Despite all the health concerns in the rotation, the Yankees acquired only two bonafide Major League starting pitchers this offseason. One was veteran Chris Capuano, who returned on a low-cost one-year contract to add depth, and the other was youngster Nathan Eovaldi. Eovaldi came over from the Marlins with Garrett Jones and prospect Domingo German in exchange for Martin Prado and David Phelps in mid-December.
Even though he has a touch more than three years of service time and 460 career big league innings to his credit, Eovaldi just turned 25 last month. He’s younger than both 2014 Rookies of the Year and is the third youngest pitcher (behind Bryan Mitchell and German) and the eighth youngest player overall on New York’s 40-man roster. Eovaldi zoomed through the minors in three years as a high school draft pick and has plenty of MLB experience despite being so young. Needless to say, he’s an important piece of the 2015 Yankees.
Yankees Need: Innings
This is priority number one. With so many question marks surrounding the other starters on the roster — Capuano suffered a quad strain a few days ago and will be out the first few weeks of the season — the Yankees need Eovaldi to be the staff workhorse. The guy who won’t make them hold their breath and hope he doesn’t blow out with each individual pitch. Well, I’m sure they do that with every pitcher no matter what, but you know what I mean. Eovaldi fell one stupid little out shy of 200 innings last year and the club is hoping he gets up over that level this summer.
Eovaldi Can: Take The Ball Every Fifth Day
Eovaldi has had two arm injuries in his life. He had Tommy John surgery way back in 2007, during his junior year of high school, and he missed the first three months of the 2013 season with shoulder inflammation. Considering how hard he throws and the fact he’s stayed healthy since the shoulder issue, I’d say it’s in the past. Same with the Tommy John surgery. Eovaldi’s thrown over 800 total innings since having his elbow rebuilt, so he’s well beyond the “honeymoon” period*.
* Long story short, Jeff Zimmerman at FanGraphs found most pitchers who continue to have ligament trouble after Tommy John surgery do so within 400 innings of going under the knife. I don’t know if he’s written that anywhere but I’ve spoken to him about it in the past.
Both the Dodgers and Marlins did a good job controlling Eovaldi’s workload, so his innings jumps from year to year have been reasonable. Here’s a quick rundown:
2008 – 10.2 innings after the draft plus whatever he threw in high school
2009 – 96.1 innings in the minors
2010 – 98.1 innings in the minors (missed a month with an oblique strain)
2011 – 137.2 innings between MLB and the minors
2012 – 154.1 innings between MLB and the minors
2013 – 127 innings between MLB and the minors around the shoulder injury
2014 – 199.2 innings in MLB
The shoulder injury threw a wrench into things two seasons ago but that seems to have been a blip on the radar. Eovaldi’s workload has grown incrementally through the years and it appears he is ready to become a consistent 200 innings a year starter. He’s a big, physical guy at 6-foot-2 and 215 lbs., and there are no lingering health concerns. The Yankees can pencil him in for 32 starts this year and feel pretty comfortable with it.
Yankees Need: Unlock Those Strikeouts
Although he sports a high-octane fastball and a promising slider, Eovaldi has only struck out 16.2% of batters faced in his career (16.6% in 2014), well below the continually climbing league average (20.4% in 2014). The Yankees love strikeouts. Love ’em love ’em love ’em. They want to see Eovaldi turn his impressive stuff into more swings and misses so he can record more outs all by himself. He’s a good pitcher now. More strike threes will help him take that next step towards becoming an elite pitcher.
Eovaldi Can: Bring Great Stuff To The Table
As I said, Eovaldi’s raw stuff is among the best in the game. His four-seam fastball averaged 95.5 mph last season and 95.2 mph from 2012-14, the fourth and third highest average velocities in baseball among qualified starters, respectively. Baseball America (subs. req’d) called his slider “a plus pitch with tilt and late movement at its best” back before the 2011 season, the last time Eovaldi was prospect eligible, so that’s a solid two-pitch mix. It still hasn’t added up to strikeouts, however.
Personally, I see three reasons to believe Eovaldi may boost his strikeout this summer despite moving from the NL to the AL this season.
- Brian McCann: Simply put, McCann is one of the best pitch-framers in baseball and Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Eovaldi’s catcher with the Marlins, is one of the worst. McCann’s going to get Eovaldi a lot more called strikes than Salty ever did.
- New Splitter: Eovaldi said he started tinkering with a splitter late last year (PitchFX classified it as a changeup) and he’s continued to work on it in Spring Training. He’s thrown a few nice ones during Grapefruit League play but the pitch is still very much a work in progress.
- Elevated Fastballs: At the behest of pitching coach Larry Rothschild, Eovaldi has been working on elevating his fastball in two-strike counts this spring. High fastballs at the top of the zone or even above the zone are a great way to get swings and misses, especially when you throw as hard as Eovaldi. High fastballs are tough to lay off.
Rothschild has a long history of helping pitchers improve strikeout rates and Eovaldi seems like the perfect project for him. They aren’t trying to squeeze water from a rock here. Eovaldi has the kind of high-end stuff that should be allergic to bats, he just needs to better learn how to use it, especially in two-strike situations.
Yankees Need: Improve Against Lefties
Like most pitchers, Eovaldi spent the first two seasons of his career going back and forth between Triple-A and MLB. He moved into the big league rotation full-time after being traded from the Dodgers to the Marlins for Hanley Ramirez at the 2012 trade deadline, and since the trade, these are his platoon splits:
| IP | wOBA | FIP | K% | BB% | GB% | HR/FB% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs. RHB | 181.0 | .308 | 3.32 | 16.3% | 7.3% | 47.7% | 7.5% |
| vs. LHB | 188.0 | .328 | 3.73 | 15.2% | 7.5% | 41.3% | 6.0% |
It’s not a huge split, but it’s enough of a split that the Yankees would like to see Eovaldi improve against lefty hitters. After all, Yankee Stadium is a great place to hit if you swing from the left side.
Eovaldi Can: Maybe Improve Against Lefties
It’s no surprise Eovaldi’s been more effective against righties than lefties in his career as a fastball/slider pitcher. Those guys typically have decent (to significant) platoon splits. The splitter will be crucial to Eovaldi’s potential improvement against lefties, not just an improved strikeout rate. His changeup stinks but the splitter would be a fine substitute as an offspeed pitch that moves down and away from lefties. There’s really not much more to say than that. If Eovaldi can develop his splitter into a reliable third pitch, he should see improvement against batters of the opposite hand.
Yankees Need: Adapt To A New Environment
Eovaldi is going from one end of the figurative baseball map to the other. These last few years the Marlins have played in front of tiny crowds in a big ballpark with four regular beat writers and basically no expectations. The Yankees play in front of much bigger crowds in a much smaller ballpark with eleven beat writers and a ton of expectations (regardless how good they actually project to be). Oh, and there’s a whole NL to AL thing too. Eovaldi’s about to enter a very different situation and he needs to adapt.
Eovaldi Can: Maybe Adapt?
There’s no way to know how some will react to a new environment until he’s actually there. The Yankees had some firsthand knowledge of Eovaldi from current third base coach Joe Espada — Espada, who spent last year as a special assistant to Brian Cashman, was the Marlins third base coach from 2010-13 and presumably got to know Eovaldi then — and I’m sure they did their homework before acquiring him. They’ve put a lot of time and effort into evaluating makeup (or attempting to evaluate makeup) in recent years. I have no reason to think Eovaldi won’t be fine in his new situation, but again, there’s no way to know for sure until he gets there.
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