PHILADELPHIA — Through his first five tries this season, pitching was kind of a pain in the neck for Aaron Nola.
The longest tenured Phillie never did warm up much to pitching when there’s still a chill in the air, thus was an inconsistent April force on the mound. But Nola had never had a season start like this one, a loser in his first five starts with an ERA of 6.43 and a 1.61 WHIP after lasting one out deep into the seventh inning in a road loss to the Mets on April 21.
He was missing with pitches. His curve was being thrown too much, probably because his cut fastball simply wasn’t cutting enough.
“His command,” Phils manager Rob Thomson observed early Saturday, “wasn’t very Nola-like.”
But somewhere between New York and Chicago something turned, and Nola went seven strong innings in what subsequently became a 3-1 Phillies win over the Cubs last week. Finally, on Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park, it really came together as Nola blanked the Arizona Diamondbacks through six innings, limiting them to four hits and striking out eight on the way to his first win of the season, a 7-2 Phillies victory.
He was mixing his pitches beautifully. His fastball was suddenly ticking up a couple of digits, which made his other stuff work all the better. And, of course, that cutter was back in style.
“All my pitches feel pretty good right now,” Nola said after the Phillies won for the sixth time in seven games. “I’m getting ahead of the hitters a lot better than I was my first few starts, and put them away when I need to. The fastball was felt good coming out of the hand. I think I threw some really good ones down in the zone. I’ve been trying to work on that quite a bit. I got a couple of freezes on it.”
Not coincidentally, Nola freezes opposing batters much better when the temperature goes up. But the breezy warmth at Citizens Bank Park on this night helped him in another way, too. The more he pitched, the more a literal pain in his neck subsided.
The stiffness hit some 45 minutes before this second game of the series against the dangerous Diamondbacks, Nola freshening in the weight room when he suddenly felt stiffness on one side of his neck.
“It just kind of locked up on me,” he said.
He informed the trainers and his coaches, who in turn let catcher J.T. Realmuto in on it while he was warming up before the game.
“I was kind of on high alert in the bullpen, trying to watch his pitches and see if anything was moving differently or to see if his stuff was different,” Realmuto said. “But it was just as sharp as it normally is. So once the game started I didn’t really think about it again.”
For Nola, the problem was significant, but also somewhat fortunate.
“Luckily it was on my right side, so I could look left and everything was normal,” he said. “It didn’t get any worse during the game. I don’t think it’s going to be any long-term thing.”
Nola said even when he was heading out to pitch, his neck “felt like it needed a pop, and it wouldn’t pop.” But he realized quickly that he could work around it as he worked through the Diamondbacks’ lineup.
“If it was on the left side it might have been a little different,” he said. “But I was for sure going to go tonight. I got out there and started throwing and felt it a little bit. It was mainly on the finish, but other than that not too bad. Once I got kind of warm, I kind of got used to it.
“As the game went on I didn’t really think about it much.”
As it happened, the Phillies offered their pitcher a helping hand, too. For some reason, Nola often isn’t treated to a fair share of run support. That wasn’t going to be the case in this game, as in the second inning, left fielder Max Kepler blasted a two-run homer. Realmuto followed with a double, Alec Bohm singled and Brandon Marsh doubled, and that fast Nola had a three-run lead to act as a salve.
Both for his neck and that stiff season start.
“It’s good to get that off my back, I guess,” he said of his overdue first win. “But like I said, you can’t really control the win-loss record. I can only control things we can control out there. For me, it’s just trying to command the ball and get my body in a good position.
“Whether it’s 0-0, or we’re losing, or we’re winning like tonight, I’m usually kind of the same way. I’ve never tried to get complacent no matter how big the gap is. But those guys came out hitting pretty quick tonight. I thought that was awesome.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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