A brilliant Aaron Nola clinched the playoffs. He and Zack Wheeler are why the Phillies can win it.

It was never going to be easy. Certainly not as easy as Aaron Nola made it look for the first 20 batters of his Monday night. Making it through three rounds of the National League playoffs was always going to be a slog. But if the Phillies wrapped up here, on the road, in Houston, just a couple of days removed from a magic number that stood at six, they were going to have a chance.

For 6⅔ innings, Nola didn’t just show the rest of the NL playoff field why the Phillies will be joining them for the first time in more than a decade. He showed them why they need to be taken seriously. In Nola, they have a pitcher who can do the things that he did Monday night. In Zack Wheeler, they have two.

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They were always the reason why it made sense to believe in the Phillies. You know about the offense. Maybe it hasn’t been everything that John Middleton expected when he started writing $20 million checks this offseason. But the bats are there. We’ve seen teams with far less offensive talent than the Phillies score enough runs to win a playoff series. That potential will always be there. At the end of the day, though, it tends to come down to the pitcher.

They have them. More than they have since that 2011 season when the Phillies entered the postseason with three pitchers who every five days seemed to do the things Nola did Monday night. That’s how good that rotation was. That’s how good the top of this one can be.

The schedule says that they are the key. Three straight games on the road, in St. Louis or New York or maybe Atlanta. One day off. Then five games in six days. They’ll have Wheeler and Nola in the first two. Win those, and they’ll have them in two of the next three. It doesn’t sound so daunting when you look at it like that, not when you consider the possibility of facing a team like the Cardinals in the wild-card round, not when you consider the pitchers that team will be starting.

Miles Mikolas? Adam Wainwright? Jordan Montgomery? José Quintana?

Top to bottom, you might take St. Louis every five days through a regular season. In the postseason, though, what often matters is the guy who can do what Nola did Monday night: 20 up, 20 down, no baserunners, no runs, no reason to question whether a one-run lead would suffice. It ended quickly, as it sometimes does with Nola. Credit Rob Thomson for recognizing it and getting José Alvarado up in the bullpen even with Nola at 80 pitches and closing in on seven perfect innings.

Two sharp singles ended the bid for perfection. The final line: 6⅔ innings, two hits, no walks, nine strikeouts, 88 pitches. It was a splendid piece of pitching in a spot where the Phillies demanded it. Less than a week ago, they were in the midst of a five-game losing streak, their playoff odds having dropped from 97% to roughly 60. Two days before the clincher, they were blown out in the first game of a doubleheader against a Nationals team they’d dominated all season. Then came a win, and then another, interspersed with a couple of Brewers losses. Suddenly, it was Nola on the mound needing one game to clinch.

» READ MORE: Projecting the Phillies’ playoff roster: Who’s in, who’s out in series vs. Mets or Cardinals

The trials and tribulations of the last week should not obscure the real opportunity they will soon stare down. In Wheeler and Nola, they have two of the most formidable starting pitchers in the National League, a couple of No. 1 starters who have the experience and stuff to win a game on his own. In Alvarado, they have a reliever who, at the All-Star break, somehow transformed into one of the best lefty setup men in the game. For sure, they need others to step up. They need David Robertson to be the guy he was before he walked five batters in his last two outings. They need Seranthony Domínguez to be the guy he was before his stint on the injured list. They need the lineup to hit.

But all of those things are at least within the realm of possibility. They have happened before.

» READ MORE: How the Phillies’ latest playoff drought stacks up to others in MLB history

It has been a weird year, and it has the potential to get even weirder. For the first time in a regulation season, the Phillies are one of six teams in the playoffs, two of which will spend the next week watching and waiting to find out whom they face. Who knows how it all plays out.

Some things don’t change. Pitching is what matters most this time of year. Nola showed that in a Game 160 clincher. Five days from now, he’ll be on the mound in Game 2, one day after Wheeler in Game 1. The smart money may not be on the Phillies. But there is reason to hope.