Nathan Eovaldi made his long-awaited return to the mound for the Red Sox on Monday night.
The right-hander, who was activated from the 60-day injured list on Saturday, entered the game in the eighth inning vs. the Rays. The good news is Eovaldi had an eight-run cushion to work with. The bad news is he was a bit rusty in his first appearance since April.
He began his inning by allowing a leadoff infield single to Guillermo Heredia, then allowed Heredia to take second on a wild pitch. Travis d'Arnaud followed up with an RBI double, and another wild pitch allowed him to reach third.
Eovaldi rebounded by striking out Tommy Pham, but he then gave up an RBI double to Austin Meadows and RBI single to Yandy Diaz.
After striking out Avisail Garcia and allowing a single to Michael Brosseau, Eovaldi was replaced by Matt Barnes. He finished with a final line of 2/3 innings pitched, five hits, three earned runs, and two strikeouts.
While his return didn't go quite as planned, one positive takeaway is Eovaldi's velocity was in the upper 90s during his brief outing. He reflected on his performance following Boston's 9-4 win saying he "felt fine" physically, but needs to "do a better job of locating his secondary pitches" going forward.
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