The Red Sox have more important things to figure out, starting with -- but not limited to -- whether their season is going to extend past Sunday, the final day of the regular season.
But with four games to go on the schedule, it's not a bad time to ask the question: Who has been their most valuable player in 2021?
There are a few worthy candidates, including Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts, both of whom have had big seasons offensively. If the season had started in late June, a case could be made for Kike Hernandez, who eventually figured out the leadoff spot and provided Gold Glove-caliber defense in center field.
But while position players are traditionally more valuable than pitchers -- if for no other reason than the chance to contribute on a daily basis -- a strong argument could be presented for Wednesday's starting pitcher, Nathan Eovaldi.
Given the closeness of the wild card race, Wednesday qualified as a must win for the Red Sox and Eovaldi, coming off arguably his worst start of the season last time out, seemed determined to not allow them to lose. He struck out the first two batters he faced and five of the first eight, and went from there. In the end, he gave the Sox six shutout innings, allowing just one walk and four hits, for his 11th win of the season.
Eleven wins, of course, is a modest win total for the year -- last night constituted Eovaldi's final start of the season -- but we've learned that nothing in the avalanche of baseball stats is less pertinent than a starting pitcher's wins. There was, for instance, a stretch of eight starts, from Aug. 11 through Sept. 19, in which Eovaldi compiled an ERA of 2.27, the single best figure of his career. And yet in those eight outings, Eovaldi personally claimed just one win.
His ERA for the season is a rather ordinary 3.75, inflated by a handful of off starts. But Eovaldi's value can be better measured in other ways.
For a pitching staff that was full of question marks at the start of the season, Eovaldi was the team's rock. He made 32 starts, the most of any pitcher on the team. He led the staff in innings (182.1) and strikeouts (195). And tellingly, he's second among all American League starters in FIP (fielding independent pitching), which seeks to measure how well a pitcher performs without factoring in the defense behind him. As we know, the Sox' porous infield defense has not helped any of the team's pitchers. Had the Sox done a better job converting balls in play into outs behind him, Eovaldi's ERA would be far closer to 3.00.
And speaking of numbers, there's this: FanGraph's WAR has him (5.3) ranked first among all American League pitchers, including Gerrit Cole and Robbie Ray, either of whom is almost certainly going to be named the American League Cy Young Award winner.
Maybe the Red Sox would have missed Devers or Bogaerts or J.D. Martinez had they not been part of the team. But the lineup is deep enough and productive enough to survive. This much is inarguable, however: they certainly would have found it almost impossible to withstand the loss of Eovaldi.
At the start of the year, the Red Sox rotation consisted of Eduardo Rodriguez, Nick Pivetta, Garrett Richards and Martin Perez. But by August, the latter two were so untrustworthy that they were demoted to the bullpen. Rodriguez, like Eovaldi, was victimized by both some bad luck and poor play behind him, but was woefully inconsistent, as might be expected from a pitcher who was forced to miss all of 2020 with COVID and the resulting case of myocarditis.
Tanner Houck? He was injured for most of two months, and undependable otherwise. Only Pivetta has been part of the rotation from the start and he's going to finish the year with an ERA about three-quarters of a run higher than Eovaldi.
Eovaldi took the ball every five days, like clockwork, something that seldom has been said about him because of his injury history. Of his 32 starts, the Red Sox won 19 of them, and in another four outings, the team lost despite Eovaldi giving up either one or two earned runs.
As I noted last week, in a one-game wild card scenario, my pick would be to start Chris Sale, who has a higher ceiling. But through no fault of his own, Sale didn't make his first start until mid-August.
Eovaldi was the guy on Opening Day. He was the guy Wednesday night when they couldn't afford one more loss. And he's been the guy, without fail, every five days.
For a team that is still waiting to find out its ultimate fate, one thing is already obvious: they wouldn't be in a position to fight for a spot in the postseason had it not been from the contributions they got from Eovaldi.