Nathan Eovaldi’s career season is likely done.
Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young told reporters on Tuesday that Eovaldi has a rotator cuff strain that will likely end his season.
The news is a blow to the Rangers as they fight to stay in the playoff hunt. Texas (66-67) is seven games behind the first-place Houston Astros in the AL West and 5.5 games behind the Seattle Mariners for the American League’s final wild-card berth.
Eovaldi’s standout season at 35 years old
It also means the likely conclusion to an exceptional age-35 season for Eovaldi. In 22 starts, Eovaldi boasts a 1.73 ERA and 0.854 WHIP with 129 strikeouts and 21 walks in 130 innings pitched. His ERA and WHIP are career bests by a significant margin.
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In 10 previous seasons with 100-plus innings pitched, Eovaldi’s best ERA was 3.39 (2013) and his best WHIP was 1.107 (2024). He has a career ERA of 3.89 and career WHIP of 1.249 in 13-plus MLB seasons.
Eovaldi’s ERA would lead MLB if he’d thrown enough innings to qualify. Eovaldi briefly took the official ERA lead last week when he pitched his 130th inning in Texas’ 130th game. To qualify for the ERA title, a pitcher must have one inning pitched for each game played by his team.
Eovaldi missed most of June with a triceps injury. He’d since returned to pitch nine games before the news of his rotator cuff strain.
Despite his exceptional play, Eovaldi was not selected to play in July’s All-Star Game. Eovaldi has twice been named in All-Star before. But his effort did place him in the Cy Young conversation. As of last week, Eovaldi had the fourth-shortest odds (+5000) to win the AL Cy Young, well behind odds-on favorite Tarik Skubal (-165).
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