Another pitching gem by Reading's Nola

 ERIE, Pa.

By the look of the box score, it was another grim day for baseball back in Philadelphia. A couple of early leads disintegrated and a late rally fell short, leaving the last-place Phillies nearly 10 games out of first place two weeks before Memorial Day.

If you were fortunate enough to be in Pennsylvania's fourth-largest city Sunday afternoon, you would at least feel better about the organization's future. That's because it was Aaron Nola's day to pitch at cozy Jerry Uht Park.

You can question whether the Phillies' 2014 first-round draft pick will ever develop into a big-league ace because his best weapon is his feel for pitching rather than a searing fastball. There is no denying, however, that he is the top man in a Reading rotation filled with five legitimate big-league prospects.

Nola, a 21-year-old righthander, showed why so many people are excited about him with a dominating eight-inning performance that allowed the double-A Reading Fightin Phils to end a three-game losing streak with a 4-1 win in their series finale against the Erie SeaWolves.

"That's a lot of fun to watch," a National League scout said as he sat behind home plate on an unseasonably hot day near the shores of Lake Erie. "He really knows how to pitch."

Seated to the left of the scout were Tom Windle and Zach Eflin, two of the other young members of the Reading rotation. It was their day to chart pitches. Windle held the radar gun, and Nola's fastball sat in the 90-to-92-m.p.h. range. On this day he also had a nasty breaking ball and a solid change-up, but again, with Nola it's more about the art of pitching than the arsenal of pitches.

"I think his best weapon is just his ability to throw strikes," Windle said. "I think, for the most part, he always knows where it's going and he's always comfortable out there. As a teammate I'm really happy for him, but we also want to do what he does. He's kind of leading the way right now. He's got a full package with the stuff he has right now."

Nola threw 101 pitches Sunday, 66 of them for strikes. He started 17 of the 27 batters he faced with a strike.

"You do that every time and you're going to have a very long career," Eflin said. "It was unbelievable. That's exactly how I like pitching. The perspective behind home plate was he was just pounding the zone. Pounding, pounding, pounding and he just kept throwing the hitters off."

He eventually made one angry, too.

When Jeff McVaney was called out on a nasty breaking ball to start the bottom of the seventh inning, the Erie rightfielder turned to home plate umpire John Libka and complained that it was not a strike.

"It's easier for them to call a strike when you're throwing a lot of strikes," Eflin said.

Nola improved to 4-2 and lowered his ERA to 2.04 by allowing just four hits. He struck out eight to match a career high at the professional level and he did not walk a batter for the eighth time in 18 career outings. He has walked one or fewer 15 times.

Erie, despite the help of two Reading errors, sent three batters to the plate in six of the eight innings it faced Nola. But the righthander's best work, according to manager Dusty Wathan, might have come in the eighth, when he allowed his only run.

"He gets in the jam in the eighth where it's first and third with nobody out and he doesn't panic," Wathan said. "He gives up the run, but he gets his out on a sacrifice fly instead of trying to punch a guy out. We try to preach to these guys that you're going to give up runs . . . but there is a time and a place when you can give up a run, and that was one of them. We also talk about pitching over errors and he did that today. He was the total package."

Afterward, Nola was one calm Cajun.

"There was a point where I started to feel locked in during the middle of the game when I started getting outs on early counts on a couple of the hitters," said Nola, who has a 1.29 ERA in his last five starts. "Overall, though, my body felt great. I felt like I could have gone longer."

Wathan said he planned to let Nola go after the complete game if he had pitched a clean eighth inning, but the manager decided that eight was enough after the SeaWolves scored a run. Wathan also pointed out that if some in the scouting circles are correct and Nola becomes a No. 3 starter in the big leagues, it would be quite an accomplishment.

"Three is pretty good," the manager said.

That does not mean Nola cannot be more.

"It's hard to project guys," Wathan said. "Is he a number three? Yeah, he's probably a number three pretty soon in the major leagues. Can he develop into a number one? Probably he can. I never saw Greg Maddux pitch in the minor leagues, but I would imagine not many people said he was a number one just because he wasn't a flame thrower.

"But he got better as he aged and threw the ball where he wanted more and more and he was able to master pitch grips and move balls all over the place. I'm not going to compare Aaron to Greg Maddux, but I'm going to say I think he can get better and better. He doesn't have overpowering stuff, but there is a lot more that goes into pitching than overpowering stuff. The number one thing is throwing it where you want it, and he throws it where he wants it a lot."

For now, Nola is the undeniable ace at Reading, but Wathan knows that isn't going to last much longer and he's just fine with that, because his objective is to help build a better tomorrow in Philadelphia.

@brookob