Nathan Eovaldi Injury Update: Rangers Ace Expected Back This Week — Timeline & Impact

Texas Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi is expected to miss the remainder of the 2025 season after an MRI revealed a rotator cuff strain in his right shoulder, president of baseball operations Chris Young told reporters Tuesday afternoon. The injury deals a major blow to both a Rangers club chasing back-to-back World Series titles and to Eovaldi’s own push for his first American League Cy Young Award. Eovaldi, 35, had authored one of the most dominant pitching lines in baseball: 11–3 with a league-best 1.73 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and 129 strikeouts across 146⅔ innings over 22 starts. According to Young, the right-hander will be shut down from throwing for at least four weeks, after which he will be re-evaluated. Even in an optimistic scenario, that timeline all but rules him out until 2026. The setback arrived just days after Eovaldi fired seven innings of one-run ball against Cleveland, his sixth straight quality start that had vaulted him ahead of Baltimore’s Grayson Rodriguez and Houston’s Framber Valdez in most Cy Young projection models. With the Rangers clinging to a two-game lead in the AL West, losing their rotation anchor forces manager Bruce Bochy to lean more heavily on Jack Leiter, Jon Gray and trade-deadline pickup Shane Bieber. Texas signed Eovaldi to a two-year, $40 million deal before the 2023 championship season, betting that his splitter-heavy repertoire and bulldog mentality would translate well in October. That gamble paid off when the righty delivered four playoff wins and a 2.15 ERA last fall. A second straight deep postseason run now rests on how quickly the club can patch the vacancy; Triple-A left-hander Kumar Rocker and swingman Cody Bradford are leading internal candidates, while the front office could scour waivers for veteran reinforcements. Eovaldi’s injury history already included two Tommy John surgeries and an elbow flexor strain that sidelined him last July. The right-hander revamped his offseason program with an emphasis on shoulder stability, a change that produced career-best velocity early in 2025 but may also have contributed to recent fatigue. He exited Saturday’s start with diminished fastball life and reported soreness the next morning, prompting the MRI. For fantasy baseball managers, Eovaldi is a clear drop in redraft formats but remains a strong hold in keeper and dynasty leagues given his elite underlying metrics: 30.4 percent strikeout rate, 5.3 percent walk rate and MLB-best 2.63 FIP. From a contractual standpoint, the Rangers hold a $17 million club option for 2026 that now appears likely to be exercised as long as the right-hander’s recovery stays on course. The Rangers will provide an official update once team doctors review follow-up imaging later this week. Until then, the 2025 Cy Young race and Texas’ title defense both have a huge Nathan Eovaldi-shaped void.