OAKLAND — Baseball, with all its oddities and weird hops and randomness over the course of a 162-game regular season, can and often will provide something different each night. Good luck finding one outing that directly mirrors another.
Lately — or, at least, every fifth day — it’s been a lot of the same at Texas Rangers games. For a good reason, too. Consider these all questions that various members of the Rangers’ organization have had to answer more than a few times in the last week alone:
Another sterling outing for starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi, huh?
“It’s just been fun to watch the man work out there,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said.
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Have you, Nathan, made any changes to bring this all on?
“I think it’s more [about] sharpening everything,” Eovaldi said.
What’s the view like from behind home plate during this stretch?
“It’s really fun,” Rangers catcher Jonah Heim said.
Nasty Nate, against the Oakland Athletics on Thursday at the Oakland Coliseum, did it again.
Eovaldi pitched eight and two-thirds scoreless innings in a 4-0 win over the Athletics — his third consecutive start of eight innings or longer — and extended his consecutive scoreless innings streak to 28.2, the longest such stretch in MLB this season. Arizona Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen’s previous league-best streak of 28 consecutive scoreless innings was, ironically, snapped by the Rangers on May 2. Because, as seen on Thursday night, this offense can figure a guy out. More on that later.
Eovaldi’s streak began with a complete game shutout vs. the New York Yankees on April 29. He followed that with eight shutout innings against the Los Angeles Angels on May 6. The 33-year old Alvin native struck out a career-high 12 batters on Thursday, including six in a row from the fourth-to-sixth innings. He gave up just three hits — one in the fourth, one in the seventh and another in the ninth — and walked just one.
Over the course of his scoreless streak, Eovaldi has struck out 25 batters, given up 14 hits and walked just four. Since 1976, only two other Rangers pitchers have totaled at least 25 innings pitched, at least 25 strikeouts and three walks or fewer over a three-start span: Nolan Ryan (1990) and Cliff Lee (2010). Dallas native Clayton Kershaw, in 2015, was the last MLB pitcher to record such a stretch. A lefty hasn’t done so since Houston’s Roy Oswalt in 2008.
Nasty, indeed.
“I think we’re at that point of the season where spring training is over and I’ve really settled into my mechanics,” Eovaldi said. “I feel like we’ve got a really good game plan going out there, and [pitching coach] Mike [Maddux] has done a really good job of preparing us with the scouting report coming in facing these guys.”
Eovaldi faced the minimum through six and two-third innings thanks in part to the arm of Heim. Oakland’s Shea Langeliers struck out in the second inning but reached first on a passed ball. Heim made up for the miscue and threw Langeliers out trying to steal second. Esteury Ruiz — baseball’s stolen base leader — led the fourth inning off with a single, but was also thrown out by Heim trying to snag second.
“The first one was my favorite, because he’s not standing there if I just catch the ball,” Heim said with a laugh. “The second one was nice, [Ruiz] is a good runner.”
Brent Rooker hit a two-out double to right field in the bottom of the seventh — the first time an Oakland runner reached second base all game — but Eovaldi answered with a strikeout of JJ Bleday to end the frame. After a 1-2-3 eighth inning, he started the ninth at 99 pitches and retired two Oakland batters before allowing a double to Ruiz. After a Maddux mound visit, Eovaldi walked Ryan Noda. Rangers manager Bruce Bochy pulled Eovaldi at 113 pitches, and closer Will Smith struck out Rooker to end the game and earn his seventh save of the year.
“We had to help him a little bit at the end, but don’t want to overtax him, either,” Bochy said.
Eovaldi, whom the Rangers signed to a two-year, $34 million deal in December, now has a 2.70 ERA in eight starts for Texas. And in the context of this season, he hasn’t allowed an earned run since the Rangers placed ace Jacob deGrom on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation.
“It is funny,” Bochy said. ‘how when Jake went down, he went up.”
And none of it is exactly a surprise to the veteran manager.
“I’ve seen him from the other side, and he just has great stuff,” Bochy said. “And then you throw the fact that he’s just such a great competitor in there. He’ll throw any pitch any time — he’s got the slider, he’s got the curveball, he’s got the splitter. It doesn’t matter what the count is, and he commands the fastball so well.”
On pitches: 52% of Eovaldi’s were fastballs, a increase of his 32.4% season average for the pitch. He threw 54 of them, peaked at 98.3 miles per hour (his fastest pitch thrown this season) and still had enough juice to hit 96.1 mph on a ninth-inning called strikeout of Nick Allen. He threw his splitter 30 times, too, and elicited a swing-and-miss on 12 of them.
“Today I had a really good feel for my splitter right out of the gate,” Eovaldi said. “So we just kept kind of going with that.”
Back to the Rangers’ bats. Texas was no-hit by Oakland starter Luis Medina through 3.2 innings, and outside of a Nathaniel Lowe triple in the fourth, couldn’t quite get a handle on the 24-year-old righthander who brought his best stuff against the American League West leaders.
Until they did. Josh Jung led off the fifth with a single and scored two at bats later on another from Leody Taveras. Marcus Semien hit his seventh home run of the year to left field in the sixth, and Robbie Grossman (double) scored on a wild pitch later in the frame to make it 3-0. Heim doubled in the seventh inning and came around to score after pinch hitter Sam Huff grounded into a run-scoring fielder’s choice.
The Rangers recorded five hits off of Medina — three on a batter’s second trip to the plate, and two on their third.
“I think, with this offense, you might get us out the first time,” Heim said. “But we’re going to come back, make an adjustment and we’re going to come hit it hard the second and third time.”
And with Eovaldi on the mound? They’ve got some time to figure it out.
On Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn
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Nathan Eovaldi on cruise control, extends scoreless streak to lift Rangers over Athletics
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