Aaron Nola’s development into a homegrown ace was central to the Phillies’ rebuild

As the negotiations got serious and the contract terms began to align more closely with his expectations, Bryce Harper pondered an ancillary benefit to playing for the Phillies for the next 13 years.

“The first thought,” he said, “was that I won’t have to face Aaron Nola anymore.”

Harper smiled, then chuckled, but here’s the thing: He wasn’t joking. He faced Nola 36 times across these past four years, and that was enough, even for one of the game’s preeminent middle-of-the-order mashers. Besides, if not for Nola, the Phillies might not have been in position to sign Harper to the largest contract in American sports history or to trade their top prospect for all-star catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Nola is the rarest of baseball creatures. He’s a homegrown, cost-controlled ace, and at 25, he’s only just reaching his peak. To a general manager, he’s like the Hope Diamond, a 1963 Ferrari GTO, or a winning Powerball ticket. He’s almost invaluable.

It’s possible to rebuild teams without drafting and developing No. 1 starters. The Red Sox got two of them by spending $217 million on David Price and trading prospects for Chris Sale. But it’s more economical to grow your own. The Dodgers’ decade-long success has come on the back of Clayton Kershaw. The Giants won three World Series with Madison Bumgarner. The Tigers captured four consecutive division titles with Justin Verlander.

And once that ace is in place, it opens up avenues to so many other things and makes it easier for an owner to spend half a billion dollars in one offseason to accelerate a 3 ½-year rebuild.

» READ MORE: John Middleton decided he was done rebuilding. Here’s how he turned the Phillies into contenders.

“From an organizational perspective, there really is no greater feeling than when you’re able to see a guy who was drafted and developed and came through the system make the kind of impact that [Nola] has made,” said Matt Klentak, the Phillies general manager charged with spending John Middleton’s cash. “For what he’s done on the field, for the work ethic that he brings to our team, for the humility that he brings, Aaron really is the perfect fit for our team and our city.”

Nola broke into the majors midway through the 2015 season, 11 months after being drafted with the seventh overall pick. But his real breakthrough came last season, when he went 17-6 with a 2.37 ERA and 224 strikeouts in 212⅓ innings and finished third in the National League Cy Young Award voting.

The Phillies spent 39 days in first place and, despite a late-season collapse, improved by 14 wins over 2017. But Nola’s maturation into a top-of-the-rotation stud was their most important development. So for all their offseason moves, the most significant might have been locking up the right-hander to a four-year, $45 million extension.

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And because Nola will count only $11.25 million against the competitive-balance tax in each of the next four seasons, the Phillies maintained the payroll flexibility to continue to add talent around him. Even after signing Harper, they can still compete for superstar free agents in future offseasons.

“When I got here in 2015, the fans and the city and the team, the whole organization welcomed myself and my family with open arms,” Nola said. “Ever since then, they've been so good to me, so respectful. I try to do that as much as I can right back at 'em.”

Nola is unfailingly humble. He rarely speaks above a whisper. He prefers to keep his head down than bathe in attention or plaudits. His reaction to finalizing the contract extension: a low-key call to his parents, who “pretty much screamed” upon getting the news back home in Baton Rouge, La., according to his mother, Stacie.

“Yeah,” Nola said, “they showed more emotion than I did.”

But beneath Nola’s aw-shucks exterior is an intense competitiveness. It simmers within him when he’s in the weight room or on the mound. And it probably explains how, in his third time through a batting order last season, he held opposing hitters to a .194 average and a .540 on-base plus slugging percentage.

Harper has seen it firsthand. He has also seen Nola’s growth into a full-fledged ace. After getting seven hits, including two home runs, in his first 13 plate appearances against Nola, he had only three hits in his last 23. Last season, Harper was 2-for-16 with one homer against him.

Where does Nola get his drive? He believes it’s a product of growing up with an older brother who wouldn’t let him play with the big kids.

“Him and one of our really good friends, they said I wasn’t good enough; I was too small,” Nola said. “I guess over time, I just kept wanting to play with them, be better and better, and then by the time you know it, I’m telling them they can’t play.”

Stacie and A.J. Nola still can’t get over their youngest son’s success. It’s not that they didn’t believe in him. But when they visit Philadelphia and see his likeness on a billboard or the side of a bus, or when they catch him chatting in the outfield before the All-Star Game with Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, it’s what A.J. describes as a “wow moment.”

“It’s weird,” Stacie said. “To see his name on someone’s jersey or hear people talking about him, or people want his autograph, it’s like, ‘It’s just Aaron.’ When we’re in Philadelphia and we see his banner when you’re walking down the street, you’re like, ‘Let’s get a picture with it.’ ”

Said A.J.: “He’s more popular in Philly than he is in Baton Rouge. I think he enjoys that, really. Very much.”

Almost as much as the Phillies enjoy having a homegrown ace around whom to build what they hope will be their next great team.

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