Matthew Boyd is Cubs’ surprise rotation anchor: ‘It’s cool how quickly he’s become a big part of this group’

The Cubs haven’t been able to lean on Justin Steele, and Shota Imanaga is on the injured list.

Yet this is a first-place team.

As manager Craig Counsell has said, great seasons need surprises. Count lefty Matthew Boyd as the surprise arm to lead the Cubs’ starting rotation through what has so far been a great season on the North Side.

The 34-year-old Boyd inked a free-agent deal with the Cubs in the winter after pitching in just eight big league games last season, the biggest addition to the starting staff while some fans clamored for a splashier, higher priced signing.

Those eight 2024 games, coming with the Guardians following his recovery from Tommy John surgery, went really well. Now he’s doing similarly excellent work with the Cubs.

Boyd has a 2.98 ERA in nine starts and hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in any of them. He’s gone three starts without issuing a walk, including in the six innings he threw in Saturday’s win over the White Sox.

Boyd hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a start since June 15, 2023, a streak of 19 consecutive outings.

“That’s consistency,” Counsell said Saturday. “And good. That’s not easy to do. That’s never having a bad outing. … It’s a valuable thing.”

The Cubs have needed that value while chasing championship-level goals without the top two arms in their starting rotation.

Of the 55 pitchers in baseball who had logged at least 50 innings coming into Sunday, only 15 had issued fewer walks than Boyd’s 13.

And the Cubs’ strong defense makes it easier to stick to throwing strikes.

“I’m a product of the people around me,” Boyd said Saturday. “When you have the defense behind us that we do, it gives you all the confidence in the world to go out there to fill up the zone because guys can make some amazing plays. We see it night in, night out. It’s really nice to pitch in front of a defense like this.”

But more than the production, Boyd’s personality has made him someone this pitching staff and this team can lean on.

“He’s excited about the opportunity. And he’s excited about every opportunity he gets in life, really,” Counsell said. “He’s a very grateful person. But he’s also competitive, and that’s been fun to see. He’s really enjoying himself in Chicago, he’s enjoying being able to pitch every fifth day on a good team. He doesn’t take it for granted, and you kind of feel that from him every day.”

“A great teammate,” second baseman Nico Hoerner said Saturday. “He’s a starting pitcher who you feel his energy every day around the field, which isn’t always true with guys who play every five days. It’s just cool how quickly he’s become a big part of this group.”

Indeed, Boyd’s gratitude shines through.

Talking after his latest successful start, he touched on what this chance to thrive on the North Side means, considering that he hit free agency following the 2023 season in the middle of his Tommy John recovery and was without a team until late June last summer.

“There’s gratitude on so many levels,” he said. “There’s gratitude playing a game for a job. To be able to do it in the Cubs’ organization and at Wrigley Field is something amazing. To be able to share this with my kids and family, we’re very grateful for it.

“I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know what I’m going to do when the ball’s in my hand. And I think that’s kind of the same as it was in May and June [of last year], when I didn’t have a team and I was throwing in front of teams. It was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen in September. I don’t know what’s going to happen in August or July or tomorrow, for that matter.’

“But when the ball’s in my hand, I know what I’m going to do.”

So far, that’s been providing a stabilizing force for a rotation in need.

And providing yet another reason these Cubs look like contenders through nearly two months of baseball.