Aaron Nola’s nightmare season continues, Phillies blow 5-0 lead and lose to the Pirates 11-7
The Phillies jumped on the Pirates with three homers in the first three innings on Monday night at Citizens Bank Park with Turner leading off the first with a solo shot, Marsh following later in the inning with another one, and Harper scorching one in the third to build a 5-0 lead that felt comfortable enough that you could sit back and relax for the first time in weeks after a road trip that required late-inning heroics in practically every game.
Trea Turner Leadoff Home Run – CRUSHED
Brandon Marsh – RING IT
Bryce Harper – RING IT
Harp Again For Good Measure
The first five balls the Phillies put in play were all hit hard, the offense was clicking from the first pitch, and Aaron Nola was rolling through the first three innings with the kind of stuff that made you think maybe, just maybe, this was going to be the start where the veteran figured things out and gave the Phillies the quality outing they’ve been waiting for from the fourth starter all season.
Then the fourth inning happened.
Nola did what Nola has been doing all season, which is take a perfectly good lead and hand it back to the opposing team one hanging pitch at a time until the boos are raining down from the stands and Mattingly is walking to the mound to pull him before things get any worse.
The Phillies lost 11-7 to Pittsburgh in a game they were winning 5-0 after three innings because Nola allowed five earned runs before getting pulled in the fifth with the bases loaded, the bullpen couldn’t hold the damage, and a team that just completed one of the most dramatic road trips in franchise history came home and lost to the Pirates because their fourth starter can’t get through five innings without imploding.
Nola’s ERA Is 6.04 Through 17 Starts…
Aaron Nola made his 302nd start in a Phillies uniform on Monday night, passing Chris Short for the third-most in franchise history, and the milestone was completely overshadowed by the fact that his ERA through 17 starts this season is 6.04, which is tied for the fourth-highest by any Phillies starter through 17 starts since the year 2000.
For context, Nola’s ERA through 17 starts last season during his injury-riddled 2025 campaign was 6.01, which ranks fifth on the same list, meaning Nola is pitching worse this year while healthy than he did last year while hurt.
The Phillies signed Nola to a seven-year, $172 million extension before the 2024 season after he made a league-high 33 starts with a 3.52 ERA that year, and what they’ve gotten since is a pitcher who has allowed 19 homers through 17 starts this season after giving up a league-high 30 in 2024, 32 in 2023, and 18 in a shortened 2025.
The home run ball has been Nola’s Achilles heel for four consecutive seasons now and Monday night was the latest example of a pitcher who can generate swings and misses with his curveball but can’t stop leaving pitches in the zone that get deposited over the wall.
Nola had 23 swings and misses on Monday, the second-most in any start of his career, and he still gave up five earned runs because the whiffs don’t matter when the mistakes get punished at a rate that erases whatever positive at-bats the strikeouts create.
He struck guys out and gave up homers in the same outing because that’s been the Nola experience all season where the stuff plays well enough to miss bats but the location betrays him often enough that opposing lineups can sit on mistakes and do damage when the misses come.
The Fourth and Fifth Innings Were a Disaster
Esmerlyn Valdez crushed a 2-1 knuckle curve that Nola hung in the zone for a two-run homer that traveled 411 feet in the fourth inning, cutting the lead to 5-2 and signaling that the pitch Nola had been leaning on as a career-high 33.9 percent of his mix was suddenly getting punished the same way his fastball and sinker have been getting punished all season.
Jared Triolo opened the fifth with a solo homer on a 3-1 sinker that leaked over the plate to make it 5-3 before Jake Mangum doubled on another hanging knuckle curve and the inning completely unraveled from there.
Konnor Griffin laid down a bunt single, a sacrifice fly made it 5-4, Griffin stole second, advanced to third on a Realmuto throwing error, and Nola walked Bryan Reynolds to load the bases before getting ahead of Ryan O’Hearn 0-2 and then failing to put him away as a 2-2 sinker leaked over the plate for a game-tying single.
Getting ahead 0-2 on O’Hearn and giving up a tying single on a 2-2 count is the most Aaron Nola sequence imaginable because the ability to get into favorable counts without being able to finish hitters off has defined his entire season and Monday was the most painful example yet of a pitcher who can set up the punchout but can’t deliver the knockout blow.
Nola walked Valdez after the O’Hearn single to load the bases again and Mattingly pulled him as the boos came down from a Citizens Bank Park crowd that had been celebrating three early homers and a 5-0 lead barely an hour earlier.
Seth Johnson came in with the bases loaded and every runner charged to Nola before a walk and a two-run fielding error by Turner pushed Pittsburgh’s lead to 8-5 and effectively ended any chance of the Phillies clawing back into a game they were dominating three innings ago.
This Was Nola’s Fifth Start Allowing Five or More Earned Runs
Five times in 17 starts Nola has given up five or more earned runs, which means roughly 30 percent of his outings have been blowups that put the Phillies in a hole before the bullpen even has a chance to get involved.
He’s allowed multiple homers in four consecutive starts, which is only the second such streak of his career, and the combination of home runs and inability to finish hitters in two-strike counts has turned every Nola start into a coin flip where the Phillies are essentially hoping the offense scores enough to overcome whatever damage their fourth starter gives up before getting pulled.
Monday’s loss was particularly frustrating because the offense did its job by scoring seven runs and hitting four homers on the night, including Marsh’s ninth homer of the month that was a solo shot in the eighth after his All-Star banner was unveiled in left field earlier in the evening.
Realmuto added an RBI single in the eighth to make it a two-run game and Schwarber narrowly missed tying it in the seventh when he pulled a potential three-run homer just foul, which would have been the kind of late-inning hero moment that defined the entire road trip.
The offense produced eight two-strike hits and four two-strike homers and it still wasn’t enough because Nola’s five earned runs and the bullpen’s inability to contain the damage after he left turned a 5-0 lead into an 11-7 loss.
The Phillies Bullpen Wasn’t Good Either
The five comeback wins on the road trip through Washington and New York required repeated late-inning work from the leverage arms in the bullpen, and the Phillies came home with Alvarado, Kerkering, Duran, and the rest of the back-end relievers running on fumes after a stretch where the bullpen was asked to cover four or five innings in multiple games because Nola and the fifth starter couldn’t go deep enough to protect leads.
Keller is still out with elbow inflammation and Mattingly noted he’ll throw live BP on Tuesday, but the bullpen depth has been stretched thin enough that Mattingly didn’t want to use another back-end arm in the ninth when the game was already out of reach and the priority shifted to preserving the relievers for the rest of the series.
Endy Rodriguez’s three-run homer in the ninth sealed the final score at 11-7 in an inning where Mattingly chose to save his best arms for games the Phillies can actually win rather than burning them in a loss that was already decided.
That’s the right decision for the marathon of a 162-game season but it resulted in a final score that looked worse than the actual competitive portion of the game, which was effectively over when Nola was pulled in the fifth with the bases loaded and the lead gone.
Trea Turner Is… Back?
The one genuinely positive development from Monday night was Turner leading off the game with a homer and continuing a hot streak that has completely transformed his season over the last two weeks.
Since June 17 Turner is slashing .340/.377/.460 with an .837 OPS across 12 games after spending the first 71 games hitting .216 with a .598 OPS and looking like a completely different player than the one who won the NL batting title last season.
The adjustment has been about pulling the ball more consistently with his pull rate climbing to 36.8 percent during the hot streak compared to the career-low rate he was posting during the cold stretch, and the hard-hit rate has jumped from 38.5 percent in his first 71 games to 47.4 percent over the last 12 because Turner is finally getting to pitches on the inner half and driving them instead of rolling over on everything and producing weak contact to the opposite field.
His BABIP has risen from .262 to .432 during the hot stretch, which tells you the quality of contact has improved dramatically and the balls Turner is putting in play are finding holes and carrying distance instead of dying in front of outfielders.
The Phillies already have Schwarber, Harper, and Marsh rolling at the plate and Turner continuing to find his pull-side power gives the offense another layer that makes the lineup significantly more dangerous from top to bottom.
If the .340 Turner sticks around for the second half instead of the .216 Turner who defined the first three months, the Phillies’ offensive problems largely solve themselves because the two-hole suddenly produces again and the ripple effect on the rest of the lineup is enormous.
The Phillies Need Too Much At The Deadline..
The Phillies do not have four starters they can trust right now because Sanchez, Wheeler, and Luzardo give them a top three that stacks up with any rotation in baseball while everything behind them continues to be a liability that costs the team games it should be winning.
Rangel has been serviceable in the fifth spot with the opener arrangement working well enough to keep the Phillies competitive, and Painter made his first Triple-A start since the demotion on Monday with one run over four innings but three walks that tell you the command issues haven’t been fixed yet.
Nola experimenting with a slider in recent weeks as another look to pair with the curveball, changeup, sinker, and fastball is the kind of tinkering that a struggling pitcher does when he knows his current approach isn’t working and is searching for anything that might change the equation.
Whether the slider eventually becomes a weapon or just another pitch that Nola leaves over the plate for opposing hitters to crush remains to be seen, but the Phillies can’t afford to wait for Nola’s experimentation to produce results while the trade deadline is more than a month away and every Nola start that produces five earned runs is a game the Phillies are essentially forfeiting.
The Phillies need to add another starter before August 3rd and honestly they might need to consider adding one sooner than that because the combination of Nola’s 6.04 ERA and Painter’s demotion leaves them with three reliable starters and a bunch of question marks behind them on a team that is three games back in the NL East and playing meaningful baseball every night.
Dombrowski has to be working the phones because the rotation depth behind the top three isn’t just thin, it’s actively undermining everything the Phillies have built under Mattingly over the last two months.
Seven runs from the offense on a night where they hit four homers and eight two-strike hits should be enough to win any baseball game, and the fact that it wasn’t enough because Nola turned a 5-0 lead into an 8-5 deficit in the span of two innings tells you everything about why starting pitching depth has to be the number one priority at the trade deadline.
The Phillies are 47-38 with the best top-three rotation in baseball and a fourth starter who is pitching at a 6.04 ERA clip while making $172 million. Something has to change and it has to change soon because the NL East race is tightening and the Phillies can’t keep spotting opponents five-run leads every time Nola takes the ball and expecting the offense to bail them out.
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