Sweep City: Phillies continue to beat up on bad teams in August, Nola’s knuckle curve might be BACK
The Phillies desperately needed to get Aaron Nola back to being a guy who gives them a chance to win every fifth day and lately, he’s doing exactly that. Wednesday night’s seven-inning gem in a 4-1 win over the Marlins was another loud reminder of the pitcher Aaron Nola can still be, even with the velo down in this ABS era.
Nola completed a sweep and pushed the Phillies to 12 games over .500 for the FIRST time all season. For three weeks I’ve been writing that the Phillies need to feast on an easy August schedule to give them some breathing room when a tough September begins and finally, we are seeing that come to life.
Aaron Nola and the Knuckle Curve
The pitch that keeps Aaron Nola alive in this league is the knuckle curve, and it all hinges on whether he can get into enough favorable counts to unleash it with two strikes.
Against Miami he faced 25 hitters and got into 17 two-strike counts, tying his season high. When Nola’s on the attack and not falling behind, he gets to play HIS game, and Wednesday he was in total control. Eight punchouts, tied for his second-most this year, and seven full innings for the first time since July 5.
The knuckle curve numbers are flat-out silly. The Marlins whiffed on 63 percent of them Wednesday. For comparison, they whiffed on 35.7 percent of the 51 he threw against them earlier this season. Thankfully, his signature weapon is coming all the way back and making good hitters look foolish.
Let’s talk about that 6th inning…
Nola breezed through five scoreless, and then the sixth got dicey, which is where he showed the exact backbone he’d been missing at times this year. Leadoff homer, a recurring gremlin for him, then two more reached with one out. Now it’s 3-1, tying run aboard, and Griffin Conine, one of Miami’s hottest bats, digging in.
That’s where the breaking ball took over and slammed the door. Two changeups to even it up, then three straight knuckle curves, the last one buckling Conine for a swinging strikeout.
Then Heriberto Hernandez, another guy who’s burned the Phillies before, got the same medicine, started and finished with the curve for another K. He bent, he didn’t break. THAT’S the difference between a steadying vet and a guy who melts down, and Mattingly had seen enough to send him back out for one more.
Three starts against the Marlins this year, just two earned runs over 18 2/3 innings, switching up his mix every time to keep them guessing. Over his last five starts he’s got a 2.51 ERA across 28 2/3 innings with 34 strikeouts. THAT is the stabilizing fourth arm this rotation has been screaming for, and the confidence in handing him a playoff start is growing by the outing.
The guy a lot of people wrote off is quietly making them eat it.
The Phillies manufactured exactly what Nola needed.
In the second, they scratched a run across with the bases loaded on a Garrett Stubbs infield single. Then in the third, Luis Arraez, the contact king, showed a little thump and launched his second homer as a Phillie, a two-run shot for a three-run cushion. Against Alcantara, that’s a big-time blow, and it let Nola pitch with the lead the rest of the way.
Bowlan Got Me BRICKED UP
Nola handed it to Jonathan Bowlan in the eighth and it got tense in a hurry. Two on, one out, tying run at the plate, before Brandon Marsh climbed the wall in foul territory for a massive second out.
Then Bowlan punched out Conine to escape and screamed toward the dugout walking off. I love that. For a team still trying to nail down the bridge to Duran, that kind of fire from Bowlan is exactly what you want to see.
Duran did the rest, slamming the ninth for his 28th save.
Brandon Marsh with two great plays in left
The Phillies are 12 games over .500 for the first time all season, fresh off a Marlins sweep, and sitting 4.5 back in the NL East. Mattingly won’t talk about the division publicly, but that gap is a whole lot smaller than it was two weeks ago, and this team is playing its best baseball of the year right when it counts.
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