New York Yankees Editorial: Is the Nathan Eovaldi Experiment Really Working?

It’s no secret that when the New York Yankees went out and acquired the 25-year old flame throwing Nathan Eovaldi during the offseason, their plan was to have Larry Rothschild tweak his mechanics and take the national league pitcher who allowed the most his in 2014 and turn him into a perennial strikeout machine.

We knew the process was supposed to take some time, but after analyzing the right-handers last few starts, one has to wonder if this plan is ever going to work at all.

Eovaldi did manage to earn a 3-1 record in May, improving his overall record to 4-1 on the season, but six was his not-so-magic number this month. In six starts, Eovaldi failed to give up less than six hits and record more than six strikeouts. He gave up seven hits against the Red Sox earlier in the month and again to the Nationals on May 19th. He gave up 8 hits in a 14-1 victory on Memorial Day over the Kansas City Royals, but his last start is the most alarming. Though the Yankees ultimately came away with a victory, Eovaldi gave up a season-high 11 hits while striking out just two in 4.2 innings pitched. He left the ball game after giving up 3 earned runs on 96 pitches.

When all the dust cleared, and as we turn the calendars over to June, Nathan Eovaldi is again the league leader in hits allowed (76). Interestingly enough, former Yankee pitcher Phil Hughes is right behind him with 75 and tied for third is C.C. Sabathia with 74. Of the the top five pitchers on this list, Eovaldi has the least amount of innings pitched (57.1) by far.

Taking a look at his strikeouts numbers, or lack thereof, after his final start of May, the young right-hander now has just 42 strikeouts in 10 starts so far in 2015, which is good enough for#41 on the 2015 strikeout leader list. Even Dellin Betances has more strikeouts than Eovaldi out of our bullpen (44)!

Following his final start in May, Eovaldi told Brendan Kuty of NJ.com;

“It’s one of the most frustrating things ” Eovaldi said, ” to throw the ball down in the dirt, then it’s middle or just up. I just have to do a better job of executing those pitches. My fastball felt good, I just wasn’t locating very well. When I would get ahead of guys, I wasn’t finishing off the batters. A lot of my offspeed pitches were up and middle. They were putting the ball in play and it felt like they were finding every hole.”

Eovaldi’s comments were in regards to his final start in Oakland, but the aforementioned numbers illustrate that this is becoming a prolonged problem.

His next scheduled start should come on Friday June 5th when the Yankees open up a three-game weekend series out in Anaheim against Mike Trout and the Halo’s. Let’s see if June will be a better month in the development of Nathan Eovaldi.

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