Pressure on Eovaldi to be Sox ace
Cora: ‘He’s been amazing all season’
It’s too bad the Red Sox weren’t able to rest Chris Sale in Game 162 so we could’ve seen who manager Alex Cora would’ve chosen to start the American League Wild Card Game tonight: Sale or Nathan Eovaldi?
Eovaldi will get the ball out of default, as Sale was burned for 62 pitches on Sunday, when he lasted just 2 L innings against the 65-win Nationals in the biggest game of the year.
At this point it’s become clear: the baton has been passed from Sale to Eovaldi as the true ace of the Red Sox’ staff.
“He’s been amazing all season,” Cora said of Eovaldi. “The way we structured our rotation towards the end, it was Chris for 162, Nate for 163 or for the Wild Card Game. Here we are.”
It’ll be Eovaldi against Yankees’ right-hander Gerrit Cole and it’s the perfect matchup for what should be a highly-entertaining single-elimination playoff game between the two most valuable starting pitchers in the AL.
“This year, the numbers that we always look at, ERA and all that, have been solid,” Cora said. “But the ones under the hood have been good, too.”
Eovaldi finished with an 11-9 record and 3.75 ERA, numbers that would probably be slightlyabove average in a normal year. But this wasn’t a normal year.
Coming off the 60-game season in which a lot of pitchers were either carefully monitored or opted out, teams across the big leagues were as tentative as ever in controlling their starters’ innings totals.
What a surprise it was to see Eovaldi, who has undergone several elbow surgeries and had made 30-plus starts just once in his 10-year career, tie for the AL lead with 32 starts while finishing fourth with 182 L innings.
He also led the AL in wins above replacement (WAR) with 5.6 while Cole, who went 16-8 with a 3.23 ERA, was second at 5.3 WAR, according to Fan Graphs.
“But you know what? It really doesn’t matter, his WAR or ERA,” Cora said of Eovaldi.
“He’s been very consistent for us and we’re glad that he’s going to take the ball.”
At some point, Sale is going to get a chance to earn his Red Sox stripes as a postseason starter this team can rely on to go deep in a meaningful game.
He hasn’t quite reached David Price-levels of postseason futility, but his 5.76 ERA over 25 innings across seven postseason games is far from what you’d expect from one of the premier starting pitchers in baseball.
The Sox are 2-2 in his four postseason starts. Sale’s only playoff win was in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees in 2018, when Sale pitched 5 M innings of two-run ball. He otherwise allowed 12 earned runs in 13 innings over the other three starts.
Now the 32-year-old is in the final stages of a full recovery from Tommy John surgery. He didn’t make his season debut until Aug. 14. And while his velocity is still slowly creeping back up towards normal levels, his changeup has been ineffective. He’s allowing a .450 batting average and .650 slugging percentage against that pitch this year.
Cora said it’s the last pitch to return to normal for Tommy John patients.
“He’s not there yet,” Cora said. “You can see it. The action is OK, but it’s actually cutting. So he actually threw today. He felt good. He stopped by the office, and I was like, ‘no, we’re not doing that.'”
Stopped by the office for what? Cora didn’t specify, but presumably to ask if he could take the ball on Tuesday.
That’s Eovaldi’s job and one he’s earned, having replaced Sale atop the rotation and delivered all year long.
“Obviously I’m aware that he was going to be out (early in the year),” Eovaldi said. “I know Eddie (Rodriguez), you know what I mean, probably wasn’t going to be himself, missing a full year (with myocarditis). It’s just going out there and competing. I take a lot of pride in what I do and going out there and competing against the best.”
That Cora didn’t entertain Sale’s office visit shouldn’t be a surprise.
But it did come as a shock when the skipper said he probably wouldn’t even use Sale out of relief on Tuesday.
Rodriguez had just thrown a strong inning of relief Sunday, two days after throwing 93 pitches in a start, and it has been Cora’s standard operating procedure to use his starters on one day of rest for an inning of relief in the postseason.
It’s either a testament to how far Sale still needs to go to being the pitcher he once was, or an abundance of caution to save the lefty for a potential Division Series matchup with the Rays, which starts on Thursday.
Though Sale probably won’t be used, Rodriguez and Nick Pivetta will likely be in the bullpen Tuesday, Cora said. This is Eovaldi’s staff now. “I’m just really excited to be in this situation and fought real hard to get to this point,” Eovaldi said. “And once you get to the playoffs, anything can happen.”