Aaron Nola made his 23rd start of the season last night at Citizens Bank Park, he was facing a team that on paper isn’t one of the top teams in the league. In fact, they are around the bottom of the league with regards to wins but recently have surprised as they beat Nola and the Phillies last night for their 7th win in a row. This is despite some nice offense by the Phils last night with a home run by Nick Castellanos, but they were 2-12 with RISP.
Embed from Getty ImagesBack to the start by Aaron Nola. He fell victim to where he was at various times last year, giving up a home run in the middle of the game as we’ve seen him do many times this season. Nola still has more starts to go for this season but he gave up his 25th and 26th HR of the year last night, and his season-high mark is 27 for his career happened in 2019.
Embed from Getty ImagesSo what’s wrong with Aaron Nola? If you listened to Larry Anderson last night, it’s simple, he’s getting the ball up in the zone and right down the middle and batters are taking advantage of it. Nola needs to keep the ball down near the knees is what Anderson said Nola needs to do.
To complicate this, Aaron Nola is in the final year of his contract with the Phillies, he refused an offer that the Phillies made him, locking him up prior to the start of this season, and Nola stated that he didn’t want to discuss it during the season. Well, things have changed in regard to how the reliability of Nola to get that much-needed win for the Phillies has gone this season. Plain and simply, he just isn’t the ace that he used to be for this team. Even though last night, Yunior Marte could have picked up Nola but pitched equally as badly, giving up a couple of hits and the lead, leading to a blown save by him.
So how did Nola pitch last night? Here’s a video by the MLB breaking the night down from Nola:
