Phillies

Aaron Nola’s Renaissance Started Far Sooner than Most Realize, and Now the Phillies Should Keep Him Long Term

By Anthony SanFilippo

Published: Oct 18th, 2023 · 11:10 AM EDT

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It was a Saturday night at the beginning of September. The Phillies were on national television, taking on the red-hot Brewers in Milwaukee. On the mound was Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola.

It had been a bit of an up and down season for Nola, but like other Phillies, he had started looking better in August – as if he was rounding into form as the top of rotation ace he has been for so many seasons, doubling as the team’s longest-tenured player.

He was coming off a stretch of four straight starts – all Phillies wins – in which he was 4-0 with a 2.63 ERA, a 1.00 WHIP, and a 27/7 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

But then disaster struck against the Brewers, and all the good had been undone.

“Milwaukee was kind of… yeah it was kind of a crazy game,” Nola said.

He started off by striking out the side, but then, all of the sudden, the Brewers started smoking the ball off Nola. He gave up three runs in the second inning and then after righting the ship temporarily, he gave up four more in the fifth inning before hitting the showers. His earned runs allowed were the most in a year.

In a season with so many pendulum swings already in it for Nola, this one was by far the furthest in a negative direction. He gave up eight hits and had three walks in just 4 2/3 innings. He allowed his 30th homer of the season. There was a swelling call for the Phillies to not even start him in the postseason, if, in fact they got there.

The uptick in walks, the downtick in strikeouts and the propensity to give up home runs were driving factors for people to not believe in Nola to be a guy, never mind the No. 2 guy behind Zack Wheeler.

It was frustrating for Nola. He had felt fine physically but wasn’t getting the results. But it was in that game that he first noticed something was off mechanically.

Since then, Nola has made seven starts, including three in the playoffs. In those seven starts, Nola has allowed just two home runs. He has 42 strikeouts. He has three walks, this included another six shutout innings in Game 2, which was a 10-0 drubbing of the Arizona Diamondbacks by the Phillies, who right now are an absolute machine.

What was it that he noticed was wrong? How did Nola go from being a guy so many didn’t even want to allow one postseason start to carrying a playoff ERA of 0.96?

Aaron Nola has been nasty so far tonight. 🤢

[via @BRWalkoff] pic.twitter.com/x7OByGAF2H

— Phillies Nation (@PhilliesNation) October 18, 2023

“I really dug into it and saw myself stepping across my body a little more than I usually do,” Nola said. “I was losing site of the left side and I wasn’t going straight to the plate. My ball wasn’t jumping like I needed it to. My checkmark has always been my glove side during my career. At that time, my checkmark was my arm side and that’s how I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t helping all my pitches.”

Nola met with pitching coach Caleb Cotham and told him what he had identified. The two devised a plan.

There was a bullpen session in San Diego. Then another when they got home to Philadelphia. In those sessions, Nola worked on a couple of things with stride and focus.

“I really focused on stepping straight again,” Nola said. He also reincorporated a slide step into his delivery with runners on base, something he abandoned after the 2017 season. “It felt weird at first, but with repetition and doing it over and over again it helped out all of my pitches, not just one or two. It was just a matter of simplifying the delivery.”

He also made one other small change. When checking the pitch clock, Nola would focus on the one on the first base side of home plate and not the third base side. It was one small detail that may or may not actually had an effect, but to the mind’s eye, may help him mechanically to stay square to the plate on delivery.

It’s been seemingly cathartic for Nola, who has been one of the pitch clock’s biggest detractors, and as a guy who had a tougher time adapting to the new rules in baseball to be able to use this element of the game that he despised to help him refocus and be the best version of himself again.

The playoff numbers are just staggering this season.

Really, if you go all the way back to August 10th, Nola’s been pretty darn good. Yeah, he may not have gotten the traditional length that he usually does in a few of those games, but in those dozen starts, the Phillies are 11-1. Nola himself is 6-1. His stat line is pretty darn good too:

69IP, 61H, 26R, 25ER, 13BB, 74K, 6HR; 3.26 ERA, 1.07 WHIP

That includes the Milwaukee clobbering. Take that one bad start out of the equation and call it an outlier and the other 11 starts net the following numbers:

641/3 IP, 53H, 19R, 18ER, 10BB, 69K, 5HR; 2.52 ERA, 0.979 WHIP

It’s important to include the Milwaukee game, because that’s when it clicked for Nola, what was going wrong. It was a seminal moment in the season for him and, as it’s turning out, for his team, as his return to form has had as great a positive impact, if not greater, than Trea Turner’s post-ovation renaissance.

He remains laser focused. He doesn’t want to talk about his future. Impending free agency is only a couple weeks away, but he has just one thing on his mind – and that’s winning a championship. So much so, that he was surprised to learn that there is a possibility that Tuesday’s performance in Game 2 was his last start in front of the home fans at Citizens Bank Park.

“I didn’t realize it,” he said. “I do try to soak it all in as much as possible and leave it all out on the field though.”

Unless Arizona figures out a way to stop this Phillies wagon twice in the next three games, Nola won’t pitch again until the World Series. If the Texas Rangers, who lead the ALCS 2-0, hold on, Nola’s next start will be in Arlington. And then, if he gets one more after that, it would be in a probable Game 6 of that series, which would also be in Texas.

Then he becomes a free agent. Parade, or not. Championship, or not.

Aaron Nola, Painted 93mph Two Seamer. 🖌️🎨 pic.twitter.com/tnmUw2j5iX

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 18, 2023

The big question will be “should the Phillies pay him?” Should they keep him in the fold for another five or six years?

He hasn’t missed a start in six seasons. He’s pitched brilliantly in so many big games the last two seasons – two regular season games to clinch playoff spots and in five postseason starts in which he’s dominated the opponent.

Oh, and there’s this nugget, courtesy of Jayson Stark of The Athletic:

Aaron Nola has made eight career postseason starts. In half of them, he has allowed zero earned runs and has pitched at least six innings in all four. He is only the second pitcher to ever do that in the history of baseball, joining Waite Hoyt, who last pitched in 1938.

Also from Stark, only six other pitchers have thrown more postseason starts with at least six innings and zero earned runs over their entire careers no matter how many starts they’ve had. The list:

• Madison Bumgarner – 6
• Tom Glavine – 6
• Justin Verlander – 6
• Andy Pettitte – 6
• Clayton Kershaw – 5
• John Smoltz – 5

Oh, and Aaron Nola loves Philadelphia as much as the city and the team should love him back.

“I love it here,” Nola said prior to Game 2’s masterclass. “Obviously it’s the only place I’ve ever been. … To be on a team like I am now, it’s really cool.”

The Phillies should pay the man – and do so like the ace that he is.

This is what John Middleton will be handing to Aaron Nola in a month pic.twitter.com/R2DNtODIGS

— Philly Nation (@Philly__Nation) October 18, 2023