Boyer rides basement pitching sessions to Twins bullpen

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Breaking down what pitcher Blaine Boyer does best, Twins general manager Terry Ryan offered a checklist.
“He throws strikes,” Ryan began. “He’s got an assortment of pitches. He can slow it down. He can spin it. He’s calm. He’s not afraid. He doesn’t panic.”
Regarding his poise, the 33-year-old Boyer can point to a decade and a half of professional experience that has taken him through eight organizations and Japan.
Also, he will tell you about Paul Byrd’s basement.
That’s where Boyer went from an emotionally conflicted real estate agent in the Atlanta area to a preternaturally calm pitcher with a wide-open future.
This was in 2012, when the husband and father of two young boys, Levi and Benaiah, took the entire season off to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“I was looking for a piece of land, and he brokered the deal,” said Byrd, a 109-game winner in the big leagues who crossed paths with Boyer when both were with the Atlanta Braves organization in 2004.
They had gone hunting together and became neighbors in Alpharetta, Ga., so it probably was inevitable that, while doing business, they got to talking about baseball. Boyer still had a clean arm, still had a big fastball, but he wasn’t sure he could ever be good enough to make the delicate balance of baseball and family life worthwhile.
Byrd, who had experienced the same sort of struggle during his 14-year career, helped convince him he could make it work.
And then they went down to Byrd’s basement.
“It’s awesome,” said Boyer, who will make $750,000 this year after being added to the Twins’ 40-man roster Monday. “It’s huge. It’s a batting cage. It’s a workout room. I mean, he’s got a trap door.”
Wait … what?
“A trap door,” Boyer said, eyes widening. “You walk down to the basement, and you
literally go through a bookcase. He’s got a bookcase that slides out, and the door opens up. It’s like that C.S. Lewis book, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’ It’s really cool.”
That’s where Byrd, who has worked with young pitchers off and on since retiring in 2009, introduced Boyer to some of his favorite techniques.
For instance, throwing bullpen sessions with classical music wafting through the room.
“It was just a calming mechanism,” Boyer said. “He always said whenever he got a guy in scoring position, he knew he could revert back to that relaxation, that calm of throwing and just listening to Beethoven or Mozart.”
Boyer, who has ridden a 93-mph fastball and veteran’s wisdom to a 1.69 earned-run average in 10 innings this spring, doesn’t necessarily summon classical music when he’s on the mound. He prefers a Christian rock group called “Needtobreathe,” fronted by brothers Bear and Bo Rinehart from Seneca, S.C.
“That’s the music that relaxes me,” Boyer said. “It’s just soothing.”
Even the band name is a reminder for Boyer, who picked up breathing techniques from Byrd that he employs every time he takes the mound.
“A big thing for me is breathing. Breathing is huge,” Boyer said. “Whenever I come set, I always let out a breath. Your breathing is so important as an athlete: how you breathe, understanding the way you breathe. You put yourself in a good situation when you exhale, calm down, lock in and go.”
Byrd, 44, walked just 2.1 batters per nine innings over nearly 1,700 big-league innings. Despite a below-average fastball and nine-inning strikeout rate of just 4.9 batters, he managed to reach the postseason four times in five years with four different teams from 2004-08.
He won at least 15 games in three seasons.
“I was known for having good control, but a lot of pitching coaches make you pitch like they did,” said Byrd, now part of the Braves’ broadcast team. “I didn’t want to do that to Blaine. I said, ‘Let’s have good control yet keep your identity as Blaine Boyer.’ I just got him to slow down, breathe, relax. He did the rest.”
Byrd took the wooden wedge he uses for a mound and pushed it up against one wall in his basement.
“You can’t fall off too far to the left or you’ll hit the wall,” Byrd said. “All your energy has to go toward home.”
He had Boyer throw in tennis shoes, another way to get him to slow down and stay under control through his delivery. He also taught Boyer how to “throw with his feet,” moving him around the pitching rubber based on the different objectives of each pitch.
“I’m not aiming with my arm. I’m aiming with my feet - where I land and where I start,” Boyer said. “I don’t want to give away too much, but I do move around the rubber, just not as much as he did and probably not as much as he’d like me to do. He sees little things.”
Instead of throwing to a catcher’s mitt, sometimes Byrd would have Boyer throw to a large tire sized for an 18-wheeler.
“He would work on hitting the four corners, the outer edges of that tire, while staying out of the middle,” Byrd said. “Control isn’t everything. Command is. I don’t want to just throw strikes, but quality strikes in the zone. Once you know, ‘I can hit any of those four corners eight times out of 10,’ then you have command.”
They did exercises to help Boyer keep his eyes on the target throughout his delivery.
“You’d be surprised, with millions of dollars on the line - millions of dollars - how many pitchers won’t do their Jobe (arm) exercises or won’t stretch before they throw,” Byrd said. “Or they won’t be conscious of a little thing like keeping their eyes on the target. It’s amazing, but that attention to detail matters.”
Byrd, who says for family reasons he has turned down offers to return to the game as a pitching coach, downplays his influence in helping Boyer reclaim his career momentum.
He says Boyer deserves “99 percent of the credit” in this remarkable turnaround, which included a 3.57 ERA in 32 outings for the San Diego Padres last season before signing a minor-league deal with the Twins in the offseason.
“He’s just starting to discover himself as a pitcher,” Byrd said. “I was shocked the Twins were able to get him for what they did. In my mind, this is a big-league closer arm in the prime of his career. Blaine has taken what I’ve given him and he has run with it.”
Not, however, without looking back in appreciation.
What came out of those basement sessions in Alpharetta?
“Just a great friendship,” Boyer said. “He basically laid it out like, ‘Hey, if you want to do this, I’ll hold you accountable and we’ll do it together.’ ”
Byrd continues to check in on Boyer by text and occasional phone calls while remaining respectful of new Twins pitching coach Neil Allen, who he believes is an excellent fit for a journeyman pitcher who has come through the fire.
“We keep in touch pretty regularly,” Boyer said of Byrd. “He’s awesome. He’s hilarious. He’s so ADD, it’s unbelievable, just like me. He’s just a great dude. That’s the best way to put it: Paul Byrd is a great dude.”
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