Few know the torment of deep World Series pitching expeditions quite like Nathan Eovaldi.
Before the Rangers right-hander gutted through six dicey innings, one year ago today, to clinch the franchise’s first championship, he did masterful work for the Red Sox in the wee hours of 2018 World Series Game 3 that went unrewarded, if not unnoticed. Eovaldi’s six frames of impromptu extra-innings relief, which ended with the Dodgers’ Max Muncy belting a walk-off homer, brought teammate Rick Porcello to tears.
“He literally gave everything he had on every single pitch,” Porcello told reporters after that loss, which bothered Eovaldi even as he reached for redemption in 2023, “and it was special.”
It was incongruous. A heroic effort torn asunder by the postseason pressure cooker that compresses the stakes of a whole month into one pitch and the forces in the air around it.
For the second straight year, the World Series ended after an ace took a no-hitter into the fifth or beyond, and with that ace on the vanquished, humbled side. Just as the Rangers eventually dented, then broke the Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen in Game 5 last year, the Dodgers managed to seep through the cracks of Gerrit Cole’s nearly airtight performance on Wednesday night and sink the Yankees in the process.
With 26 2/3 innings of work in the Fall Classic under his belt, third among active pitchers, Cole has a 2.36 ERA and no rings to show for it. The latest gut punch left him repeating that familiar phrase, the one that doesn’t seem to mean much in October.
“I gave it everything I had,” Cole said afterward. “I’ll be frustrated—like, every time you have a tough loss, you use it to motivate you. But it’s all out there. There’s nothing a whole lot more that I could do.
“I gave it everything I had.”
In the World Series, every inning is a miracle, not to mention a threat.
The mound froths with danger, a topsy-turvy crucible where immediacy strips away the backing of all logic and history. Dominance can be foreboding, fastballs can be changeups, down can look like up. Those who withstand its tests the longest wind up divided into the heralded cowboys and hard-luck losers of baseball lore.
Sometimes, a pitcher occupies both archetypes, or transforms from one to the other. Eovaldi’s journey has mingled with modern conditions that make World Series glory even more slippery to grab.
Prominent starters throwing the final pitch of key games is now about as common as an ace facing the batting order three times. When Eovaldi clawed his way through 27 Arizona batters in Game 5 last season, he became the first pitcher to make three complete trips through the lineup in the World Series since Stephen Strasburg in 2019. Cole eclipsed Eovaldi by facing 30 batters on Wednesday, a phenomenal outing in every sense except one: the disastrous, error-laden fifth inning—including a miscue by pitcher himself—during which the Yankees squandered a five-run lead and left the Dodgers in striking position the moment Cole departed.
The flashpoints created when the 2015 Mets left Matt Harvey in, or when the 2020 Rays took Blake Snell out, now feel quaint, and not because one way has become conventional wisdom. Insead, the sport’s annual trials at solving the problem only reinforce the utter lack of a right answer.
In the past 10 seasons, only nine starters have completed that third time through in a World Series game. Their teams are 3-6 in those games. In the previous 10 seasons (2005 to 2014), 34 pitchers did it; their teams went 24-10. The Dodgers, who once put Eovaldi through the crushing deflation they had watched Clayton Kershaw experience, won the 2024 title without a fourth starter. Beyond that, they won it without any hurler logging even seven innings in the World Series. Not seven innings in a game, mind you—in the entire series.
Whatever illusion still existed of the rotation workhorse is thoroughly shattered. In October, the game is galloping and bucking. The pitchers are just trying to hold on.
It’s easy to feel this as a loss, as another blow landed to undercut the starting pitcher’s status in the sport. But the reality is something messier. The feat of staying on the mound for six or seven innings, of facing Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman a third or fourth time, has not necessarily gotten more perilous so much as the danger has become more universally acknowledged.
There’s the times-through-the-order penalty, viscerally apparent in the numbers. There’s the familiarity penalty. And there’s the rigor of throwing 98 mph and twirling sharp sliders, over and over, after a season of repetitions. When Eovaldi and Cole gave it everything they had, it wasn’t in the token 110 percent corporate-speak way. It was in the physical tendon and ligament and bone way.
Even with the origin story of hailing from Nolan Ryan’s hometown, Eovaldi joined the Rangers expressly because Ryan’s 300-inning years and era-spanning longevity were stamped out by the velocity and spin it requires to get outs in the major leagues. He was the extra arm for when the other arms got hurt, and more reinforcements would be needed even after that.
Just as Eovaldi was slated to start Game 4 of the 2018 World Series, until he wasn’t, and was never hailed as the leader of the 2023 Rangers staff, until he was, pitchers are in control of their destiny until they aren’t. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts would have been thrilled to send Kershaw or Tyler Glasnow out there to match zeros with Cole. The Yankees probably would have sacrificed untold resources for a fallback plan with the credentials of Walker Buehler, on one day of rest, after two Tommy John surgeries, to alleviate some of the pressure on Cole.
The best performance doesn’t always match that day’s daunting challenge. And the glowing victor is often the one who stepped aside just barely unscathed.
Staying on the mound in the World Series for any amount of time is a daring feat. It takes everything, and in due time, with any luck, it becomes something. Something to be proud of.
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