PHILADELPHIA — Aaron Nola didn’t pitch a baseball for four days. During the All-Star break, he took his wife on a trip to Key Largo, Florida. You ate good food. They relaxed.
“Yes, it was good,” Nola said. “I felt like I needed it. I feel like all the staff needed it. But we’re ready to come back and start the second half off right. And that was us.”
The Phillies have designed their rotation to give Nola, a pitcher who will draw more attention than anyone else in the last two and a half months of the season, the most amount of rest time possible. He’s made more starts than anyone in the sport since 2018. And in 7 1/3 innings on Tuesday against a rival Brewers team, Nola was excellent. The Phillies won 4-3 and continued their rise in the National League.
The rotation — and Nola in particular — is paramount to what the Phillies hope to achieve. Everybody knows.
“They keep us in the game offensively,” said Kyle Schwarber. “Even if we don’t score in the first few innings, we can go out and score the third time. They did a fantastic job at this track. These are the guys we can count on. They approached us.”
That’s one factor in the impending dilemma that Dave Dombrowski, the veteran manager tasked with bringing the Phillies back to the World Series, must consider before the Aug. 1 close. The Phillies will add plays. You’ll be looking for a right-handed outfielder: Tommy Pham is a logical target; The Mets have signaled to clubs that they are preparing for a sell-off. Additionally, it makes sense for the Phillies to consider a rotation upgrade.
The Phillies had been telling teams all along that they were waiting for clarity on their top pick, Andrew Painter, before jumping into the rotation market. But Painter suffered a setback earlier this month as he slowly recovered from a minor elbow sprain. The Phillies are hoping he can end 2023 healthy and somewhere in the minor class. He is no longer an option for the Oberliga this season.
“I mean, you can just do the math,” Dombrowski told MLB.com. “It just doesn’t make sense. I think basically since a few weeks when he had that[setback]I thought that was it for this year.”
Andrew Painter is off duty pitching in the majors this season, the Phillies say. (Brynn Anderson/Associated Press)
So now it makes sense for Dombrowski to take out insurance. The Phillies like their back four — Nola, Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suárez and Taijuan Walker. They would be comfortable with all four starting in a postseason game. It is a rotation that is durable and reliable. The Phillies have had a 3.50 ERA from their starters since Cristopher Sánchez was placed in fifth place on June 17. That’s fourth place in the majors this time. Sánchez has been an important player because the Phillies no longer feel like they’re fighting every fifth day and there’s a little less pressure on the other starters. The arrangement offers more comfort.
But even if Sánchez has been performing well for a month, a short string of poor performances is enough to raise doubts. He’s little behind in the minors, although Nick Nelson and Bailey Falter threw better in the triple A. Griff McGarry and Mick Abel had brilliant highlights at the Double-A Reading but need to hone their skills before they become viable options. Right now, if a major league regular were out with an injury for an extended period, the Phillies might just pick one of the powerful Double-A contenders and see what happens.
Because of this, Dombrowski will be looking into the starter pitching market. It is a market where demand far exceeds supply. The prices will be high. So if the Phillies are confident in their top four starters, they might not want to spend decent prospects acquiring something that would be a luxury.
As a result, rival teams in contact with the Phillies say Dombrowski’s front office isn’t buying in the first starting class. The Phillies tell teams they’d like to add a “deep” starter.
Dombrowski has done so on each of the last two trading deadlines. He took over from Kyle Gibson in 2021 and Noah Syndergaard in 2022. Both were seen as support for the back of the rotation and generally did what was expected of them.
This is the kind of pitcher Dombrowski could add by the 2023 deadline: someone who wouldn’t displace the top four starters, but who would take Sánchez’s place and at least provide a buffer if the Phillies did incur an injury in their rotation suffer.
If the Phillies go that route, it’s a bet the top four starters will keep doing what they do. Zack Wheeler wasn’t his best player this season, but he is, too had some of the worst defenses in all of baseball this year. Ranger Suárez and Taijuan Walker were ineffective earlier this season but have since acted as mid-rotation stabilizers. They’re not perfect, but the Phillies would trust them in a big game.
Aaron Nola allowed two earned runs in his first second-half start in 7 1/3 innings against the Brewers. After this season he will be a free agent. (Kyle Ross / USA Today)
It all leads back to Nola, because the Phillies know there’s extra gear in their homemade starter. You saw it at the track last September and the first few weeks of the postseason. Nola wasn’t that pitcher consistently in 2023. He left too many fastballs in the zone.
That was no clearer than his last outing before the break in Miami, when he conceded three home runs.
“I feel like I’m running down the hill,” Nola said. “Especially in Miami. A lot of fastballs were in the zone. It was difficult for me to get the ball down. So I just tried to slow down and simplify everything.”
It worked.
“We just wanted to give him some rest,” Thomson said. “He understood.”
30-year-old Nola has learned how to take less strain on his arm by doing less work between starts in the later months of the season. When he was younger, he might have scoffed at the idea of not pitching baseball for four days in the middle of the season. Now? He can see the big picture.
It’s nights like Tuesday that reinforce the Phillies’ belief in a rotation that they expect to carry well into October.
“Just go out and do my job,” Nola said. “That’s all I can focus on. I think it will take care of itself. Just focus on my stuff during the week and prepare as best you can for each start. Stay healthy. If I do that, anything can happen.”
(Top photo of Aaron Nola tipping his cap as he exits Tuesday’s start: Matt Slocum/Associated Press)