PHILADELPHIA – Before anything else happens in the first game of the Phillies’ season Thursday, Aaron Nola will pick up a baseball.
Before Bryce Harper swings or Jean Segura fields or Andrew McCutchen runs or Rhys Hoskins digs out a throw at first, Nola will whip his right arm toward the plate.
Before there is one cheer in Citizens Bank Park, there will be 0.4 seconds of telling, captivating silence as Nola’s first delivery sails toward J.T. Realmuto. For it is in that moment, and for the next 3,100 pitches Nola must throw before October, that the Phillies’ chances to win anything in 2019 will be measured.
Harper is a superstar, by any definition, an A-list paparazzi obsession able to drive baseballs into seats and customers into the souvenir shops. Hoskins is a developing All-Star. Realmuto is the best catcher in baseball. McCutchen is a relatively recent MVP. But as much as John Middleton has earned a jolly-good-fellow chorus for attacking the offseason wallet first, his noble attempt at real-life rotisserie baseball will fail unless Aaron Nola is great. Fortunately for him, there is evidence that Nola can be just that.
“There’s not a more prepared individual than Aaron Nola,” Gabe Kapler was saying the other day at the ballpark. “There is nobody who has a better, more respectable routine than Aaron Nola. He has a rhythm for what he does between starts. He’s got an intensity for what he does between starts. And when you have talent and you have an incredible process, that is a recipe for a guy who has the ability to get better.”
It will be difficult for Nola to be better than he was last year, when he began the season at 11-2, earned a spot in the All-Star Game, provided 212.1 innings of excellence and a 2.37 ERA and finished third in the N.L. Cy Young Award election behind only Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, both of whom had legendary seasons of their own. Yet by their offseason actions, that is what the Phillies clearly are expecting. How else to explain Middleton barking that he wants the World Series trophy back and then spending as if he meant every syllable, yet making exactly zero improvements to a starting rotation of a team that finished below .500? They are expecting Nola, at 25, to grow from All-Star to superstar, from staff ace to a budding Hall of Fame candidacy, from finishing close in a Cy Young race to winning one in a landslide. They are counting on him winning four out of his every five starts and carrying a rotation with as many blemishes as accomplishments.
The Phillies are right to expect greatness from Nola. Hardly an overachiever, he was the seventh overall pick in the 2014 draft after a successful career at LSU. He was drafted to be a No. 1 starter, and by last season, he was a good one. But he has had just four seasons of major-league experience, has struggled with injury, and as recently as two seasons ago was just 12-11. He should be a star. And the Phillies are paying him that way, raising his salary from $573,000 last season to $4.5 million, and locking him in until age 30, when he gradually will have become a $16 million pitcher. But technically, Nola’s 2018 outburst was the exception on his career stat sheet. And do the Phillies know, do they really know, if that will continue?
“He’s improved,” Kapler said. “He went back and saw the areas he needed to grow, and he attacked that. And if you had to bet on a personality that would improve, it’s probably him.”
Probably. And if so, whatever else the Phillies try through 162 games will be enough to reach the postseason. If Nola is again a star, and if Jake Arrieta channels enough of his many talents to be consistent, then Kapler will need only one more from the group Pete Mackanin once labeled the “usual suspects,” to pop. And Nick Pivetta, Zach Eflin and Vince Velasquez all have shown that ability. Jerad Eickhoff is also in reserve, working his way back to full efficiency in the minors after missing almost all of last season. And that should be enough to plop the Phillies in contention by the trade deadline, when Middleton will buy, not sell. At that point, it is widely speculated, Madison Bumgarner will be in play.
That is a departure from the last Phillies effort to win a title. That’s when they employed Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels and were convinced they would avoid any losing streaks. But even since then, the game has changed, with bullpens becoming deeper and more versatile. And Kapler will have plenty of options in relief, long and short.
“It’s definitely exciting,” Nola said. “We have a good team. We have a lot talent. We have a playoff team. But there are no guarantees. We’ve got to take it game by game. There are no guarantees we will make the playoffs or the World Series. We have to go out and compete. But we all believe that we can get there, especially the guys who have been here.”
They have that ability. But they need a strong top of an all-right-handed rotation.
“For me,” Nola said, “it’s about making quality pitches and going out there, competing and giving the team in the best chance to win.”
It’s the only way it will work. It’s the only way any of it will work.
