ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — One of baseball's best pitchers this season isn't even listed among the league leaders, and was left off the American League All-Star team.
Nathan Eovaldi is 6-0 with a 0.47 ERA in six starts for the Texas Rangers since the beginning of July. The right-hander, coming off one-hit ball over eight innings in a 2-0 win over the New York Yankees, is 10-3 with a 1.38 ERA in 19 starts overall.
“I don’t know what else I can say about him. I’ve run out of superlatives,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said. “This is one of the best runs I’ve seen from a pitcher. Believe me, I’ve enjoyed watching it.”
And Bochy, also a former big league catcher, has seen a lot in 28 seasons as a manager while winning 2,231 regular-season games and four World Series titles.
Eovaldi would qualify as MLB's official ERA leader, by more than a half-run better than both All-Star starters, had he not missed most of June with elbow inflammation.
Pittsburgh's Paul Skenes lowered his NL-best ERA to 1.94 with six scoreless innings against Cincinnati on Thursday night, when the wild card-chasing Rangers had only their second off day in three weeks since the All-Star break. The AL leader is reigning Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal at 2.18 for Detroit.
“It's just kind of been building off the previous outings,” Eovaldi said. “I'm going out there trying to make sure that I'm mixing up my pitches, and trying to keep them off balance as much as I can.”
Only four MLB pitchers since 1920 had a lower ERA than Eovaldi in the first 19 starts of a season, with Bob Gibson's 1.06 for St. Louis the lowest in 1968, the season the Hall of Famer won both the NL Cy Young and MVP awards. Gibson also allowed one or zero runs 13 times in a 14-game span that year, and was the only pitcher since 1900 to do that until Evoaldi's current streak, according to STATS.
Close to qualifying
Eovaldi's 111 innings pitched are five shy of qualifying as the league leader after 116 games for the Rangers — pitchers need one inning per team game. If the Rangers stick to their rotation, he could get to 120 innings in their 120th game Monday against Arizona with another complete game — he threw a four-hit shutout April 1 at Cincinnati in his second start this season.
This is already his third consecutive 10-win season since joining his home state team, and last December signed a new $75 million, three-year contract through 2027. The 35-year-old Eovaldi and Hall of Fame strikeout king Nolan Ryan are the only big league players from Alvin, Texas.
While Ryan was a flamethrower, Eovaldi has a mix of pitches: four-seam fastball, cutter, split-finger and curveball.
“He's probably using the mix even more than he has in the past. He’s comfortable with any pitch of his four pitches, and with amazing command of all four,” Bochy said. “He’ll throw them in any count. He’s got both sides covered, he’s got up and down covered. He just works quadrants as well as any pitcher I’ve seen.”
Another ace
The Rangers, who still gave Eovaldi the $100,000 All-Star bonus that is in his contract, also have two-time National League Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom (10-4, 2.80) signed through at least 2027. After being Texas' only All-Star this year, deGrom has given up five runs in each of his last two starts.
This is Eovaldi's sixth MLB team, and his 34 wins for the Rangers are his most for any of them. He joined them after five years in Boston, and was part of World Series titles in his first season with both organizations. Eovaldi has a 101-84 career record, and is 9-1 with a 3.05 ERA in 17 postseason games.
“Well, I think he’s become this player long before Texas," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after Eovaldi's gem against them Tuesday. “Great competitor, has great stuff, a really good arsenal and tremendous command. You got to earn everything against him.”
Sitting Judge down
All-Star slugger Aaron Judge's return from a 10-game absence due to an elbow issue came against Eovaldi. Judge was 0 for 3 with two strikeouts as the Yankees had just one baserunner in Eovaldi's second-longest outing of the season — Anthony Volpe on a hustling double in the third.
“Just uses all his pitches,” Judge said. “Works all parts of the zone. Does a good job throwing strike-to-ball pitches. So you've really got to be disciplined when you're facing a guy like that.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press
