PAWTUCKET – The savior of the Boston Red Sox pitching staff made a quick, impressive stop at McCoy Stadium Thursday afternoon.
Now it’s on to Baltimore.
That’s the plan anyways after Nathan Eovaldi, he of the big, new contract and the balky elbow, tossed 19 pitches in one, clean inning for the PawSox. In his first appearance since April 17.
Eovaldi struck out three whiffers from the Louisville Bats. His fastball popped the Triple-A radar gun at 98 miles an hour and the knee-buckling curve ball he ended his outing with for a third strikeout was a doozy.
“I felt really good,” Eovaldi said. “My fastball felt good. Cutter felt good. I didn’t throw any splits (finger fastballs) today but I threw two curve balls and they felt really good coming out of the hand.”
Eovaldi doesn’t get the final call on when he’ll return to Boston’s pitching staff. That’s manager Alex Cora’s call. He said the team will bring the big man along on a weekend trip to Baltimore, see how he feels Friday and then make a decision.
“I feel like I’ve gone through all the tests that I possibly can so I feel like I’m ready to go,” Eovaldi said. “I’ll mainly use tomorrow as a recovery day and be ready to go Saturday or Sunday.”
It’s next to impossible to weigh how close Eovaldi is to top form just looking at rehab outings like this visit to McCoy. The lowly Bats don’t have many major league-looking players, after all, but then again neither do the Orioles. But the Red Sox coaching staff has watched him like a hawk for weeks now and feels he’s close and a potential elixir for a shaky bullpen.
Eovaldi oddly didn’t discuss his 19-pitch cameo with the handful of press watching at McCoy.
The Red Sox made his wishes clear several hours before he took the mound that he’d talk after he made a fast break up Route 95 and back to Fenway Park, which is out of the ordinary.
Everyone from David Ortiz, Oil Can Boyd, Jon Lester, Dustin Pedroia and countless others take their laps with the PawSox, buy the clubhouse some Capital Grille food and speak to the press.
Not Nathan. The scene brought back memories of other Sox stars who flashed their juvenile sides in pit stops at McCoy. Infielder Mark Bellhorn once played a few innings, left the game and proceeded to stall in the clubhouse while a fleet of cameras and notebooks awaited outside. He then snuck out a side door.
The all-time getaway caper came from often petulant hurler Josh Beckett. He once threw a few innings and soon after a large contingent of Providence and Boston press and TV types assembled for an expected quick interview. Instead of obliging, Beckett made a bee line for the same side door and his Monster Truck.
But Beckett was no Harry Houdini when it came to a disappearing act. When word got out, a conga line of overweight camera men and scribes stumbled into the parking lot and nearly cornered the big Texan’s wheels before he tore out of town.
No one wants to see Eovaldi back at McCoy this season. That would mean problems and right now the Red Sox need him to switch from a problem to a problem-solver. Although the Sox saw Eovaldi as a starter when they showered a four-year, $68 million contract on him in the offseason, now he’s an answer to myriad pitching problems. They feel he’s best suited to firm up the pen and not slot him back into a shaky starting rotation.
“It’s very significant,” Cora said of Eovaldi’s return. “It’s one more arm and there are a few guys who are throwing the ball well, too. You’ve got (Brandon) Workman and (Matt) Barnes throwing the ball better. You’ve got Nathan. It’s kind of like the domino effect. One more guy is going to help us get through the previous inning and the previous inning.”
It’ll be interesting to see how smoothly Eovaldi settles into one inning relief work. Only eight of his 160 major league appearances have come out of the pen but Red Sox fans only recall the four relief stints he made in the 2018 World Series run. Most notably was the incredible, heroic six-plus inning stretch in a Game 3 loss at the Dodgers.
Up at Fenway, Eovaldi admitted that a reliever’s life is very different than that of a starter. “Just throwing every day, being ready to go every day. I feel like I’ve been trying to do that now and trying to get my mind ready for it,” he said.
Is he capable of shut-down innings where his high 90’s fastball and knee-buckling curve combine to mow through lineups? For sure. Is that the role that sparks the Red Sox on some sort of second half magic carpet ride back into the A.L. East race and into the postseason?
We shall see.