Aaron Nola’s meltdown cost the Phillies in Arizona. But we’ve been here before.

It’s a special time of year.

The kids go back to school, the NFL kicks off its season, and Aaron Nola stops earning his money.

Nola has always been suspect as the leaves began to change, and he’s always pushed back against his autumnal agonies, but on Tuesday, in a monumental moment, he blew his latest chance, and in spectacular fashion.

The Phillies needed a lockdown road start from their No. 2 “ace.” They needed to flush a Monday night choke job in the Arizona desert after gifting the Diamondbacks the biggest comeback in franchise history. They needed hope, with both their Cy Young candidate and their closer on the injured list.

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They needed Nola to start proving his September haters wrong.

They got none of that.

As Tuesday crept into Wednesday on the East Coast, Nola gave up eight runs in four innings in Phoenix. Not only did he get hammered by one of the worst-hitting teams in baseball, he did so in a moment that might define his season, and his team’s.

The calendar is rolling over into September. The Phillies entered the three-game series finale in Arizona in possession of the second wild-card slot, by a half-game over the Padres, and were three games ahead of the Brewers, who are the first team out, but stuff gets real now. The Phillies are crossing their fingers, and not just with regard to Nola.

It might not be time to panic but it’s certainly fair to worry. Their fortunes always depended on their front-end starters and their back-end relievers.

Things look bleak.

Zack Wheeler, the $118 million staff ace, is on the 15-day injured list with forearm tendinitis. So is Seranthony Domínguez, who has been a revelation as the team’s new closer. He’s fighting triceps soreness.

Wheeler missed most of spring training and his first start this season due to shoulder issues over the winter after he broke the 200-inning plateau for the first time in 2021.

» READ MORE: Phillies need a healthy Zack Wheeler to contend for a playoff berth | David Murphy

Dominguez’s chronic elbow problems allowed him to pitch just one inning — one — between June 2019 and April 2022.

Wheeler is expected to start when the Miami Marlins visit Tuesday. Domínguez can come off the IL on Friday, but that seems aggressive. Both threw on flat ground in Arizona on Tuesday.

The Phillies have downplayed these absences. They have cast them more as moves of precaution than of alarm.

Well, it’s not called the “precautionary list.” It’s called the injured list, and for good reason. The players on it are injured, and, in the case of pitchers, they’re unlikely to be whole again until the snow falls and melts.

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Understand that, assuming both Wheeler and Domínguez come off the IL by the start of next week, neither will be the pitcher he was when he got hurt. Domínguez’s fastball won’t be sitting at 98 mph, and Wheeler’s won’t sit at 96.

Both will be eased back into their roles. Wheeler will have a pitch count for all five of his September starts, and the Phils will probably give him a six-day schedule.

As for Domínguez, he might never pitch on back-to-back days for the rest of his career, much less the rest of this season. Maybe Joe “Soft-Touch” Girardi was right.

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This sort of déjà vu is nightmarish for Monsieur Nola.

Over his eight-year career, Nola is a winning pitcher in every month except September/October. His 4.60 ERA as the seasons end is his worst of any other month. He’s given up a total of 32 homers in the seasons’ final weeks after averaging 20.6 homers in each of the other five months. That’s 36% worse.

To be fair, we looked at Nola’s numbers for September/October in his last two full seasons since the start of his four-year, $45 million contract in 2019.

It’s even uglier for those 2019 and 2021 seasons combined: a 6.33 ERA and 10 homers allowed.

It’s not quite September yet, but Tuesday night was no aberration. It was Nola’s second poor outing in his last three; the Mets tagged him for five runs in five innings 11 days before. He logged a shutout in the game between those two, but that’s kind of the point: Nola isn’t awful in every late-season start, he’s just incredibly undependable.

And “undependable” just doesn’t cut it for a No. 2 starter on a team with playoff aspirations.