Eovaldi's historic walkless streak ends in mixed outing

ARLINGTON -- The full-count pitch to the second batter of the game Sunday was clearly outside, but the crowd at Globe Life Field voiced a loud collective grumble anyway after it was called a ball. Perhaps many in attendance were simply unaccustomed to seeing Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi walking someone because he hadn’t done so in such a long time.

Even a superfan who watched every pitch Eovaldi threw in July didn’t see him issue a free pass. To be exact, Eovaldi’s streak ended at 167 batters faced and 43 1/3 innings -- both franchise records -- before he walked Masataka Yoshida after recording the first out of the Rangers’ 7-2 loss to the Red Sox.

The rare base on balls foreshadowed an inconsistent outing for Eovaldi, who allowed five earned runs on seven hits in five-plus innings, including two home runs. He struck out seven.

In two-strike counts, Eovaldi missed with fastballs above the strike zone five times, enough that both he and manager Bruce Bochy specifically mentioned the two-strike misfires after the game.

“I felt like my splitter was really, really good today, I relied on it a lot, but I can’t go out there and throw it every time, right?” Eovaldi said. “I would use it, get ahead 0-2 or 1-2, and then try to execute a good fastball up and in, up and away, and it was just too high. I’d reset the count and then I have to come back and really make a good pitch, and I wasn’t able to do that.”

Eovaldi kept the Rangers in the game, for the most part, but the last two runs he was charged with scored when rookie Walter Pennington, who relieved Eovaldi in the sixth, surrendered a three-run home run to Wilyer Abreu.

Eovaldi “had good stuff,” Bochy said. “His velocity was good, everything was good ... they’re good hitters over there and they found a way to get some runs and we gave up two of his runs.”

After Eovaldi’s last strikeout in the fifth inning, three of the final five batters he faced reached base and scored. Eovaldi surrendered a solo homer to Jarren Duran in the fifth and allowed a single and a double to Rafael Devers and Connor Wong to start the sixth. By the time Eovaldi came out for the sixth inning, he had already thrown 90 pitches.

Nine pitches and two hits later, Eovaldi was lifted for Pennington, making his second MLB appearance after he pitched two-thirds of an inning in his debut last month for the Royals. The Rangers acquired him in a trade for Michael Lorenzen last week.

Abreu greeted Pennington with a Statcast-projected 430-foot homer that extended Boston’s lead to 6-2.

“Put the kid [Pennington] in a tough situation, no getting around it -- [runners on] second and third with nobody out,” Bochy said. “He was the freshest arm at that point, with a lefty-on-lefty matchup.”

That closed the book on Eovaldi, who gave up five earned runs or more for only the fourth time in 20 starts this season.

Though his first August outing was a relative dud, Eovaldi was in peak form in six July starts. He was 4-1 with a 3.23 ERA, 32 strikeouts and a .212 batting average against last month. His command of the strike zone was so thorough that he became only the sixth pitcher in the Modern Era (since 1901) to record 30-plus strikeouts and zero walks in a month.

Sunday, the Rangers’ offense didn’t offer much help to Eovaldi, who fell to 8-5 on the season. Corey Seager and Josh Jung each lofted solo homers in the first two innings, but the Rangers managed only one more hit after that.

The Rangers have lost seven of their past nine games, dropping three consecutive series as they tread in third place in the American League West division. They have only 50 regular-season games left to climb back into contention. On Monday, the Rangers will begin a critical series against the second-place Astros.

“They’re all important series at this point,” Bochy said. “At this stage of the season, you’ve got to win ballgames. That’s where it’s at right now.”