Leading up to the Aug. 3 trade deadline in Major League Baseball, the contending Phillies were expected to add, among other wish-list items, a starter to fortify the rotation for the stretch drive. While they did add a much-needed infield bat in Luis Arraez, Dave Dombrowski and company did not fetch a starting pitcher. What if, though, a resurgent veteran already in place stepped into the breach?
What if indeed. Aaron Nola, the 33-year-old Phillies lifer, may be just such a solution, at least if the quality of his recent innings is any guide. Nola is in the third year of a $172 million pact that runs through the 2030 season. Thus far, that contract has been a wreck from the club standpoint, as Nola, since the start of the 2025 season, has pitched to a 5.49 ERA over 43 starts. Submerged within those grim overall numbers, however, are Nola's last five starts:
Thanks to this quintet, Nola has lowered his ERA for the 2026 season from 5.82 to 5.12. That stretch includes Wednesday's gem, in which he spun seven frames of one-run ball against the Marlins with eight strikeouts and no walks. That was good for a Game Score -- a quick-and-dirty stat that measures the effectiveness of a pitcher in a given start -- of 71. That's Nola's highest figure of the season.
"Just all my pitches, how they feel, and winning the counts and not walking guys," Nola on Wednesday told reporters, including MLB.com, of what's driven his recent surge. "Gotta keep trying to keep the ball down and in the ballpark."
Overall, not much has changed with Nola's pitch mix over this five-start stretch. For a couple of turns, he de-emphasized his curveball in favor of his changeup, but that hasn't really been the case over his most recent pair of starts. He has, however, leaned on his cutter less often than he did earlier in the season. Nola's fastball velocity over these last five starts is also up a bit relative to his prior work this season, which may speak to the improved feel he noted above.
Whatever the underlying reasons, subtle as they may be, Nola has not just kept runs off the board over his last five starts; he's also struck out 28.8% of batters over that stretch. Prior to that, he had a strikeout rate of 23.6% this season. That's a significant jump and an encouraging sign, particularly since it hasn't come at the cost of control.
There are, however, caveats. Nola's FIP, or fielding-independent pitching (a pitcher's "deserved" ERA after the effects of luck and team defense are removed), is 4.51 over his last starts, or two full runs higher than his ERA. That's a concern moving forward, in that regression toward that higher figure is possible. The Phillies and Nola, though, will certainly take these recent results and hope that his recent capacity to strike out more batters is the stronger indicator when it comes to future performance.
As for the Phillies as a whole, they enter Thursday's off-day having won six in a row. That puts them at a season-best 12 games over .500 and in second wild-card position in the National League. They're also now a workable 4 ½ games behind the first-place Braves in the NL East. As such, the Phillies are strong bets -- 76.8%, according to SportsLine -- of making the playoffs for a fifth straight year. The recent Nola renaissance raises hopes that the Phillies, assuming they do indeed make the postseason, will have a ship-shape rotation by that point. Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, and Jesús Luzardo are certainly up to the task, based on their 2026 outputs. Increasingly, Nola has looked like their peer. The Phillies need that to continue if an October deep run is in their near future.
