerated degree of importance in a rotation expected to carry the team into postseason play.
The injury-prone Boyd, however, has thrown a total of 202.2 innings over the last four seasons and hasn’t surpassed 100+ innings pitched since 2019. The Cubs are hoping that his 2023 Tommy John surgery served to repair the damage that has been limiting the 10-year veteran.
The 34-year-old pitched well after coming back at the end of last season. He posted a 2.72 ERA in eight regular season starts. He also dazzled in the playoffs, giving up just one earned run in 11.2 innings for the Cleveland Guardians over three starts.
A Calculated Gamble From The Chicago Cubs
The reality, though, is that signing Boyd was a calculated gamble by the Cubs front office, a hope that that they’d make the right grab at the right time for someone who could turn in elite numbers for the price of a fifth starter.
Some feel that the gamble will probably not pay off in the way the Cubs clearly hoped it would.
Rich Eberwein of Cubbies Crib doesn’t think highly of the Boyd signing, giving it a letter grade of “D” as a gamble likely to fail.
Per Eberwein:
“At the time of this writing, we’re about two and a half months out from the news of this deal dropping, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
[Jed] Hoyer is banking on a 34-year-old pitcher, who has not been able to stay healthy for more than half a season’s worth of games since 2019. These were serious elbow issues that resulted in two surgeries. I don’t understand how this warrants a two-year contract worth $29 million, especially when Boyd’s only meaningful success came in just 11 starts with the Cleveland Guardians last year.
Boyd was great in that span, with a 2.28 ERA over 11 starts. But this is a very small sample size (51.1 Innings) to put as much stock into as the Cubs are. Boyd is in line to take the team’s fourth starting rotation spot and it’s hard to imagine him giving the team more than 100 innings in 2025. I might feel differently if another reliable starter was added to the rotation this offseason, but that didn’t happen. Prior to the regular season, this contract looks pretty bad.”
The Realities Regarding Boyd
Even by the assessment of the Cubs’ own pitching coach, Tommy Hottovy, 100 innings pitched for Boyd is not too far off the mark.
“There’s definitely some risk/reward there,” Hottovy said in a January radio interview. “If we’re sitting here today and we say, ‘Matt Boyd throws 120 innings of really good baseball,’ I think we’d all be really happy about that. Anything above that would be great.”
But what if 120 innings (or less) is not enough for a starting rotation that under-performs a bit? Will Ben Brown, Jordan Wicks, Colin Rea, or Triple-A ‘s Cade Horton be able to fill the void?
All will be revealed soon enough.
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