Major League Baseball

With Jacob deGrom down, the Rangers are finding another ace in Nathan Eovaldi

Published May. 16, 2023 5:58 p.m. ET

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Rowan Kavner

MLB Writer

The best signing of the offseason’s free-agent pitching class resides in Texas. It’s just not the Ranger most would have expected.

On the same day Jacob deGrom went to the injured list with right elbow inflammation, Nathan Eovaldi lifted his group’s spirits on April 29 by firing the first nine-inning shutout of his career. His sensational outing against the Yankees began a scoreless streak that remains active at 28.2 innings entering his start Wednesday for the first-place Rangers. 

After striking out eight batters in that 2-0 win against his former team, Eovaldi proceeded to spin eight scoreless innings against the Angels and 8.2 shutout frames against the Athletics in his next two starts, thriving in different ways to emerge as the Rangers’ ace with deGrom on the shelf. 

Against the Yankees, Eovaldi featured his full repertoire, getting at least six combined whiffs and called strikes with each of his top four pitches — a four-seamer, splitter, curveball and cutter. His last start didn’t require such variety. 

Against Oakland, he carved up A’s hitters primarily with his four-seamer and splitter. The two pitches alone got a combined 33 called strikes and whiffs and helped Eovaldi strike out a career-high 12 batters, finishing one out short of his second complete-game shutout of the year. Afterward, A’s manager Mark Kotsay called it the best splitter he’d seen "in a long time." 

The numbers back up Kotsay’s eyes. It’s been the best splitter in baseball this year, and Eovaldi is throwing the pitch more than ever before in his 12-year career. He added the splitter toward the end of his 2014 campaign with the Marlins and began incorporating it more into his repertoire a year later with the Yankees under the direction of then-pitching coach Larry Rothschild. 

"It’s always been kind of my go-to pitch," Eovaldi said after signing with the Rangers this winter. "I throw it like a fastball and trust it."

The pitch plays well off his four-seamer, which has ticked up during his scoreless innings streak, registering as fast as 98.3 mph in his most recent start. While the velocity helps, the command of his extensive arsenal is his most admirable skill.

After producing the lowest walk rate in the majors among qualified starters (4.6%) in his All-Star 2021 season, Eovaldi lowered that number even further last year (4.3%). The trend is continuing into 2023, as he’s produced a 3.9% walk rate  — for context, 8.8% is the MLB average — while posting career bests in whiff and strikeout rates. At 33, he is striking out seven batters for every walk issued and finds himself in the midst of one of the best stretches of his career.  

While upping the usage of his splitter and cutter, he is also inducing more ground balls than ever. The result is a sparkling 2.70 ERA in his debut year with the Rangers, who look to have made a prudent decision adding Eovaldi to an already revamped rotation this winter. He may not have been their most coveted free agent, but he’s been their most important one. 

By FanGraphs WAR, Eovaldi has been the most valuable pitcher in the American League this year (2.2 fWAR), providing everything general manager Chris Young could’ve hoped for when he signed Eovaldi, a Texas native who attended the same high school as Nolan Ryan. 

"Nate’s a winning person, a winning teammate," Young said in January, after adding Eovaldi on a two-year, $34 million deal with a third-year vesting player option. "He’s an unbelievably hard worker. He values the role as a leader and really embodies everything we want our players to be."

Most importantly, he is also consistently posting for a Rangers team that remains without deGrom, who inked a five-year, $185 million deal in early December. Both pitchers carried with them considerable injury risk. 

After serving an integral role as a versatile piece on Boston’s 2018 championship roster, Eovaldi required an elbow procedure a year later that limited him to 67.2 innings. But he would eventually rebound, demonstrating his workhorse capabilities in 2021, when he led the AL with 32 starts. That year, Eovaldi finished fourth in Cy Young voting while going 11-9 with a 3.75 ERA in 182.1 innings — his most innings pitched since 2014.  

Last year, back and shoulder injuries limited him to 20 starts, but he was still productive when healthy, registering his third straight season with a sub-4.00 ERA. 

As Eovaldi considered potential landing spots this winter, he wanted to go somewhere with a chance to win. He took note when Texas added Corey Seager and Marcus Semien last year, and he believed in what the Rangers were assembling when they added deGrom and Andrew Heaney before he signed this offseason. 

"I view starting pitching as the key to winning a championship," Eovaldi said. "I think everything falls off of that. When the guys know that you have your guy on the mound who’s going to go out there and go seven innings, they have the confidence coming into the field every day that you’re not trying to piece a team together."

In Eovaldi’s case, it’s often been more than seven innings. 

He enters his start Wednesday against Spencer Strider and the Braves with a chance to become the first major-leaguer since Clayton Kershaw in 2015 to toss eight-plus shutout innings in four straight starts. Prior to Kershaw, no pitcher had accomplished the feat since Orel Hershiser during his historic stretch in 1988. 

Is it an example of how Eovaldi, on his sixth major-league team, is doing more than providing depth for the first-place Rangers. 

He’s becoming a main attraction. 

Rowan Kavner covers the Dodgers and NL West for FOX Sports. He previously was the Dodgers’ editor of digital and print publications. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner. 

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Rowan Kavner