Nathan Eovaldi Is Making Scrumptious Lemonade

If motor preferences had been the ultimate phrase on pitcher efficiency, Nathan Eovaldi can be sitting on a seashore someplace.

Eovaldi throws from a low slot, releasing his pitches from a median arm angle of 30 levels. (Zero levels is totally sidearm; 90 levels is straight excessive.) Many low-slot pitchers have a supination bias. There are downsides to being a supinator — their desire for chopping the baseball tends to supply crummy four-seam fastballs — however they normally haven’t any hassle throwing exhausting breaking balls; they will additionally extra simply harness seam-shifted wake to throw sinkers, sweepers, or kick-changes. Low-slot supinators, like Seth Lugo, can mainly throw each pitch within the e book. Excessive-slot pronators like Ryan Pepiot or Lucas Giolito don’t have that form of vary, however make up for it with wonderful changeups and high-carry fastballs.

Eovaldi is, tragically, a low-slot pronator. Not many low-slot pronators make it to the large leagues. The pronation bias blunts their means to throw exhausting glove-side breakers, and the low arm angle obviates the pronator’s nominal benefit, killing the stick with it their fastball. As Tyler Zombro of Tread Athletics (now a particular assistant of pitching for the Cubs) stated in his primer video on motor preferences, “I do know in stuff fashions and simply off of Trackman alone, this arsenal with this slot shouldn’t be that engaging.”

As Zombro goes on to say, low-slot pronators can work round their limitations through the use of angles. The video makes use of B-roll of fellows like Chris Sale, Nick Lodolo, and Tayler Scott to indicate that excessive horizontal launch factors can increase an in any other case uninspiring arsenal. Eovaldi doesn’t belong to this class of pitcher. He releases the ball from about 2.5 ft to the fitting of the middle of the rubber, nowhere close to the extremes of these three pitchers. And whereas his vertical launch level is low — simply 5.3 ft off the bottom on common — the measly 12 inches of induced vertical break on his heater implies that the vertical strategy angle is extra good than nice.

Velocity has a manner of erasing form considerations. However Eovaldi is not the flamethrower of his youth. As soon as able to dialing up triple digits, Eovaldi’s common fastball is all the way in which all the way down to 93.9 mph, dropping a tick and a half from 2024 to 2025.

And but — in some way — he’s among the many frontrunners for the American League Cy Younger. By each outcomes and peripherals, Eovaldi is dominating, operating a 1.78 ERA and a 2.13 FIP by means of 9 begins. His 28.6% strikeout charge is the very best of his profession, his 2.4% stroll charge the bottom. In his age-35 season, Eovaldi is uncorking a profession yr.

Now a wily veteran, Eovaldi is taking advantage of what he’s obtained. Positive, he can’t throw a breaking ball with out sacrificing important velocity. However there’s one pitch the place the dearth of spin expertise is definitely an asset: The splitter, which hardly spins in any respect. In 2025, Eovaldi belongs to the unique membership of split-first beginning pitchers.

Eovaldi wasn’t at all times so split-happy. As just lately as 2021, the splitter was his fourth-most-used pitch, relegated principally to late-count obligation in opposition to lefties. Eovaldi sat 97 on the heater then, even operating it as much as triple digits when he actually wanted it. The arm pace of his prime years allowed his slider to play regardless of its so-so form, giving him a robust out pitch in opposition to right-handed hitters.

As velocity loss set in, Eovaldi was compelled to adapt. At 97 mph, the fastball form wasn’t as a lot of a priority; at 94, it’s an issue. His slider was workable at 86 mph; it isn’t viable at 84 mph. So Eovaldi’s primarily deserted it, throwing simply 12 sliders complete thus far this season. Enter the splitter.

9 begins into his 2025 marketing campaign, Eovaldi is throwing his splitter 29% of the time. It’s not a distinct segment pitch to interrupt out in late counts in opposition to opposite-handed hitters; Eovaldi is throwing the splitter to everybody in mainly each depend. That works for him on two ranges. First, it’s an excellent pitch by the specs. At 87 mph and practically an inch of (non-gravity-induced) drop, that form has an enviable mixture of pace and depth. The beneficiant utilization additionally factors to a different ingredient of Eovaldi’s success — his means to be a pitch kind random quantity generator.

To quantify this random quantity generator ability, I calculated one thing known as the Shannon entropy for pitch varieties thrown in early counts. If the likelihood of one thing taking place is x, the Shannon entropy is mainly 1/x, or the inverse of likelihood. (The maths is a bit more difficult than that, as this wonderful explainer video will get into. Conceptually, it’s shut sufficient.) If Eovaldi had been to throw solely fastballs in early counts, his Shannon entropy would equal one. Something above that determine factors at extra randomness within the pitch choice.

Once I wrote about Spencer Schwellenbach earlier this yr, I famous his tendency to throw any pitch in any depend. Schwellenbach throws six pitches, which helps. By the entropy rankings, most of those many-pitched fellows prime the listing of highest pitch kind entropy in early counts. (Lugo, no shock, sits on the prime.)

However amongst pitchers with simply 4 pitches of their arsenal, Eovaldi is a stand out, posting one of many highest entropy scores for anybody in his cohort. To hitters from either side of the plate, Eovaldi will drop any pitch in any depend:

Along with the four-seam fastball and the splitter, Eovaldi throws a curveball and a cutter; the motion profiles of each are knowledgeable by his pronation tendencies. As a result of Eovaldi can’t actually spin the ball, the cutter truly averages a half-inch of arm-side motion, however it works as an efficient bridge pitch, filling out the center of his pitch plot. With a purpose to throw a breaking ball, he should sacrifice important velocity, which explains the form and pace of his curveball, an enormous looper averaging 76 mph:

These 4 pitches produce the pitch plot seen above. Regardless that it’s simply 4 pitches, a pittance by fashionable requirements, he nonetheless stands out in Baseball Prospectus’ arsenal metrics, rating within the 88th percentile by motion unfold and 93rd percentile by velocity unfold. As Stephen Sutton-Brown discovered when creating these metrics, huge spreads in motion and velocity in a pitcher’s arsenal mess with hitter timing, serving to pitchers like Eovaldi carry out above the standard of their stuff.

Armed with a nasty splitter, a various arsenal, and the power to throw all pitches in all contexts, Eovaldi ties it along with chic command. His stroll charge is elite, at the moment the bottom amongst all certified starters. He locates practically each splitter both on the backside of the zone for a strike or simply beneath for chase. His curveball lives proper off the periphery. He zones his fastball over 60% of the time, rating within the prime quartile of pitchers with a minimum of 100 fastballs thrown, per Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboards.

In comparison with his friends on the prime of the WAR leaderboards — Hunter Brown and Tarik Skubal, to call a pair — Eovaldi is missing in flash. There’s virtually definitely regression coming, notably in his residence run charge, given how a lot he’s residing across the zone with mediocre stuff. Nevertheless it have to be admired how Eovaldi is extracting essentially the most from his ability set. Can’t spin the ball? Make the splitter your main pitch. Lack velocity? Flip that right into a energy. Crummy fastball? Conceal it. Given a pair of lumpy lemons, Eovaldi is popping them right into a scrumptious lemonade.