E-Rod, Eovaldi silence doubters
Show injury concerns are a thing of the past
FORT MYERS — Fresh off a 19-win season, left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez slipped during a bullpen session last Wednesday, fell to the ground and twisted his knee. Red Sox Nation grew so quiet you could hear a season drop.
Throwing two simulated innings with Rafael Devers at the plate Monday morning on Field 1 of the Red Sox spring training complex, Rodriguez crushed whatever fears that fall created. He did so with a blistering, welllocated fastball and a sharp breaking ball that left Devers shaking his head and mumbling.
Afterward, Rodriguez said he didn’t know how many times he struck out Devers, but the left-handed hitter who delayed his arrival to training camp because of the recent birth of his child didn’t have any trouble counting.
“Five times,” Devers said. “Nasty!”
The good vibrations surrounding the Sox depth-challenged rotation continued a couple of hours later when Nathan Eovaldi took the mound down the road from JetBlue Park to face the Twins at Hammond Stadium.
Lighting up the radar gun at 100 mph, Eovaldi pitched two shutout innings, allowed two hits (one on a ball that glanced off of his foot), didn’t walk anybody and struck out four batters in a 3-2 loss to the Twins in which Kyle Hart allowed two long home runs to the Twins.
“I feel like I’m coming in with a better idea and a better approach, picking up where I left off last year, what I was working on,” Eovaldi said, comparing this spring to last. “Had a lot of time to work on it in the offseason and I knew exactly what I wanted to work on.”
His split-fingered fastball ranked first on that list and the fruits of that work were on display against the Twins.
“I felt really good out there,” Eovaldi said. “I felt like I had really good command of my fastball, really everything, other than my slider. Split felt probably the best out there.”
If all goes well, Rodriguez and Eovaldi each will start five exhibition games in preparation for the regular season. Only so much can be read into a two-inning stint, but it couldn’t have gone much better for either pitcher.
Rodriguez was in great spirits after, and even well before, his simulated two innings in which he rested between innings. Xander Bogaerts, on the mend from an ankle injury, stood in the cage against Rodriguez, but just tracked his pitches, not swinging at any so as not to risk aggravating the ankle.
“When we got here this morning, I told (Devers), ‘Bro, you want to face me today?’ He told me, ‘I want to hit the ball out of the ballpark.’ ‘I’m gonna strike you out.’ Thank God I win that bet,” Rodriguez said.
He is on course to make his first official exhibition start Saturday.
Eavoldi’s strong start was a step toward putting a frustrating season in which he spent time in the rotation, the injured list and the bullpen behind him.
“He’s huge because we need to keep our starting pitchers healthy, out on the field,” Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke said. “When you’re always trying to go grab guys from your minor leagues to come up or fill in from your bullpen to try to fill starting spots, you can only do that for so long. If you have one injury you’re usually OK, but you have two or three of your starters go down and you better be really deep to be able to fill that.”
Roenicke was encouraged by the command of his pitches that Eovaldi had for two innings.
“I think a lot of the inconsistency comes from the injury,” he said of Eovaldi’s 2018 season. “I think with Nate, you get him on a roll health-wise, he looks great so far. And then it starts with that great stuff. He starts getting command with it and then all of the sudden you have this great pitcher. I know he has this great stuff and these big-league hitters, they’re getting better and better and they’re getting more used to seeing that type of velocity, even up to 100. And when you miss, even with 100, it still gets hit at times. So the more velocity we see in this game, the more they get used to it. And you’re going to have to really start making pitches like everybody.”
Rodriguez and Eovaldi both made pitches that for the most part were too hot to handle. They’re one-sixth of the way through their spring training schedules. For both of them, it was a start, a very strong start.