Pittsburgh Pirates trade target profile: Nathan Eovaldi

As part of our Trademas in July series, we’ll take a hard look at potential trade targets for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pittsburgh Pirates seem to be gearing up towards pursuing a controllable starting pitcher. The latest rumors, first reported by the Tribune-Review’s Rob Biertempfel, see the team having already had talks with the New York Yankees for RHP Nathan Eovaldi.

Profile and performance

Eovaldi is a six-year veteran who has spent time with the Dodgers, Marlins and now Yankees. Below are his career statistics:

 

 

The 26-year old has gone through an interesting evolution. He carries a dvierse pitch mix, with a slider, curve and split-finger fastball complimenting his four-seam fastball. For the first three years of his career, Eovaldi threw a changeup, however that has been completely abandoned over the past two years in favor of the splitter. At times in his career he has thrown a cut fastball and sinker, but those too have fallen by the wayside.

The fastball averages 98.09 mph, and has hit the glove as high as 102 at times. Despite the heat, he is closer to average in terms of getting batters to chase. His career swinging strike rate rests at 8.4 percent, a tick below the accepted average of 9.5. In a pitch-by-pitch basis, the fastball carries just a 7.71 whiff percentage, far behind the 10.20 from the slider and the 17.17 percent rate enjoyed by the split finger.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]Eovaldi is a six-year veteran who has spent time with the Dodgers, Marlins and now Yankees.[/perfectpullquote]

In this way, Eovaldi clearly still has some work to do to refine how his pitches play together. In two strike counts, the split finger and four seam are used equally, despite the splitter’s clear edge in effectiveness. The lack of cohesion in his pitches results in a low K/9 of 6.6 for his career.

Should Eovaldi find his way to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Ray Searage may be able to help him focus on what works. We can perhaps even call this “The J.A. Happ Blueprint,” as paring down Happ’s usage directly led to his second half performance in 2015.

The Pirates have previously been interested in Eovaldi, as the late Tom Singer pointed out back in 2014:

Hearing #Marlins try for Morneau may be falling apart. Could renew Alvarez-Nathan Eovaldi talks. #Pirates #MLB

— Tom Singer (@Tom_Singer) December 11, 2014

The case for Eovaldi

• Eovaldi can bring the heat, and the ability to flirt with 100mph is something every team lusts after. As currently constructed, the Pittsburgh Pirates have many guys with high-90s stuff but only Gerrit Cole has shown an ability to hit triple digits. While velocity isn’t everything, it certainly helps.
• Eovaldi’s pitch selection lends itself well to a bullpen role, should the Pirates decide he could help them there. The right hander has some relief appearances sprinkled in throughout his career.
• With one more year of arbitration control, Eovaldi could be a great one-year solution to allow the second tier of starting pitching prospects – Steven Brault and Nick Kingham – another year of seasoning.

The case against Eovaldi

• It’s hard to fathom how someone with such velocity can have such a low strikeout rate, but the simple fact is that Eovaldi just doens’t miss many batters.
• The 26 year-old is allowing 1.7 home runs per nine innings this year. This is an alarming uptick for someone who has been pretty stout in keeping the ball in the park. For the first time in his career, Eovaldi’s FIP lines up with his ERA, perhaps showing that this uptick is not an anomaly.
• If the Pittsburgh Pirates are going to invest in a controllable starting pitcher, is it fair to wonder if there are better options out there?

What it might take

Surprisingly, Eovaldi might be easy to get. The New York Yankees will be famously saddled with the contracts of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez until the 2018 season. As it just so happens, this is also when big names such as Jose Fernandez and Clayton Kershaw will hit the market. The Bronx bombers have done a great job of reshuffling their cards to get their system and their finances right, all in the name of making a big play at the right time.

With that in mind, the Yankees may be interested in taking Jon Niese. With his dual $500,000 buyouts, Niese would be a perfect stopgap to eat innings for a season before better options can be brought in.

Of course, it will take more than just Niese to land a controllable starting pitcher. The Pittsburgh Pirates would almost assuredly need to include a prospect in the deal. As we look over the Yankees pipeline, they have a little bit of everything in their top 30. With no clear and present deficiency, the Pirates may just need to part ways with one of their second tier of position prospects. With his excellent performance at Double-A Altoona, Kevin Newman figures to be untouchable. His Seinfeld counterpart Kevin Kramer might have some value, as would second-tier outfield prospects such as Tito Polo or Barrett Barnes.

Conclusions

Provided that the price isn’t too steep, the Pittsburgh Pirates could certainly do worse than Eovaldi. But, they can also do better. With reports that the team has also scouted Chris Archer and Ervin Santana, there are certainly more accomplished possibilities out there.

Featured Image Credit – Flickr Creative Commons

Pirates Breakdown writer Justin Kosanko contributed to this report.