Well-grounded Boyd dominates Twins

DETROIT — Some ballplayers escape to exotic locations for the All-Star break. Matt Boyd found peace and quiet with his wife along the lakeshore at a vacation house in Traverse City. He also had to find a place to do his weighted-ball workout routine, though, so he found an old tree stump.

“I just let it eat against the tree stump, knocked all the bark off of it,” Boyd joked after a 1-0 win over the Twins on Monday night. “If I missed, it would’ve been in the water.”

Maybe that’s why Boyd was able to keep the ball down so well Monday, inducing seven ground-ball outs and seven strikeouts over six scoreless innings. Or maybe it was the mix of pitches that befuddled a group of Minnesota hitters that hadn’t seen him since last September.

Whatever the reason, a pitcher with one of the highest fly-ball ratios in the Majors last year looked more like a ground-ball pitcher Monday.

“I think the slider is the biggest difference there,” manager Brad Ausmus said. “I think the slider’s a good addition. I think he’s probably going to be a pitcher that can pitch up and down as much as he can side to side.”

That’s the …

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