“We need a pillar.”
There are many ways to describe Texas righthander Nathan Eovaldi. “One of the best teammates I’ve ever had.” (Texas catcher Jonah Heim.) “The ultimate competitor.” (Texas coach Bobby Wilson.) “A man who has given me life-changing quotes that have nothing to do with baseball.” (Texas first baseman Nathaniel Lowe.)
But what Eovaldi, 33, means to the Rangers, which was evident in not just his ALCS 5–4 win Monday but also how he did it, was borne of a conversation general Chris Young had last September over breakfast with Boston coach, good friend and fellow Princeton alum Will Venable. Young was putting together his free agent shopping list.
He asked Venable about Red Sox pitcher Eovaldi.
“Big game pitcher. Winner,” was Venable’s contribution to the Eovaldi Thesaurus.
Young knew he had position player pillars in middle infielders Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. The Rangers had posted six straight losing seasons. Young knew he needed someone on his pitching staff with a winning pedigree and off-the-charts intangibles to light the way forward. He didn’t know yet if the budget would allow for a run at Jacob deGrom, as it would.
“We wanted Evo because we needed to build a pitching culture,” Young says. “We needed to build a winning mentality in our pitching.
“We wanted Evo because of the exact reasons we’re seeing. He's a winner, he's done it, he's a leader, he makes everybody around him better and he brings everybody together. He surpassed everything we could have hoped.”
Thomas Shea/USA TODAY Sports
Eovaldi has pitched 14 postseason games. His teams are 11–3 in those games. One of those defeats, 2018 World Series Game 3, helped the Red Sox win a world championship because Eovaldi pitched so well and so long in the 18-inning loss his teammates gave him a standing ovation in the clubhouse after the game.
Back him into a corner, such as bases loaded, no outs in the fifth inning against the defending world champions on the road, and the best of Eovaldi comes out.
“Just go with his best pitch,” said Heim, his catcher, about the strategy in the moment.
And what is that? Eovaldi is such a four-pitch artist with command of the entire deck that he threw 91 pitches in Game 2, none of them 30 times.
“Good question,” Heim said. “Tonight, it was the splitter. On another night? Could be another pitch.”
Eovaldi extricated himself with a sampler of sweetness: striking out Yanier Diaz on a curve, striking out Jose Altuve on a splitter and getting Alex Bregman to ground out on a cutter. In what may turn out to be the pivotal sequence to decide the American League pennant, The Pillar stood tall. The man with the career record of 79–73 with a 4.10 ERA in the regular season turns into a postseason beast: 7–3 with a 2.87 ERA.
“I feel the most comfortable when I'm out on the mound and executing my pitches,” he said.
He gets so locked in that when teammates mentioned how loud Minute Maid Park was, Eovaldi had no idea.
“And to me, you get that tunnel vision, that extra focus, and you block everything out,” he said.
He had no idea how many pitches he had after he came off the field after the sixth and manager Bruce Bochy told him, “You’re done.”
Says Young, “The bases loaded? Nobody out? It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. He's everything you could want in a teammate, in a person, in a leader. And he lives for these moments. He lives for them. I asked him yesterday, ‘Do you prefer the roof open or closed? He goes, ‘I don't care.’
“He’s just a gamer. He showed it again. But that's the stuff—the intangibles—that were almost more important to us than the good performer we knew we were getting. The intangibles to elevate everybody in terms of what we were trying to do with our pitching.”
Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports
The Rangers are two wins from the World Series two years from losing 102 games. They have run the postseason table for seven games after blowing the division title by getting shut out on the season’s final day, forcing them into what has been a 22-day odyssey with one home game.
“I was on a cross-country flight instead of being home with my puppy,” Lowe says.
Mondo the German Shepherd has had to wait as the Rangers grow the bonds of a champion that come from the other side of adversity. It’s what has forged Eovaldi, the survivor of two Tommy John surgeries and six teams.
“The best teammate you could ever want,” Lowe says. “He’s talked to me about some things that have had an impact on me. His quotes are something I cherish.”
Asked to share one of them, Lowe thought for a second and said, “I’d rather keep them private. I will say they have nothing to do with baseball.”
The Rangers have not lost a baseball game since that shutout in Seattle, a 16-day sojourn without knowing what losing feels like. In every phase of the game Texas looks remarkably solid. As solid as a pillar.
