CHICAGO — Matthew Boyd doesn’t label his pickoff move as successful because it can steal outs – as it did during Saturday afternoon’s 2-1 win over the Pirates.

No, it’s effective because of its impact.

“If I didn’t pick anybody else off the rest of the year, but it kept them a step closer to the base and they didn’t steal a base, it’d be a win,” Boyd said. “And that’s kind of the point of it, right? It’s not the move in and of itself.”

Saturday he was able to pick off Tommy Pham in the sixth inning after the veteran outfield drew a leadoff walk. That allowed him to breeze to the final two outs of the frame as he pitched six innings of one-run, one-hit ball in the win.

A pickoff like that isn’t always that noteworthy. A pickoff in Saturday’s contest was paramount. Boyd retired 14 hitters in a row after allowing a one-out home run in the first inning. Pham’s free pass in a tie game was big – it was a difficult hitting environment, and every run felt bigger.

And, as he’s gotten older, Boyd has learned the value in pushing the envelope as a pitcher in those types of games.

[Cubs Takeaways: What we learned in another pitcher’s duel vs. Pirates]

“Something that’s kind of been an area of growth of me is just like you want to err on the side of being aggressive,” Boyd said. “You don’t want to err on the side of being tentative. So I’ve got my move and it’s a little unorthodox, and if I’m going to miss with it, sometimes that happens, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it again.”

It does help to have such a strong move to first base.

Boyd said he learned the maneuver from Mark Yoshino, the head baseball coach at Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, Wash. when he was a 9-year-old growing up. He goes to Yoshino every spring to fine-tune it and has an MLB-best six pickoffs this season.

“It’s just deception,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “He’s got a couple different deliveries [and] he’s worked on it a lot.”

The Cubs have stressed – since the offseason, really – the importance of winning on the margins. They want to find any tiny advantage that can lead to more wins. Some of those ways have been more pronounced – their once under-the-radar bullpen additions have contributed to wins. The aggressiveness on the basepaths has helped, too.

Boyd’s pickoffs have led to six more outs throughout the season – it’s not a gigantic number, but it’s not insignificant, either.

“It’s just the things that you can have and the impact you can have on the game,” Boyd said. “If you can keep him a step closer, so on a ball that’s [hit] a little bit in the gap, but one of our outfielders cuts it off and that keeps him at second base as compared to having a first and third situation – that’s a small win in the margin right there.

“Who knows, maybe a fly ball on the next pitch keeps a run [off] instead of letting a sac fly come in. Or, we’re keeping [the runner] there so the double play’s in order as compared to letting a guy steal second. If you get an out, it’s a bonus. That’s a cherry on top.”