Nate Eovaldi has gotten a taste of what it is like to be a successful pitcher in the major leagues.
In 2008, the Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the 11th round. His draft stock fell by way of injury and a Tommy John surgery that had caused him to miss the baseball portion of his junior year of high school.
Eovaldi decided to forgo his commitment to Texas A&M on a baseball scholarship and sign a contract with the Dodgers that included a 250K dollar signing bonus.
Eovaldi was sent to the GCL Dodgers, in which he accumulated a 0 win and 1 loss record and appeared in six games.
His next stop was in Ogden, and while playing for the Raptors, he pitched in one game, a total of 2.2 innings. Eovaldi would spend the entire 2009 season in Midland Michigan playing for the Great Lake Loons.
2010 was a minor setback when Eovaldi pitched for the Raptors again. In one game, five
innings, he picked up his only win for the Raptors in his career.
Fast forward nearly two years and Eovaldi was making his major league debut in Los Angeles. On August 6th, 2011, he started his first game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, picking up the win. He pitched five innings, while only allowing two runs and striking out seven. He also hit a single in his first major league at bat and scored a run.
Eovaldi’s seven strikeouts were tied for fourth in Dodgers’ history for a major league debut. He also was only the fourth Dodger pitcher to score a run in his MLB debut since 1960.
After a rocky start to the 2012 season, 1-6 with a 4.15 E.R.A., Eovaldi was traded as a part of a blockbuster deal that sent Hanley Ramirez to the Dodgers while landing Eovaldi in Miami to play for the Marlins.
While playing the rest of the season, Eovaldi went 3-7 with a 4.43 E.R.A. for the Marlins. In 2013, he went 4-6 with a 3.39 E.R.A. In 2014, he went 6-14 with a 4.37, and despite the overall poor performance, he started 33 games and pitched in 199 2/3 innings.
On December 19, 2014, the Marlins traded Eovaldi, along with Garrett Jones and Domingo Germán, to the New York Yankees for Martín Prado and David Phelps.
This brings us to the most successful Eovaldi of his young career. While currently tied for 9th in wins amongst American League starting pitchers, he holds a record of 9-2.
With an E.R.A. of 4.50, Eovaldi’s success is fueled behind the Yankees bats and their persona of the ‘Bronx Bombers.’ The Yankees currently sit in second, as a team with 116 home runs, and 409 runs.
At the All-Star break Eovaldi and the Yankees are three in a half games up on the Toronto Blue Jays in the A.L. East and have a record of 48 wins and 40 losses on the season. The Yankees will take on the Seattle Mariners after the break starting July 17th.
