The Phillies' Aaron Nola problem isn't going anywhere -- maybe a short leash is the answer

Remember Cole Hamels back in 2009?

Hamels was a year removed from a magical campaign, posting a 3.09 ERA in the regular season and then reaching an even higher level in the playoffs, leading the Phillies to a World Series title and earning MVP in the process. But it might as well have been a ten-year gap. The steady, confident Hamels was nowhere to be found in 2009, replaced by a skittish, inconsistent mess, prone to full-fledged meltdowns at the first sign of trouble. His ERA jumped over a full run, and while the Phillies showed all the signs of a club primed to repeat their title, The Hamels Problem loomed large in the background.

It all came to a head in Game 3 of the World Series. Cliff Lee had stolen Game 1 at Yankee Stadium with a legendary gem. In Game 2, an aging Pedro Martinez used all of his guile to nearly snatch another road win, but despite an admirable effort, the Phillies’ bats just couldn’t get to A.J. Burnett. Still, the Phils would be heading back home with the series 1-1, with the Citizens Bank Park faithful behind them, fully capable of taking control of the series.

The problem? Hamels was slated to start.

Through three innings, Hamels cruised, allowing just one baserunner as the Phillies stormed out to a 3-0 lead. But he wouldn’t survive the fifth inning, collapsing in ignominious fashion and turning that lead into a 5-3 deficit — one that the Phillies would never overcome, in the game or the series.

Which brings us to Aaron Nola. Or, to be exact, the 2023 version of Nola.

Like Hamels, Nola has a long track record of not just being an above-average starting pitcher, but a legitimately very good one. That’s not the version of Nola that the Phillies are getting in 2023, however, with last night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals serving as yet another reminder of that truth. After failing to escape the fifth inning for the third straight time, Nola’s full-season ERA sits at 4.62, and as the Phils enter the stretch run, Nola isn’t merely not showing signs of turning it around. He’s getting worse.

Also like Hamels in 2009, there’s at least a case to be made that Nola isn’t actually this bad. His 1.19 WHIP is ninth in the National League among starters, and all of his advanced metrics — FIP, xFIP, SIERA, basically all of the acronyms — look significantly better than his actual ERA. But all that really says is that Nola’s talent hasn’t disappeared; it’ll convince his suitors in free agency this winter that the pitcher is fully capable of bouncing back in 2024. It doesn’t really matter for the Phillies now, if Nola continues to show no sign of possessing consistent ability to keep actual runs off the board.

Are there plausible explanations for Nola’s frustrating season? Of course. Perhaps he’s gassed after throwing a combined 220 innings last year across the regular season and playoffs. Maybe his rhythm has been completely thrown off by the newly-implemented pitch clock. Maybe the pressure of pitching for his next contract has gotten to him. Or perhaps he’s just no longer the same ace-level starter he was from 2017 – 2020, given that now, two of his last three seasons have been underwhelming at best (the big difference between he and Hamels, for whom ’09 ultimately proved to be a brief speedbump in an otherwise-sterling Phillies career).

Frankly, the precise reason for Nola’s struggles — my guess is it’s a combination of all of the above reasons — is irrelevant to the Phillies in the here and now.

What matters is what to do with him.

After all, October is just two weeks away at this point. Playoff rotations need to be set. Strategies need to be designed. Manager Rob Thomson may have given Nola yet another vote of confidence following the team’s 5-4 victory on Friday (which came in spite of Nola, not because of him) and it makes sense to do that publicly, given the fact that so much of Nola’s struggles this season appear to be mental. But privately? He knows he has a team with World Series aspirations, and surely he realizes that he has a starting pitcher in his rotation that he simply can’t fully trust in October.

Maybe the Phillies can get by in the wild card round during a Nola start by simply bludgeoning Kyle Hendricks or Jameson Taillon for eight runs. But against the stacked Atlanta Braves? Or, if they pull the upset and make it past them, whoever they face from the AL? Come on. The Nola problem is destined to bite them at some point, just as it did in 2009 with Hamels.

So what can the Phillies really do here?

They could choose the path of least resistance, of course — simply keep him in his usual spot as the No. 2 behind Zack Wheeler and hope against hope the best version of Nola reappears when it matters most. It’s at least possible that could work. After all, as poor as Nola has been this season, he’s delivered six great starts (by my estimation) out of 30 total — that’s a 20 percent likelihood that he’ll pitch a gem. One in five isn’t great, but it’s better than zero. The upside is there with Nola; that’s part of why he’s been so frustrating to watch. Behind the fans’ anger is the knowledge that Nola should be better than this, he has been better than this. Perhaps he could be again.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t going to work. Nola has struggled all year, but he’s an absolute mess right now. He isn’t even tough to hit at the moment, which was his one bright spot most of the season (as shown by his strong WHIP) — he’s allowed 22 hits in 13.2 September innings (0.355 opponent batting average). Whether he’s just stuck in his own head at the moment or if fatigue is fully setting in, neither is an issue that the stress of playoff baseball is likely to resolve.

Option No. 2 is the one that would be most cathartic for Phillies fans — remove him from the playoff rotation and kick him to the bullpen. Frankly, Nola probably deserves it. Wheeler is obviously a lock. Ranger Suárez has just been plain old better than Nola this season, and was a stud in the playoffs last year as well. As for Taijuan Walker, he’s been something of the anti-Nola in 2023 — a pitcher with mediocre stats (though a better ERA than Nola) who pitches himself into bad situations regularly but tends to find a way out of them and position the Phillies to win. If they roll with a three-man rotation (at least to start the playoffs), there’s a very strong case to be made that Nola should be kept out of it.

But the problem is — regardless of how satisfying it might be for fans to see Nola punished for making them suffer through his starts this season — it would be a major risk dropping Nola in the bullpen and expecting him to provide actual playoff value in that role. He’s exclusively served as a starter at the MLB level, and asking a player who already appears to be struggling with confidence to adjust his approach on the fly seems like a recipe for disaster. Walker probably isn’t a bullpen fit — the early innings of his starts tend to be his worst, which isn’t a formula for relief success — but both Suárez and Michael Lorenzen have extensive, relatively recent experience as relievers, and have succeeded in that role. Moving one or both to the bullpen for the playoffs just makes more sense than dropping Nola there and expecting he’ll do anything except implode in the fifth or sixth inning of any game he appears in.

Finally, there’s the middle ground between the two options: Keep Nola in the rotation for the playoffs, but have him on an extremely short leash.

After all, for all of Nola’s struggles this season, he has performed quite well the first time through the order. It’s the second and third times when he’s generally faltered, just as he did on Friday.

• Nola first time through order: 3.42 ERA
• Second time: 5.12 ERA
• Third time: 5.03 ERA

Maybe the best play here is to essentially plan to use Nola as an opener. Let him keep his normal starter’s routine, hope he rolls through the first two or three innings, and then at the absolute first sign of trouble — even just a couple baserunners — get someone like Suárez or Lorenzen warming. Preempt the inevitable Nola meltdown, in other words, while squeezing as much of the good parts out of this 2023 version of him as possible.

In the regular season, yanking Nola at the first sign of trouble isn’t an advisable strategy, given the need for a five-man rotation during the daily grind and the justifiable desire to avoid taxing the regular bullpen pitchers for the same reason. In the playoffs, when every game matters so much more, and a five-man rotation is unnecessary? The equation changes dramatically.

Now, there’s no guarantee this strategy works, either. Perhaps Nola can’t even get through two innings in the playoffs, given the increased pressure and his rapidly declining level of current performance. It also just isn’t nearly as satisfying or confidence-inducing as Option 2, and it requires fans to trust that Thomson will pick the exact right time to pull Nola, just before a meltdown kicks into high gear.

Had the Phillies given Hamels just three innings back in that fateful Game 3 rather than five, maybe the entire complexion of the series changes, and that era would have produced two titles instead of just one. Or maybe not. In any case, The Nola Problem’s striking similarities to the one that club faced with Hamels — and how it ultimately played out — should serve as a cautionary tale for how not to approach this one.