During the 2022-23 offseason, then-free-agent righty Nathan Eovaldi inked a two-year, $34MM contract with the Rangers. The contract contained a provision for a vesting player option that would give Eovaldi say over his fate for the 2025 season, provided he stayed largely healthy over the course of the contract’s first two seasons. With a combined 300 innings pitched between 2023-24, Eovaldi gains a player option valued at $20MM for the 2025 campaign. The veteran right-hander’s most recent start brought him to 296 innings between the two seasons combined. He’ll trigger the vesting player option if he completes at least four innings in his next start, which is slated to come tomorrow when the Rangers host the Blue Jays. All but two of Eovaldi’s 26 starts this year have lasted at least four innings.
There’s a strong likelihood that Eovaldi will unlock that option tomorrow versus Toronto. It should be emphasized that he’s not locking himself into that $20MM salary for the 2025 season, however, but rather gaining the choice to exercise that $20MM option or turn it down in favor of a return to the open market. There’s perhaps some extra incentive for Eovaldi to consider the player option, as a Texas native — he was born and raised in the Houston area — but he should also be able to top that $20MM guarantee in free agency.
Eovaldi, 35 in September, has been a clearly above-average starter in each of his two seasons in Texas. He’s started a combined 51 games and pitched to a 3.65 ERA across his 296 frames with the Rangers, fanning 23.7% of his opponents against a 7% walk rate. Both marks are better than the league average. He’s also upped his ground-ball rate considerably thanks to an uptick in his splitter usage. A hearty 49.8% of the batted balls against Eovaldi have been grounders; he posted a 43.9% grounder rate in his final two seasons with the Red Sox from 2021-22.
Barring a late injury that throws his 2025 outlook into question, there’s a good case to decline that $20MM player option. Recent examples of multi-year free-agent deals for pitchers beginning in their age-35 season aren’t exactly plentiful, as can be seen in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, but there are a few such cases that underscore the earning power he’ll have.
Back in the 2018-19 offseason, for instance, both J.A. Happ ($34MM) and Charlie Morton ($30MM) inked two-year deal in free agency. Happ had nearly identical numbers in his two prior seasons to those of…
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