Ad Disclosure
The Talent is Still There for Aaron Nola, Who Looked Good in San Diego
By Tim Reilly
Published:
What happens when a stoppable force meets a movable object? Phillies fans willing to wait up for some West Coast baseball on Tuesday night found out the answer when a scuffling Aaron Nola took the mound against a listless San Diego Padres lineup.
In the end, it was Nola who stood firm. Opting to keep in his back pocket the four-seam fastball that opponents have feasted on this season, Nola instead relied on his breaking ball and his sinker to work ahead of hitters. Nearly half his pitches were knuckle curveballs, which he threw early and often as he pitched backwards and worked ahead of the count:
The result? The Padres seemed off balance most of the night. Nola retired the first eleven batters he faced until a two-out infield single off the bat of Gavin Sheets ended the drought. Sheets hit the ball hard up the middle, but shortstop Trea Turner was well-positioned to make the play. He could have made the play. He should have made the play. He didn’t make the play.
As has been the case for much of the season with Nola, he answered one mistake with a bigger mistake. Forced to pitch from the stretch, he threw a 91 mph sinker over the heart of the plate to Manny Machado, who promptly deposited the cookie into the seats behind the left-field wall.
All in all, however, it was a great outing from a tormented-but-talented pitcher in need of a positive result. Six innings, three hits, and two runs is winning baseball for a back-end starter, even if said starter is making front-of-the-rotation money for this campaign and four more beyond it. And he was dominant outside of that blip in the fourth inning. He didn’t walk anyone and only had two baserunners to manage all night, which meant he stayed out of the stretch (a long-term issue for Nola) and could focus on the batter in front of him.
Was the successful outing a recipe for sustained success? Well, Nola won’t be able to bank on facing San Diego every time out—although he does see the Padres again next week. Teams with the ability to do so will load up their lineup with lefthanded batters, who are hitting at a .298 clip off Nola this year. Can he locate his knuckle curve with the consistency needed to feature it early in counts?
Candidly, I’m skeptical. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a big Aaron Nola fan. He doesn’t pitch well in April, or when it’s cold, or when he can’t locate his pitches just so, or when runners get on base, or when MLB instituted the pitch clock and then the ABS challenge system. It’s always something, an endless search for excuses to explain away an inability to meet the standard consistently.
The Phillies should have more seriously considered letting him walk after 2023, difficult as the decision might have been in the moment. The club had benefited from his best years, and it seemed wiser to let a division rival like the Braves pay a premium price for his post-prime years. One wonders, had the front office been able to project what Cristopher Sanchez would become, if they would have re-signed Nola.
They didn’t have that foresight with respect to Sanchez – did anyone, though? – and hindsight is a pointless exercise. Moreover, any discussion of Aaron Nola’s issues inevitably leads to someone pointing out that the fallen ace isn’t *the* problem with the Phillies, that it’s their somnambulant offense, or Trea Turner, or Dave Dombrowski, or Kevin Long, or the recently fired Rob Thomson, or someone or something else.
No, Nola isn’t the problem. There is no “the” problem. The Phillies are a good team with the pieces to be great and a lot of obstacles preventing them from getting there. One of those obstacles is the ineffectiveness of Aaron Nola. He needs to be better, and fast.
The talent is still there. You could see it in the sixth inning, with a runner in scoring position and two outs in the sixth inning. Sheets was at the plate, a Padres slugger with a penchant for hitting dramatic homers representing the tying run in a game the Phillies had controlled to that point. Nola promptly threw a knuckle curve that Sheets took for a strike, and then another that the lefty swung and missed for strike two.
With the count 0-2, Nola dialed up a 94 mph four-seam fastball that he painted on the outside corner. The pitch froze Sheets and ended the threat.
It was only one game against a team that is struggling to hit the baseball, but maybe the outing gives Nola the confidence he needs to rediscover some semblance of his old form. We can only hope.
Tim Reilly is a freelance writer from Northeast Philadelphia. He can be reached at reillyt7@gmail.com.