{"id":99224,"date":"2025-08-26T21:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/99224\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:24:07","slug":"nathan-eovaldi-suffers-season-ending-rotator-cuff-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/99224\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan Eovaldi Suffers Season-Ending Rotator Cuff Strain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Eovaldi<\/a> has a rotator cuff strain and is likely done for the season. President of baseball operations Chris Young relayed the news to reporters, including Kennedi Landry of MLB.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The All-Star righty had been listed as the probable starter for tomorrow\u2019s game against the Angels. There was no previous indication he was dealing with an injury. Eovaldi had reeled off seven innings of one-run ball with nine strikeouts against the Guardians on Friday. It\u2019s not clear whether he pitched through discomfort toward the end of that appearance or suffered the injury during a between starts throwing session. In either case, he\u2019s headed for the injured list.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest blow in a Rangers season that has unraveled. They bought at the deadline. They\u2019d played at a 16-9 pace in July to pull within a few games of a Wild Card spot. Their impressive run differential and seemingly positive trend convinced the front office to push in prospect capital for Merrill Kelly<\/a>,\u00a0Phil Maton<\/a> and\u00a0Danny Coulombe<\/a>. They\u2019ve followed up with their worst month of the season.<\/p>\n

Texas has played at a 9-14 pace in August to fall below .500. They swept Cleveland over the weekend, more or less driving a nail into the Guardians\u2019 season, but were shut out in last night\u2019s series opener against the Angels. They\u2019ve also lost\u00a0Evan Carter<\/a> (wrist fracture),\u00a0Marcus Semien<\/a> (foot fracture) and Eovaldi to what may all be season-ending injuries. Overcoming those hits to erase a 5.5 game postseason deficit in the final month seems very unlikely.<\/p>\n

Eovaldi has had a brilliant year when healthy. He carries a career-best 1.73 earned run average while working nearly six inning per start. He has earned a quality start in 14 of his 22 appearances. Eovaldi has fanned 26% of batters faced while showing his typical elite command. The only black marks \u00a0have been injuries. He was limited to one appearance in June by elbow inflammation and will miss all of September with the shoulder issue. Eovaldi has turned in a 2.67 ERA or better in every other month.<\/p>\n

This was the first season of his three-year, $75MM contract. Texas has both Eovaldi and\u00a0Jacob deGrom<\/a> signed for another two guaranteed years. They\u2019ll go into next season with as much upside as any 1-2 punch in MLB. With both pitchers in their mid-late 30s, however, it\u2019s difficult to count on them to stay healthy. That makes it all the more disappointing that the Rangers have seemingly squandered a season of fantastic production from both veterans.<\/p>\n

Eovaldi\u2019s injury comes a few days before the Rangers need to decide whether to wave the white flag and place a number of players on waivers. They could try to dump the salaries of a handful of players (Merrill Kelly<\/a>, most notably) in an effort to get below the $241MM luxury tax line. Players need to be in an organization by September 1 in order to be playoff eligible, so they\u2019d be much likelier to get claimed if their waivers resolve before the end of August. Waivers take 48 hours to process, meaning players need to land on the wire no later than Friday to be playoff eligible with a claiming team. Texas plays two more against the Angels and is off on Thursday before making that call.<\/p>\n

Patrick Corbin<\/a> takes the mound opposite\u00a0Yusei Kikuchi<\/a> tonight. They\u2019ll probably run a spot starter or bullpen game tomorrow.\u00a0Kumar Rocker<\/a> is on optional assignment but hasn\u2019t pitched in a Triple-A game in nearly three weeks as he irons out mechanical issues.\u00a0Caleb Boushley<\/a> pitched 2 2\/3 frames in the minors on Sunday. That essentially leaves long man\u00a0Jacob Latz<\/a>, who last pitched on Wednesday, as the only option on the 40-man roster for a spot start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Eovaldi has a rotator cuff strain and is likely done for the season. President of baseball operations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,2224,82],"class_list":["post-99224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-eovaldi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}