Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 82)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	94	Joe Blanton	2010	5.33
2	91	Rick Porcello	2018	4.56
3	88	Brad Penny	2007	3.25
4	87	Mike Leake	2017	4.50
5	87	Hyun-jin Ryu	2016	11.57
6	87	Kris Medlen	2015	4.63
7	87	Andrew Cashner	2016	5.66
8	86	Matt Morris	2004	5.12
9	86	Mat Latos	2017	6.60
10	86	Steve Rogers	1979	3.51
11	85	Roger Nelson	1973	4.12
12	85	Jose Quintana	2018	4.18
13	85	Odalis Perez	2007	5.83
14	85	Gavin Floyd	2012	4.50
15	84	Bob Rush	1955	3.52
16	84	Billy O'Dell	1962	4.04	DNP
17	84	Kyle Lohse	2008	3.96
18	84	Jordan Zimmermann	2015	3.97
19	84	Frank Viola	1989	3.97
20	83	Jeff Francis	2010	5.26
21	83	Joe Horlen	1967	2.30
22	83	Dave Bush	2009	6.61
23	83	Jon Matlack	1979	4.55
24	83	Larry Jackson	1960	3.89
25	83	Anibal Sanchez	2013	2.77
26	83	Vida Blue	1979	5.43
27	83	Mark Mulder	2007	13.91
28	83	Jimmy Key	1990	4.60
29	83	Dave Goltz	1978	2.94
30	83	Daniel Hudson	2016	5.82
31	83	Wade Miley	2016	5.42
32	83	Frank Sullivan	1959	4.31
33	83	Curt Schilling	1996	3.39
34	83	Mark Gubicza	1992	3.80
35	82	Joel Pineiro	2008	5.39
36	82	Matt Garza	2013	4.23
37	82	Edwin Jackson	2013	5.65
38	82	Carlos Silva	2008	6.69
39	82	Bob Friend	1960	3.17
40	82	Matt Harvey	2018	5.05
41	82	John Lackey	2008	3.91
42	82	Shawn Hill	2010	3.48
43	81	Jeff Weaver	2006	6.12
44	81	Matt Cain	2014	4.68
45	81	Kevin Correia	2010	5.52
46	81	Fritz Peterson	1971	3.48
47	81	Jon Garland	2009	4.68
48	81	Chris Tillman	2017	8.32
49	81	Freddy Garcia	2006	4.83
50	81	Don Drysdale	1966	3.75
51	81	Roy Oswalt	2007	3.40
52	80	Doug Drabek	1992	2.95
53	80	Dick Donovan	1957	3.10
54	80	Gaylord Perry	1968	2.88
55	80	Kevin Millwood	2004	5.17
56	80	Don Sutton	1974	3.62
57	80	Vicente Padilla	2007	6.58
58	80	Yovani Gallardo	2015	3.71
59	80	Waite Hoyt	1929	4.71
60	80	Aaron Harang	2007	3.85
61	80	Danny Duffy	2018	4.99
62	80	Jack Morris	1984	4.04
63	80	Bret Saberhagen	1993	3.55
64	80	John Burkett	1994	4.07
65	80	Andy Messersmith	1975	2.57	DNP
66	80	Ned Garver	1955	4.49
67	80	Odrisamer Despaigne	2016	6.23
68	79	Alex Cobb	2017	3.91
69	79	Mark Buehrle	2008	4.36
70	79	Mike Boddicker	1987	4.54
71	79	Brian Bannister	2010	6.49
72	79	Jason Jennings	2008	8.89
73	79	Chad Billingsley	2014	0.00	DNP
74	79	Gil Meche	2008	4.19
75	79	Chad Bettis	2018	5.39
76	79	Johnny Werts	1927	4.57
77	79	John Smoltz	1996	3.30
78	79	Charles Nagy	1996	3.61
79	79	Dock Ellis	1974	3.62
80	79	Kelly Downs	1990	3.71
81	79	Josh Collmenter	2015	3.94
82	78	Paul Maholm	2011	3.99
83	78	Ted Higuera	1987	4.13
84	78	Doug Fister	2013	3.92
85	78	Brandon McCarthy	2013	4.73
86	78	Jon Niese	2016	5.73
87	78	Rick Reuschel	1978	3.60
88	78	Mike Mussina	1998	3.71
89	78	Bill Hands	1969	3.06
90	78	Dallas Keuchel	2017	3.09
91	77	Bob Ojeda	1987	4.47
92	77	Juan Marichal	1967	3.51
93	77	Masahiro Tanaka	2018	3.92
94	77	Zach McAllister	2017	2.32
95	77	Frank Lary	1959	4.36
96	77	Kyle Gibson	2017	5.30
97	77	Mike Maroth	2007	7.97
98	77	Jim Beattie	1984	3.67
99	77	Joe Kennedy	2008	0.00	DNP
100	77	Sal Maglie	1946	0.00	DNP

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		Nathan Eovaldi will spend the spring trying to show that his second Tommy John surgery didn't rob him of his elite velocity.
2017		A second Tommy John surgery awaits Eovaldi, who partially tore the UCL in his right elbow and tore his flexor tendon off the bone in his right forearm. He’ll likely return in 2018 at age 28, which is troublesome considering he's very much still a work in progress as a starter. During his time with the Yankees, he increased his fastball velocity and added a cutter and splitter to his repertoire. While this equated in more swings outside the zone he still struggled as a starter, and very much earned a disastrous 5.08 ERA in the role. A move to the bullpen late in the season seemed to benefit Eovaldi, who tossed 7.2 scoreless frames as a reliever, and that could be his home when he finally heals.
2016		Eovaldi came to the Yankees as a guy with a reputation for throwing hard but giving up too many hits and failing to live up to his peripherals. He pretty much lived up, or down, to that reputation. The complaint here is that while he has top-notch heat, the secondary stuff just isn't there consistently. To his credit Eovaldi did develop a mightily intriguing splitter that did seem to help him down the stretch. He's old enough to no longer be considered a project, but unfortunately he still has all the characteristics of a project. The sterling 14-3 record might have helped him win friends with some over the course of the year, but frankly if you are reading this it's unlikely you are among them.
2015		Things went pretty well for Eovaldi last year, except when they didn't. The fireballing righty still hasn't found a way to translate his prodigious fastball velocity into strikeouts—he had the fourth-fastest heat but the 70th best K rate among qualified starters—but he has cut down on walks and started leaning more heavily on an improved slider. Throwing just under 200 innings during his age-24 season is a pretty neat trick as well. At the same time, he had a tough time stranding runners due to his lack of swing-and-miss stuff and propensity for pounding the zone. He had the second-lowest left-on-base percentage (66 percent) in baseball and the fourth-most hits allowed (223). He'll battle with Chris Capuano for starts in New York's rotation, which is fitting: They're essentially opposite pitchers who get almost the same results.
2014		It’s one thing to have a powerful fastball, and it’s another to know what to do with it. In 2013, Eovaldi’s average fastball velocity of 97 mph was the best in baseball among starters (barely edging out Gerrit Cole), but his strikeout rate of 17.3 percent was more than 2.5 percentage points below league average. That comes partly from not inducing enough swings outside the strike zone—his 25 percent swing rate on such pitches was fourth-worst in baseball by a starter. On the bright side, he has increased the whiff rate on his slider each year he’s been in the majors, reaching 33 percent in 2013. He might be an average major-league starter even without a grade jump in command, but the potential of his raw stuff has yet to be fulfilled.
2013		Many Marlins fans were disappointed when Eovaldi headlined the return package for Hanley Ramirez, but the former 11th-round pick flashed mid-rotation potential during his second tour of big-league duty. Eovaldi’s command needs work, but his fastball and slider are quality offerings and his changeup is steadily coming along. After enduring his worst month of the season in August, a six-start stretch marred by more walks than strikeouts, Eovaldi bounced back with a much-improved 3.38 K/BB ratio in September, and he will look to build off of that finish while competing for a rotation spot in spring training.
2012		Eovaldi's improved command of his 94-96 mph fastball and the rapid development of a new slider led to the best strikeout rate of his young career, not counting his 10 2/3 innings in rookie ball; just as importantly, he stayed healthy, and by the time he was recalled in early August, he had already thrown more innings than in any of his professional seasons. He delivered three quality starts out of six for the Dodgers, allowing more than two runs just once, before being effectively shut down due to innings concerns. Eovaldi's heavy fastball helps him keep the ball in the park, but he'll need to improve his secondary pitches and trim his walk rate significantly in order to have any staying power.
2011		Nathan Eovaldi, an 11th-round pick in 2008, has a high ceiling thanks to his mid-90s heat, but poor command and a lack of consistency with his breaking pitches have prevented him from turning it into strikeouts thus far. His future may be in the bullpen if he can't expand his arsenal.
2010		Tommy John surgery and a commitment to Texas A&M scared most teams off Nathan Eovaldi, but the Dodgers plucked him in the 11th round in 2008; he can pump his fastball into the mid-90s, but his secondary stuff is a work in progress.

BP Articles

BP Chats

BP Roundtables

PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Nathan Eovaldi has thrown 24,811 pitches that have been tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2011 and 2024, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2024, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (96mph) and Splitter (89mph), also mixing in a Curve (78mph) and Cutter (92mph). He also rarely throws a Slider (87mph).