Nathan Eovaldi's 14-Year Evolution

You know who is having an absolutely bananas season? Texas’ Nathan Eovaldi. It’s barely being noticed because:

He’s dropping jaws now. Eovaldi threw eight shutout innings against the spiraling Yankees Tuesday night — the only hit he allowed all night was a Jeter-esque bloop double by Anthony Volpe. The Rangers have won 12 of Eovaldi’s 19 starts, and his ERA is 1.38.

Yes, that’s right: Nathan Eovaldi has a 1.38 ERA.

Here’s the thing I dig about Eovaldi’s pitching: His calling card was always that high-velocity heat. This is a guy who had his first Tommy John surgery when he was still in high school, his second shortly after that. He threw 100 mph when he wanted, and being brutally honest, it didn’t work all that well for him. In Los Angeles, Miami, New York, he mostly had high ERAs and shockingly low strikeout totals for a power pitcher.

But after that second Tommy John surgery, he adjusted, developed his secondary pitchers, figured out how to get strike three. Check out how the league is hitting against his four pitches, which he will throw on any count and in any situation:

This is just old-fashioned Warren Spahn upsetting timing. It turns out, it still works when you get the order of operations correct. Take Aaron Judge’s first at-bat back after the injury break:

— Eovaldi started him off with the big, slow curve, which Judge swung over.

— Eovaldi came back with the splitter, inside and low, and Judge watched it go by for a ball. But something in the way Judge watched stayed in Evoaldi’s mind.

— Third pitch was a cutter up in the zone, and Judge, looking for something low, fouled it off.

— Fourth pitch, Eovaldi went back to the exact same splitter he threw with Pitch 2, and this Judge swung over it for strike three.

This is just who Eovaldi is right now. All these years of pitching have turned him into a master of the art, and it’s fun to watch. That doesn’t mean he won’t get lit up in his next outing, you never know how it will go, but we are talking about a guy who has not allowed more than one run in a game since late June.

The Sacramento A’s are now officially at that “Wouldn’t it be funny if we led off Shea Langeliers?” phase of the baseball season, so they did that last night against Washington.

“We thought it was a typo or something,” Langeliers said.

And then Langeliers — who, like Ebby Calvin Laloosh, is in desperate need of a nickname — responded with a historic game.

Yes, I do love these statistical gumbo games — and this is the second one the A’s have given us this year (after Nick Kurtz’s six-hit, four-homer masterpiece).

The other two catchers to have 15 total bases in a game are: Cincinnati’s Walker Cooper in 1949 (6-for-7 with three home runs against the Cubbies) and the Giants’ Wes Westrum in 1950 (4-for-4 with three home runs and a triple against the Reds).

By the way, I love Mark Kotsay’s reasoning for hitting Langeliers leadoff: Shea had been hot (hitting .397 with seven home runs in his previous 16 games) and Kotsay thought: “It’s a chance to get us off to a quick start, hopefully.” Like I say, the last place A’s are at that stage of the season where, what the heck, you try stuff, especially against terrible teams like the Nationals.

But the best part is that he made it very clear before the game that this was a one-time deal. “It’s a spot that, you lead off the game once and that’s the last time you lead off,” Kotsay told reporters.

I’ll bet he hits Langeliers leadoff again, probably tonight.

Kyle Schwarber is now leading the National League in home runs — but Schwarb fans will notice something else about this season: He has a combo WAR of 4.1. That is the highest WAR he’s had at any point in his career. It appears he’s doing everything just a little bit better than ever before — he’s been a neutral baserunner, he’s not playing enough outfield to hurt the ballclub, and he’s hitting almost 30 points higher than his career average coming into the season.

Add that to all the bombs and all the walks and you have a legitimate MVP candidate. I mean, he won’t actually WIN the MVP award, but a top-five finish, maybe even a top-three finish, is definitely a possibility.

I bring this up because Brilliant Reader Dan reached out to say that while he actually does like WAR as an analytical tool, he thinks it just misses the boat on a guy like Schwarber, who hits all those home runs and draws all those walks and seems to have the personality that makes him everybody’s favorite teammate.

“Since 2019, Schwarber has 16.1 WAR, OK?” he says. “And since 2019, Mike Yastrzemski has 16.4 WAR. No disrespect to Mike Yastrzemski, he’s a fine player, but would anyone take him over Kyle Schwarber?”

It’s a fair point.

So I looked it up — Schwarber came into the year with 284 homers and 15 bWAR. That’s about 19 times more home runs than wins above replacement … is that the highest in baseball history?

It is not, no, there are actually a bunch of players who hit a bunch of home runs and had very few wins to show for it. I expected the leader to be Dave Kingman, and he’s right near the top with 442 home runs and just 17 WAR (about 26x).

But actually, the king is Mark Reynolds. In his weird and wild career, Reynolds hit 298 home runs. And he had a grand total of 7 WAR — let’s just say that the WAR system of analysis did not play to his strengths, as he was a subpar fielder, subpar baserunner, he didn’t walk much, he hit for low batting averages, and he was a legendary whiffer.

But he sure could mash.

So can Schwarbs — but he’s doing a whole lot more.