JT Realmuto: People who say Nola’s not an ace don’t know baseball
A good rule of thumb for Phillies fans and the media would be that when the Best Catcher in Baseball speaks, you better be listening. After Aaron Nola’s masterful performance today against the St. Louis Cardinals, JT Realmuto was asked about Nola and what he thinks when people say “he’s not an ace.”
“If you look at Nola the last three or four years, I don’t know how you could possibly say he’s not an ace, he’s been a Top 10 pitcher in baseball so I’m not sure how that would be considered not an ace. If that was me, that would certainly fuel my fire.”
“I would say it’s people outside of the game of baseball who view it that way. People in the clubhouse and people on the field know that he’s an ace, on this team and other teams. Just look at the guy’s resume. I’m not really sure where that comes from but it’s not from people who know baseball.”
Since 2018, Aaron Nola is 35-19 with a 3.08 ERA and 1.10 WHIP. He has 67 more strikeouts than innings pitched and over that span, he leads all of the MLB in innings pitched which is one more out than Gerrit Cole and five more outs than Jacob deGrom.
I don’t know about everyone else but I agree with the BCIB, that sounds like an ace to me. Nola doesn’t really care about the chatter. He’s unbothered by it. Honestly, Nola seems unbothered about pretty much everything. Our ace has a low-key personality and I absolutely love it.
I’ll leave you with one more quote from Realmuto…
“He’s not Max Scherzer out there, he’s not huffing and puffing around the mound. I can see where that would confuse some people, but as far as getting outs and winning baseball games? He does a really good job of that.”
Mandatory Credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer
