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Aaron Nola Says His First 10 Phillies Starts Have Been “Not That Great”
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Rough one at the ballpark on Wednesday afternoon. It was hot as hell on “Weather Education Day,” and Aaron Nola was getting roughed up while Bill Henley was talking to John Kruk and T Mac about Stratocumulus clouds:
“I felt better today, missed some balls over the plate, and they capitalized on them.”
He looked great in the first. A pop out to start things off, followed by two strikeouts. Then he started the 2nd with three straight hits on a cutter, sinker, and knuckle curve, and the Phils were down 3-1.
Nola has a 6.04 ERA through 10 starts. BB/9 is close to a career high. The fastball is sitting around 90 mph and batters are crushing his four-seamer to the tune of a .432 average. Barrel % and hard hit numbers are both up over the past two seasons of struggle. There’s been some chatter about Nola not being able to work the edges in the ABS era, which has historically been pretty important for him. It’s pushing more pitches into the zone and those pitches are being put into play, or out of the ballpark entirely. The stuff looks okay, but the command hasn’t been there and he just doesn’t seem to be locating the ball the way he used to.
People are making Taijuan Walker comparisons, which is rough. Nola is 33 years old with four more years at $24 million per on his deal. They’re not gonna send him down. They can’t release him and eat all of that money. Maybe you pull a phantom IL stint and go from there, otherwise they don’t have much of a choice but to hope Nola works his way out of this.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com