Why Aaron Nola might be the Phillies' biggest factor the next four months | David Murphy
The Phils need the righthander to be a once-every-five-days injection of stability to the pitching staff.
Within the context of the next four months, the most important player on the Phillies roster might be Aaron Nola.
You saw it on Sunday, when the righthander returned from a month-long stay on the disabled list to cruise through seven innings on 89 pitches against the Pirates. Yes, the Phillies lost, but it's the cumulative effects of such outings that will provide them with the biggest benefit.
Right now, the thing that they need more than anything else is the thing that Nola is supposed to be: a once-every-five-days injection of stability to a pitching staff that has increasingly come to resemble a chaotic free-for-all.
Seven weeks into the season, most of the attention has focused on the shortcomings of the Phillies' bullpen, and for perfectly valid reasons that we need not rehash in this space. Yet every big-league bullpen has a symbiotic relationship with the starting rotation that precedes it, and the flux the Phillies have experienced within that unit hasn't helped Pete Mackanin's quest to get his late-innings guys clicking in their preferred roles.
Phillies starters enter the week averaging 5.48 innings per start, fewer than all but five NL teams: the Cubs (5.42), Brewers (5.23), Mets (5.37), Marlins (5.09), and Reds (4.94). A couple of weeks ago, Mackanin was talking about the need for a big-league hitter to produce quality at-bats consistently, regardless of their end result. The same can be said for a pitcher and his starts. The volatility the Phillies have experienced in that department has been hugely destructive.
The only Phillies starter averaging six innings per start is Zach Eflin, who has logged 36 innings in six outings. Otherwise, you've got your opening-day starter averaging 16.5 outs per start and your No. 2 averaging 17.1. Then, at No. 4 and No. 5, Vince Velasquez and Nick Pivetta have averaged just a shade more than four innings per outing: 12.6 outs per start in 12 starts.
The Phillies have seen a starter go six or more innings in just 17 starts, which ranks 27th in the majors. The Nationals, by comparison, have had a starter go 6+ in 31 of their games. Not once has a Phillies starter finished eight innings. That's not unprecedented — five other teams have failed to do so — but it's more destructive for a team that also features significant bullpen issues.
In short, the Phillies desperately need Nola to stay off the disabled list and be the pitcher they drafted him to be: a guy whose lack of elite-level strikeout stuff is offset by his consistency. He is only 24 years old, so his career arc is still in its infancy. Stephen Strasburg didn't eclipse 160 innings in a season until he was 24. But neither is Nola so young that he warrants limited expectations. At 24, Cole Hamels pitched 227 1/3 innings in the regular season and then won a World Series MVP.
When Nola has pitched, it has mostly been as advertised. In 37 career starts, he's averaged 17.1 outs per outing, with a 4.21 ERA that belies the strength of his rate stats: 8.9 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, and 0.9 HR/9 (a career 3.43 FIP, for those of you who care about such things). The lack of length has had more to do with the Phillies' careful handling of him than it does any failure on his part.
The Phillies are still at a point where they need to prioritize the future over the present. At some point, though, the future arrives only when the young guys arrive in the present. The Mets took Michael Conforto three picks after the Phillies took Nola. Conforto, an outfielder out of Oregon State whom the Phillies liked, is hitting .320 with a .412 OBP, 1.076 OPS and 11 home runs in 148 plate appearances for the Mets. In 690 career plate appearances, he has 32 home runs and an .832 OPS. The previous year, the Yankees took Aaron Judge out of Fresno State after the Phillies earlier selected J.P. Crawford. This year, Judge has been a huge reason the Yankees appear to have rebuilt on the fly, with 15 home runs and a 1.128 OPS in 164 plate appearances.
There's a big piece of the Phillies' bullpen issues that is independent of their starting pitching. But it's a lot easier to right the ship when the rotation is eating innings.