Can Nathan Eovaldi become Rangers’ first Cy Young winner? Here’s how his case stacks up

Sorry, we’re a little new to this whole deal, this thing you call the Cy Young Award race. The Rangers have only been around 54 years — 65 if you include their days in Washington — and are still looking for their first Cy Young Award winner.

Only they and the Colorado Rockies, who, first of all, play in Colorado, and, secondly, are 35 years younger as an organization have never produced a Cy Young winner.

Oh, Ferguson Jenkins was close in 1974, getting edged by Oakland’s Catfish Hunter. And Yu Darvish was also a runner-up in 2013, based mostly on leading the league in strikeouts. Other than that — what do you know — a team never known for its pitching hasn’t won baseball’s biggest pitching award.

That could finally change.

Rangers

Nathan Eovaldi, who makes his 20th start of the season Monday, has burst into contention with a historically low ERA and a knack for winning when the Rangers absolutely need it. More than two-thirds of the way through the season, he might be the best candidate the Rangers have ever had. Still might not be a favorite, though. It’s going to be hard to beat incumbent Tarik Skubal of Detroit, but with 40 games left, it is a race.

At least it’s close enough to look at the obstacles and assets in Eovaldi’s case:

Obstacles Innings

This may be the biggest obstacle for Eovaldi. Missing a month cost him four or five starts and the equivalent of about 30 innings of work. And he is hopelessly behind the leaders. With 111 innings to date, he doesn’t even technically rank among the league qualifiers for the ERA title as that is based on a pitcher having one inning per team game and 162 for the season. He’ll make his next start eight innings shy of qualifying. By contrast, reigning Cy Young winner Skubal, perhaps the favorite, and Garrett Crochet each have over 140 innings. And while their ERAs aren’t historic, they did enter the weekend ranked 1-2 in the AL among qualifiers. That said, Skubal, at 2.18, was eight-tenths of a run worse than Eovaldi. Crochet was at 2.24.

At his current pace, Eovaldi, who is averaging just under six innings per start, will get maybe nine more starts. If he averages six innings per outing, it would carry him to 165. That would put voters to a real test. Not including relievers, the lowest innings pitched total for a winning pitcher in a 162-game season: Corbin Burnes with 167 for Milwaukee in 2021. He and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler, who led the NL in innings pitched, each got 12 first-place votes, but Burnes won on down-ballot votes 151-141.

Also we should note that Rick Sutcliffe won the 1984 NL Cy Young with only 150 innings. But that was only 150 innings for the Cubs. He began the season with Cleveland, pitched 94 innings there and was then traded. At that point, stats were kept separate by leagues.

Strikeouts

Innings are important, but strikeouts are sexy. Since 2000, as strikeouts have proliferated, there’s been only one case of a starter winning the award in a 162-game season with fewer than 200 innings and fewer than 200 strikeouts. Justin Verlander had 185 strikeouts in 175 innings in 2022. Verlander averaged 9.5 strikeouts per nine innings. Eovaldi goes into his start against Arizona averaging exactly nine strikeouts per nine innings.

Verlander had an intangible going for him in the 2022 race: The old guy factor. Everybody loves when an old warrior has a last hurrah. Verlander, Early Wynn (1959) and Gaylord Perry (1978) all won during their age 39 season, essentially tying for second behind Roger Clemens, who pitched at 41 in 2005. For a full season, Eovaldi hasn’t averaged a strikeout per inning pitched since 2021, when he averaged 9.6. Since he came back from injury in late June, Eovaldi is averaging just under a strikeout per inning.

In addition, several of the newer metric indices voters look at tend to favor the importance of strikeouts because, the theory goes, the pitcher has more control over that than balls in play. So it figures into pitching WAR and Fielding-Independent Pitching (FIP). At the moment, Detroit’s Skubal leads the AL at 5.7 WAR, two wins better than Eovaldi. He is also the leader in FIP (1.95) and Expected ERA, the projective stats. Eovaldi will have an uphill battle to win over voters who favor new analytics.

The Hype Train

If your last name starts with “Sk,” you’ve been blessed by the MLB hype train, which can’t get enough of Skubal, last year’s unanimous AL winner, and Paul Skenes, who appears to be the only pitcher throwing in the NL this year based on social media. Having one Cy Young in the bag is always a nice feather in the campaign hat. So is starting the All-Star Game, as Skubal did, though he did allow the NL a pair of runs.

Eovaldi was left off the AL All-Star team this year despite a 1.58 ERA at the break. The omission is looking more and more egregious with every second-half start he dominates. The snub should not penalize Eovaldi, though there hasn’t been an eventual Cy Young winner left off the All-Star team since Boston’s Rick Porcello was snubbed at midseason in 2016.

Much of Eovaldi’s case will rest on ERA. One bad start could send that askew. But, to this point, his ERA is truly historic. Consider the ERA pace. In the “live ball era,” which dates to 1920, there have been only 12 pitchers with at least 100 innings in their first 19 starts (Eovaldi’s total to this point) to post ERAs below 1.50. At 1.38, Eovaldi ranks fifth behind Bob Gibson (1.06) and Luis Tiant (1.27), both in 1968, a year that so favored pitchers, MLB lowered the mound the next year, Zack Greinke (1.30) in 2015 and Vida Blue (1.37) in 1971, a year he won both the Cy Young and MVP.

It’s going to be tough to keep up his level of dominance as innings pile up, but Eovaldi is on pace for a truly historic ERA, which has been a traditional foundation point for Cy Young candidacy.

His control

In addition to strikeouts, FIP relies heavily on acts that don’t involve fielders — walks and homers. Or we should say the lack of walks and homers.

It is why, among pitchers with at least 100 innings, Eovaldi ranks second only to Skubal in FIP in the AL. Skubal is at 1.95; Eovaldi at 2.37. Eovaldi has the fourth-lowest walk rate in the AL (OK, OK, Skubal does rank first) and the lowest homer rate in the league. It’s also why, despite a relatively modest strikeout total, Eovaldi ranks third in the AL in strikeout-to-walk rate at 5.5 to 1. Yes, Skubal leads.

The narrative

Just because there is a narrative about something, doesn’t mean it’s false. Eovaldi is not going to win an award based on career accomplishments. This award will be about 2025, period. But just like Skubal will go into the minds of voters as “Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal,” Eovaldi has created a reputation as a clutch big-game pitcher that dates to the 2018 World Series and includes his legendary run in 2023. The Rangers are 12-7 when he pitches; 48-52 when anybody else starts this year. Being “Big Game Nate,” isn’t going to win him the Cy Young Award, but it can’t hurt.

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