Returning to form, Rangers' Nathan Eovaldi takes on D-backs

Nathan Eovaldi appears to have turned the corner following a rocky start to the season.

The right-hander will look to take another step forward on Monday when the Texas Rangers open a three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks in Arlington, Texas.

The Rangers had lost five of their previous six games before registering back-to-back shutouts against the formerly white-hot Chicago Cubs. The latter team was riding high on the strength of its second 10-game winning streak of the season before dropping 6-0 and 3-0 decisions over the weekend.

Eovaldi (4-4, 4.15 ERA) surrendered 23 runs and nine homers en route to losing four of his first six starts before bouncing back in a big way in a pair of outings against one of his former teams, the New York Yankees. He scattered four hits over seven scoreless innings on April 29 before yielding one run on three hits over eight frames last Wednesday.

“He had such a good game plan, such a good feel for swings,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “He has a game plan but also can navigate a game on his own as good as anybody, based on what he’s seeing.”

Eovaldi, 36, is 3-1 with a 4.17 ERA in 11 career appearances (eight starts) against Arizona.

Right-hander Michael Soroka (4-2, 4.14) will look to snap a two-start losing streak when he takes the mound for the Diamondbacks.

Soroka was gashed for eight runs on 10 hits in three innings of a 13-1 shellacking by the Milwaukee Brewers on April 30. He pitched much better on Wednesday, yielding just one run on seven hits in 6 1/3 innings of a 1-0 setback to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Soroka, 28, sizzled in his lone career appearance versus Texas, scattering two hits over six scoreless innings to pick up the victory last June while with Washington.

He’d be wise to pitch carefully around Josh Jung, who collected consecutive three-hit performances for Texas on the heels of an 0-for-12 effort in his previous three games. Jung was riding high on a 13-game hitting streak before that.

While Jung consistently is finding success at the plate, the same cannot be said for Corey Seager. The latter is 0-for-14 with six strikeouts in his last four games to see his batting average slip to .193 for the season.

Perhaps Seager’s workload is slowing him down. After all, he has started 19 consecutive games without an off day.

“Corey and I talk every day about how he feels and where he’s at physically, but the other part of this is, you’re trying to win a series, right?” Schumaker said before Sunday’s game. “He’s still our best player. I don’t care what he did yesterday or the day before. It means something to us when you see him in the lineup. We do have a day circled here soon.”

The Diamondbacks lost seven of eight games before capturing the final two contests of a three-game series versus the New York Mets. Arizona allowed a total of two runs on seven hits in its last two games.

Making his second start in the majors, Ryan Waldschmidt recorded his first three career RBIs on two hits in the Diamondbacks’ 5-1 victory over the New York Mets on Sunday. He also made a dazzling catch in the fifth inning to preserve Eduardo Rodriguez’s no-hit bid.

“I took off for it, I knew I was getting close to the fence, but I was going to do whatever I could to catch that ball,” Waldschmidt said. “I was going full speed into the wall, catch or not. I’m glad I was able to make that catch for him and keep that thing going.”

–Field Level Media