A few months in, the production still isn't there for Nathan Eovaldi. To get to the next level, he needs to begin to understand himself as a pitcher.
For years, Nathan Eovaldi has confounded scouts with his inability to strike batters out in spite of his triple digit velocity. Among the various explanations for this phenomenon, Mike Petriello at MLB.com probably hit the nail on the head when he talked about the spin rate of various fastballs. The spin rate of Eovaldi's fastball is not that great, and a higher rotations per minute value actually correlates better with whiffs than velocity.