Nathan Eovaldi Is Making Scrumptious Lemonade

If motor preferences had been the ultimate phrase on pitcher efficiency, Nathan Eovaldi could 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 absolutely 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 provide crummy four-seam fastballs — however they normally don’t have any bother throwing arduous 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 guide. Excessive-slot pronators like Ryan Pepiot or Lucas Giolito don’t have that kind of vary, however make up for it with glorious changeups and high-carry fastballs.

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

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 men like Chris Sale, Nick Lodolo, and Tayler Scott to point out 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 method of erasing form issues. However Eovaldi is now 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 — one way or the other — 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 via 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 bought. 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 all the time so split-happy. As just lately as 2021, the splitter was his fourth-most-used pitch, relegated largely to late-count responsibility towards lefties. Eovaldi sat 97 on the heater then, even operating it as much as triple digits when he actually wanted it. The arm velocity of his prime years allowed his slider to play regardless of its so-so form, giving him a powerful out pitch towards right-handed hitters.

As velocity loss set in, Eovaldi was pressured 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 basically deserted it, throwing simply 12 sliders whole to date this season. Enter the splitter.

9 begins into his 2025 marketing campaign, Eovaldi is throwing his splitter 29% of the time. It’s now not a distinct segment pitch to interrupt out in late counts towards 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 amazing pitch by the specs. At 87 mph and practically an inch of (non-gravity-induced) drop, that form has an enviable mixture of velocity and depth. The beneficiant utilization additionally factors to a different factor of Eovaldi’s success — his capability to be a pitch sort random quantity generator.

To quantify this random quantity generator talent, I calculated one thing referred to as the Shannon entropy for pitch varieties thrown in early counts. If the likelihood of one thing occurring 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 glorious 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.

After 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 high the record of highest pitch sort entropy in early counts. (Lugo, no shock, sits on the high.)

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 really averages a half-inch of arm-side motion, nevertheless 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 velocity of his curveball, an enormous looper averaging 76 mph:

These 4 pitches produce the pitch plot seen above. Although 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, broad 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 elegant command. His stroll charge is elite, presently the bottom amongst all certified starters. He locates practically each splitter both on the backside of the zone for a strike or simply under for chase. His curveball lives proper off the periphery. He zones his fastball over 60% of the time, rating within the high quartile of pitchers with not less than 100 fastballs thrown, per Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboards.

In comparison with his friends on the high of the WAR leaderboards — Hunter Brown and Tarik Skubal, to call a pair — Eovaldi is missing in flash. There’s virtually definitely regression coming, significantly in his residence run charge, given how a lot he’s residing across the zone with mediocre stuff. However it should be admired how Eovaldi is extracting essentially the most from his talent set. Can’t spin the ball? Make the splitter your major 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.