In life, familiarity breeds contempt.
In baseball, it's supposed to mean trouble.
The more an opponent sees of a pitcher, the more they know about him. They understand tendencies and patterns, and after a while, there's little that's unknown. One of the reasons the Red Sox had at least some success against the great Mariano Rivera was that they got to see him a dozen or so times over the course of a season. If nothing else, it took some of the mystique away.
But don't tell that to Nathan Eovaldi.
Over the course of the regular season, he started six games against the Yankees. Every series that was played between the teams, Eovaldi made a start.
Not that that helped the Yankees in any way in the A.L. wild card game Tuesday night. Eovaldi limited the Yankees to a single run on four hits over 5.1 innings as the Red Sox dispatched the Yanks, 6-2.
"They know him,'' marveled Alex Cora, "and he was great.''
He survived a wall-scraping single by Giancarlo Stanton in the first, allowed a swinging bunt single to Gio Urshela in the second and then really got locked in, retiring the next 11 hitters he faced. His control was impeccable (no walks) and he was unscored upon until Anthony Rizzo took him into the right field seats with one out in the sixth. When Aaron Judge then reached on a slow roller to short, Cora felt Eovaldi had done enough.
"When I went to the mound, he gave me this look, like, 'What are you doing?' '' recalled Cora with a chuckle. "But we felt our bullpen was ready to get the rest of the game.''
And indeed it was, allowing just one more run over the final 4.2 innings.
But the tone had long been set by Eovaldi, no matter how familiar he looked to the Yankees.
"A lineup like that,'' said Eovaldi, "you have to prevent the ball from leaving the ballpark and attack the zone. And I feel like if you can attack the zone, it's going to make your job a little bit easier out there.''
A week and a half ago -- also at Fenway, also matched against Gerrit Cole -- Eovaldi didn't follow his own advice. Too often, he fell behind to Yankee hitters. That complicated things for Eovaldi, who allowed seven runs and couldn't get out of the third inning.
But Eovaldi knew where he had gone wrong. He knew that he didn't have the best command of his off-speed pitches -- his curveball and his splitter in particular -- inviting the Yankees to tee off on his fastball. Live and learn. Two can play at this game.
"They did an amazing job (last time),'' said Cora of the Yankees. "They took some pitches away, they hit pitches in certain spots and they did damage, But we learned a lot from that.''
As he's gotten older, Eovaldi has become more cerebral in his approach. Yes, he can hit 100 mph with his fastball. But he's also got an arsenal of four others pitchers, and when he can throw most of them for strikes, as he did Tuesday night, he can be close to unhittable. Ask the Yankees: they collected four hits and two didn't leave the infield grass.
"Tonight,'' said Eovaldi, "I wanted to make sure to establish the fastball inside. And the second time through (the order), I was able to stay away from them bot also keep them honest inside. I think that game plan worked out well for us tonight.''
The Yankees now have all offseason to gameplan against Eovaldi. They had plenty of chances this season, and when it counted, that didn't do them any good.