One year removed from surgery, Nathan Eovaldi not only bounced back with his performance, he contributed to the Red Sox run to the World Championship. Between Tampa Bay and Boston, Eovaldi made 22 appearances (21 starts) in the regular season winning six of his 13 decisions. However, Eovaldi did record a 3.81 ERA, 3.67 xFIP and 1.13 WHIP over his 111 innings with 101 strikeouts against only 20 walks.

Eovaldi finished with career bests in strikeout percentage (22.2 percent), strikeouts minus walks percent (17.8) and WHIP. He also upped his swinging strike percentage to 10.7 percent compared to 9.3 percent in 2016. Plus, Eovaldi limited traffic on the bases with a 4.4 percent walk rate in the majors.

In the postseason, Eovaldi surged making two starts of his six outings with two wins, two holds, a 1.61 ERA and 16 strikeouts against three walks over 22.1 innings. He also held hitters to a .185 batting average against (15-for-81) in the playoffs. Adding his postseason innings to his season total gives Eovaldi 133.1 innings last season which provides hope to his prospective owners for raising his total between 150-to-160 in the year ahead. However, paying for more than this with a chance for another playoff appearance could be a mistake.

Part of Eovaldi’s success occurred in refining his arsenal. He dropped his change-up and sinker from 2016 along with altering his usage patterns last year. For starters, here’s his arsenal in plot maps courtesy of Statcast:

Elevating his fastball fueled his success last season working more often in the top of or above the strike zone to set up his split-finger and slider which dive below it as evidenced in his zone profiles:

Plus, there’s room for improvement if Eovaldi throws more split-fingers and sliders in 2019:

Owning three different pitches which generated a strikeout percentage above 20 percent benefits Eovaldi going forward. Health and effectiveness make him tough to trust. He’s only logged more than 150 innings twice in his career. Entering his Age-29 season, this needs to be in the back of fantasy owner’s thought processes.

Before trying to assess his projections, Eovaldi’s xSTATS do support last year’s breakout. His bbFIP of 3.58 compared to his 3.67 xFIP set a nice baseline of hope for his ERA in the year ahead. Plus, using the data on xSTATS, Eovaldi finished last year with a 1.18 expected WHIP when adding his expected hits to his walks.

There’s going to be migration to the mean, so knowing how his ratios could shift helps to set a baseline. With this in mind, here’s Eovaldi’s projections from four different sites:

If Eovaldi stays effective pitching up in the strike zone with his four-seam fastball and can bury his complimentary pitches, he can carry over his success. Especially if he ramps up the split-finger and slider usage with health. However, herein lies the rub of how many innings Eovaldi will be able to complete in 2019. At his present price point he is the 176th player taken in NFBC Draft Champion 15-team leagues sandwiched between Kyle Freeland and Dallas Keuchel . With this in mind, he’s a worthy upside play as a fourth or fifth starting pitcher in fantasy.

Invest with eyes wide open, but Eovaldi could reach his THE BAT projection if everything breaks right with his predictive statistics from last season.

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Statistical Credits:

Fangraphs.com

BaseballSavant.com

xSTATS.com

THE BAT courtesy of Derek Carty

ATC courtesy of Ariel Cohen

Steamerprojections.com

ZiPS courtesy of Dan Szymborski

MLB.com