When Aaron Nola has his best stuff, he pitches in a rhythm. There’s little delay, or deception planned. It’s more just grab the ball, decide on the next pitch, and throw it.

But when he doesn’t have his best stuff, he’s never just mailed it in and called it a day. Instead, he’s always turned toward slowing the game down. Walking around the mound. Grabbing some resin. Varying the length of time between pitches, whether it’s stepping off the rubber, or throwing over to first, or waving off a pitch, it’s what pitchers have always been trained to do.

In 2023, with a pitch clock in place, most of this stuff can’t happen anymore, or if it does, it’s on a very limited basis.

The Phillies have talked about some workarounds for their pitchers, and are constantly reminding them to try what they can when they’re in a game.

To this point in the spring, Nola has mostly shrugged that off. But after his outing Thursday against Baltimore, facing a lineup full of left-handed hitters, several of whom got some hard contact off him, Nola is ready to admit he needs to buy in to the fact that his routine needs to change.


The Phillies won 7-6, but Nola’s line wasn’t particularly pretty. He threw three innings, allowed five hits and two walks, four runs, three of which were earned, while striking out just one batter:

“I was supposed to throw four (innings today) but I threw 50-something pitches, so… I need to get the curveball a little sharper. It’s been hanging a little bit. But I need to get repetitions with the pitch clock. I’m glad I had an outing like this today. I need to figure out a strategy to slow the game down.

“There’s times where you’re giving up hits and they’re running around the field and you’re backing up bases. That’s when you have to slow the game down. It’s what we’ve been doing our whole lives. I’ve got to figure out a way to slow that down.”

Nola talked about potentially asking for a new ball, or finding other little tricks to change the rhythm for the opposition.

“We talk about it every day. When to get new balls and everything, but you actually got to do it,” he said. “I have to have an outing like this to realize I have those options to slow the game down, which I didn’t do today. I have to get out there and do it. We can talk about it all we want, but the repetition and the experience in these games is important.”

Nola is on track to start opening day, which means he’ll have three more spring starts to figure it out.

Harper update, already

Earlier, we talked about Bryce Harper’s first meeting with the media in Clearwater, where there was no new news and a bunch of seemingly rehearsed questions and answers.

Then, after the game we found this out:

And #HarperWatch3.0 has officially commenced.