Aaron Nola has earned his millions with two payoff playoff runs. Pay him, Phillies.
In his last five starts, Nola is 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA, 35 strikeouts, and two walks. He's killing it in huge games for the second year in a row, and he's going to be a free agent.
Baseball is simple for Aaron Nola. He takes the ball every fifth day, without fail. He prepares and gives his best effort, without fail. Sometimes, he fails, and that drives most fans crazy. He seldom fails, come fall. Come fall, he rises.
That’s what we’ve seen these past two postseasons. Last time, it surprised us all. This time, with even more pressure, he’s doing it again; doing it in a contract year. A big contract year.
In his last five starts, all huge games, Nola is 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA, with a breathtaking 35 strikeouts and two walks. He gave the Phillies six shutout innings Tuesday in a 10-0 Game 2 win, which put the Diamondbacks in a 2-0 hole in the National League Championship Series. His fastball moved like an electric eel. His knuckle-curve looked like Bugs Bunny was throwing it. For such a nice guy, he treated the Snakes like the Biblical maledictors they are.
Nola does this all the time. He hasn’t missed a start in almost seven full seasons. Every fifth day, he’s been as efficient as the Terminator and as cold-blooded as John Wick.
Now, again, it’s October. Efficiency in October gets rewarded, especially when it’s repeated. After contract extension talks collapsed during spring training, that looked unwise for Nola. However, after an inconsistent first five months, Nola is making the best possible case to get paid by the only franchise he’s ever played for.
But how much?
As much as the Yankees gave Carlos Rodón: six years and $162 million? If the Yankees get involved, not to mention Mets max-spender Steve Cohen, that’s probably a starting point for Phillies owner John Middleton.
Nola declined to discuss finances with me Tuesday, and he swears he’s pitching for a ring, not a deal. If he gets the ring the deal will surely come, but he’s earned the deal already.
How do you argue against it? How do you look across a table and tell Aaron Nola he’s not worth a guy like Rodón, a two-year wonder? How do you look the guy who’s been face of your pitching staff in his face, after nine years of consistency with extended streaks of excellence, and tell him that you can do this again without him? How do you tell the guy who has now won you eight big games in the biggest parts of the past two seasons, “Thanks for everything, but we don’t need you anymore”?
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As much as Joel Embiid is the product of the Sixers’ flawed “Process,” Nola represents the Phillies’ process, as rudderless and coincidental as it was. They drafted him in the first round in 2014, two years removed from their glory days. They developed him to their best homegrown pitcher since Cole Hamels — maybe since Robin Roberts — and now, at 30, Nola is everything they could have hoped he’d become.
Horse. Gamer. Big-game stud. And yes, autumn ball is bigger than summer ball, and he’s made for it.
“Definitely, it’s a bigger stage,” Nola said. “The cool thing about our team is we all have fun. We don’t really get into these super-pressure games, or these super-pressure situations. We like those.”
Nola seems to love those: pitching for his future in the brightest spotlight of his life.
“It just goes to show what type of competitor he is,” said Zack Wheeler, the staff’s ace, who, after 2019, was in Nola’s situation: a fine pitcher, about 30, hoping to break the bank. Wheeler got five years and $118 million from the Phillies. “I don’t think he was really [anxious] about pitching this season with the contract coming up, but there are some pressures that come along with that.”
Wheeler wants him to stay. The Phillies should want him to stay, and you should want him to stay. He wants to stay, too. Why wouldn’t he? He’s one of the cornerstones of what’s been built here, and he wants to continue to enjoy it.
“I hope so. I really do. I love it here,” Nola said Monday. “Obviously it’s the only place I’ve been. I came up through some special times in the rebuilding era and getting to witness and be a part of a lot of different type of teams. To be on a team like I am now, it’s really cool and special to see and to be a part of all the success and failures to get to where we are now.”
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Failures, like nine years without a winning season, a decade with no postseason, bumbling regimes and managers who couldn’t get out of their own way. He was the jewel of that 2014 draft, when the Phillies also took Rhys Hoskins, but Hoskins was hurt this year, so it was Nola who is the emblem of suffering and shame.
He has nothing to be ashamed of these days. His best days.
“I’ve always said he is a big-game pitcher, and I’ve seen it for many years here, and especially the last two years in the playoffs,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said before the game. “He’s stepped up. ... He’s just been really good and really consistent the last four or five starts.”
Now, it’s five.
As Thomson alluded, this is not uncharted territory for Nola. Last year, in his first playoff run, Nola got hot when the temperatures cooled. Nola’s last start of the 2022 season, in Houston, clinched the Phillies’ playoff berth. He allowed no earned runs in his first two playoffs starts. That gave him a stretch of 19⅓ innings with no earned runs, 21 strikeouts, and three walks.
Finally, there is the Bank Factor. Nola is 4-1 with a 1.58 ERA in five playoff games at Citizens Bank Park.
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It took a while for Nola to adjust to 2023. He hated the pitch clock. He has struggled to pitch out of the stretch, which leads to single big innings that sabotage otherwise clean outings. He entered September with a 9-11 record and a 3.43 ERA. He wasn’t pitching badly, but he wasn’t pitching to a nine-figure contract.
Then, two months ago, he incorporated a slide step for the first time since 2018. A little less than a month ago, he started to focus on squaring his shoulders to the plate as he releases the ball.
He tinkered and he improved, but mostly he just pitches. He’s a man of faith: When the ball leaves his hands, it’s in God’s hands. Nola accepts the results and the judgments with the sincerest sort of indifference and grace. Then, five days later, he does it again.
The way he throws it, that’s worth an awful lot of money.