Aaron Nola’s ace effort lifts Phillies to a series victory over Cardinals | Bob Brookover

The debate started before Aaron Nola arrived in the big leagues and, despite his glowing resume, it continues to this day.

Is he or isn’t he an ace?

The answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Nola proved it again Sunday afternoon against the St. Louis Cardinals at Citizens Bank Park. With his team just a few days removed from a 1-5 road trip and coming off a lopsided loss in which starter Matt Moore did not make it through the third inning, Nola did what an ace does by doing something he had never done before.

The 27-year-old right-hander pitched the first nine-inning complete game, which also happened to be first nine-inning shutout of his career. He allowed just two singles, no walks, and had 10 strikeouts in giving the Phillies a 2-0 win as well as a series victory.

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“If you look at Nola the past three or four years, I don’t know how you can say he’s not an ace,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “He’s a top-10 pitcher in baseball, so I don’t know how you cannot consider that an ace. If that was me, I think that would certainly fuel my fire.”

Let’s use Realmuto’s “past-three-or-four-years” criteria to assess Nola.

The ability to be an ace starts with durability and availability. Nola’s 110 starts are tied with Jacob deGrom and Rick Porcello for the fifth most in baseball since 2017 and his 678 2/3 innings pitched also rank fifth.

Among the 43 pitchers who have logged at least 500 innings since 2017, Nola has a 3.20 ERA since 2017, which ranks eighth. You might have heard of the seven guys ahead of him: deGrom (2.46), Clayton Kershaw (2.62), Max Scherzer (2.74), Justin Verlander (2.82), Chris Sale (3.08), Gerrit Cole (3.12), and Zack Greinke (3.19).

Aces one and all.

“People in the clubhouse and people on the field know that he is an ace, and that’s on this team and on other teams,” Realmuto said. “You just look at the guy’s resume and he gets outs and he shows up consistently. I’m not sure where [the doubts] come from, but it’s not from people who know baseball.”

Maybe not, but it’s something Nola has had to hear his entire career. After he was drafted, he was described by one prominent draft guru as “a No. 2 or 3 starter.”

Phillies third-base coach Dusty Wathan, who managed Nola at double-A Reading in 2015, had the perfect response to that label: “What’s wrong with being a No. 3 starter in the big leagues?”

Nothing is the answer, but Nola has earned the right to be called a lot more. He made his fourth straight opening-day start this year, the first Phillies pitcher to do that since Steve Carlton. Lefty, of course, is the Phillies’ all-time ace.

“He’s definitely more calm than a lot of people,” Realmuto said. “He’s not Max Scherzer out there, huffing and puffing around the mound, and I could see where that might confuse some people. But as far as getting outs and winning baseball games, he does a really good job at that.”

Nola has had some difficult times. It definitely bothers him that he has gone 4-9 with a 4.44 ERA the last three Septembers when the Phillies have been in contention, but he’s not the first really good pitcher to experience turbulence at the worst of times. Kershaw, for instance, has a career 2.43 ERA in the regular season and a 4.19 ERA in 37 postseason games.

It also bothered Nola that he had consecutive short outings against the New York Mets after pitching a gem against the Atlanta Braves on opening day. But he insisted it does not bother him when some people start questioning his status as an ace.

“For sure I hear it and, no, it does not bother me,” Nola said. “I’m going to go out and pitch my game and pitch for my team. I’m going to try to go as long as possible and try to get my pitch count as high as possible until they take me out.”

Nola’s pitch count stood at 102 after eight innings Sunday and he was prepared to argue his way back to the mound for the ninth inning if need be. Manager Joe Girardi had closer Héctor Neris warming in the bullpen, but he wanted Nola back on the mound.

“He was going back out,” the manager said. “I loved the way he was throwing the ball. I loved the way he attacked the top of the order all day and had done a really good job, so it was his game. I know he had never had a nine-inning shutout and I knew it was important to him, so that’s why I let him go.”

It took Nola just seven pitches to finish off the dangerous top of the Cardinals’ order in the ninth. He retired Tommy Edman on a grounder to first, six-time All-Star Paul Goldschmidt on a lazy fly ball to right field and five-time All-Star Nolan Arenado on a grounder to shortstop to end the game.

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The Cardinals never got a runner beyond first base and went down in order six times. It would have been seven, but Nola’s one mistake was a dropped feed at first base on a throw from Rhys Hoskins in the third inning. He was so frazzled by his mistake that he struck out Goldschmidt on three pitches.

That’s the kind of thing aces do.

“With people throwing so hard and you see what deGrom is like and you see a Gerrit Cole, I think people scream at that as being an ace,” Girardi said. “But there are different types of aces, and he’s one of them.”