CHICAGO – The Cubs’ series against the Angels opened with perfect baseball weather and ended with the polar opposite, pun slightly intended.
After both teams enjoyed the summer-like warmth of Monday’s opener, Wednesday’s game-time temp came in at 39 degrees. Add in the 21 mph gusts that kept every flag clinging to its respective pole like its life depended on it, and you had the kind of atmosphere that forced every player to take the field covered in multiple layers.
Well, everyone except Matthew Boyd.
On a day when the real feel was in the 20s, Boyd stepped to the mound boasting nothing but short sleeves, ready to breeze through Los Angeles’ lineup.
“I was a little confused,” catcher Carson Kelly said of Boyd’s cold-weather approach. “I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’”
Boyd's choice of winter gear (or lack thereof) may have left teammates scratching their heads, but the bone-chilling conditions did little to stop him from striking out 10 over 5 2/3 two-hit innings during Chicago’s 6-2 win at Wrigley Field. The performance marked the ninth double-digit strikeout game of his career and first since Aug. 31, 2019, with the Tigers.
“The mindset doesn’t change,” Boyd said. “The geography, the weather, time of day, the team – it can’t change what you expect of yourself when you go out there. So you just deal with it. Whatever it is, you deal with it as it comes.”
It was the kind of start the Cubs expected from the 35-year-old southpaw when they named him this year’s Opening Day starter. But while he kicked off the 2026 season with three efficient frames against the Nationals, a six-run fourth brought that day's start to a close.
Zach Neto singling on the second pitch of Wednesday’s game may have hinted at another tough outing on the horizon for Boyd. Everything he did after that at-bat proved otherwise.
Boyd used a slick pickoff move to erase Neto, then didn’t allow another baserunner until Neto walked in the fourth. In the time between, the Cubs’ southpaw leaned almost exclusively on a fastball-changeup combo to hold the Angels to nothing but K’s and flyouts.
“He was great today,” said second baseman Nico Hoerner, whose third-inning RBI double sparked a five-run frame for the North Siders. “I felt like they were constantly off-time with his combo of four-seams and changeups. Really effective, so many swings and misses, which is huge.”
Boyd saved most of those whiffs for his second trip through Los Angeles’ lineup. That point of the game marked the moment where things turned south for Boyd on Opening Day. After allowing just one hit (a solo homer) through the first nine hitters he faced against Washington, he was tagged for five runs on five hits and plenty of loud contact during his second time through.
“The Opening Day start, I just needed to make an adjustment faster,” Boyd said. “I wasn’t able to do that. You learn from it, you go on.”
It certainly seemed like that adjustment was made on Wednesday, when another look at the lefty seemed to make the Angels’ bats even less effective than before. Of Boyd’s 10 strikeouts on the day, six of them came during his second time through the lineup.
“Just being in-zone and competitive with the changeup really set him up as he went through the lineup the second time and made him good throughout the whole start,” manager Craig Counsell said. “He pitched really, really well. The swing-and-miss in both starts is always encouraging. That’s an important indicator that the stuff is good.”
It certainly confirmed as much against Los Angeles. Boyd’s outing was just the eighth time in his career that he was able to induce 20 whiffs in a game. He hit that mark during his Opening Day start, while the other six times all occurred during the 2019 season.
Boyd got 11 whiffs on his four-seamer, along with seven on his changeup, ensuring that steady, cold breezes were coming from more than just nearby Lake Michigan. Asked how cold it had to be to force him into long sleeves, Boyd cited his start in Chicago against the White Sox on April 6, 2017, as the only time he felt compelled to dress appropriately for the weather.
But if rocking short sleeves in frigid temps means turning in a 10-strikeout gem, perhaps Boyd is on to something. Even if it leaves his team questioning his decision-making.
“Well, that was a personal choice,” Counsell joked, “so that doesn’t impress me.”