The Rangers and right-hander Nathan Eovaldi are in agreement on a new contract, according to a report from Robert Murray of FanSided. Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, it’s a three-year contract worth $75MM.
It’s a somewhat shocking contract for the right-hander in a hot pitching market that has exceeded expectations across the board. Eovaldi is the latest pitcher to beat early offseason projections, and his guarantee significant outpaces the two-year, $44MM pact that MLBTR predicted for the righty as part of our annual Top 50 MLB Free Agents list. The fact that the Rangers went to a third year in order to land Eovaldi is particularly noteworthy, as it’s just the third time since 2010 that a pitcher entering his age-35 season or later has landed a guarantee longer than two years according to MLBTR’s Contract Tracker. Rich Hill’s three-year pact with the Dodgers is nearly a decade old at this point, and good a pitcher as Eovaldi is, he’s not a Hall of Fame-caliber talent like Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom before him.
More to come…
