GDT 5/4/26 Philadelphia Phillies (Nola, A) @ Miami Marlins (Junk)

[kmc1019]

Huge for Nola to have a night where he can resemble his former self. Now let's hold on to it for the rest of the year.

[VoteForKalas]

Kudos to Harper, pretty much the entire offense tonight. Congrats to Nola

[LoneStarPhan]

Very good pitching tonight with the combined shutout. Great to win a 1-0 game. Nola with a solid six and three relievers (Banks, Alvarado, Keller) looking better than they have of late. Harper with three hits wins it on the homer.

[EastFallowfield]

Considering how many annoying series Phillies have had down there, I'll take a frustrating 1-0 win and 3 of 4 over many other possible outcomes.

[Philsmania]

Yesterday's game was one of those take the bad with the good games. Bad the offense was so bad, yet again. Good that Nola and the beleaguered bullpen were on, that our run differential is close to no longer being the worst in baseball (-42 for us -41 for the Orioles) and that we took three out of four and have now won 7 of 9, although it was May the Fourth be With You Day not Star Trek Day.

[Callison]

Nola rejoins team!

Wonder what was so different that everything worked yesterday that didn't work previous games? Maybe Nola does too.

Many will be anxious to see what he can do next game. Everybody knows he can pitch this way once in a while - earned him one of those Casty/Walker contracts.

Good luck Aaron Nola. The team needs the guy who pitched yesterday.

[andyb]

Nola got 3 extra days rest to work on things. Wheeler likes less rest but Nola likes more. Added benefit of fitting Nola in between the 2 lefties in the rotation.

[Philsmania]

Nola got 3 extra days rest to work on things. Wheeler likes less rest but Nola likes more. Added benefit of fitting Nola in between the 2 lefties in the rotation.

Wasn't there talk that getting used to the pitch clock in 2023 was a bit of a struggle for Nola and that he was a guy who liked to take things at his own pace?

[zambonir]

And now there's talk that he's been struggling with ABS, because he's a guy who works the edges.

[mdougherty12]

In terms of pitch selection, Nola threw fewer sinkers and more change ups yesterday. His 2 best starts of the season (yesterday and 4/3 in Colorado) are the starts with the fewest sinkers thrown based on the pitch tracking:

https://www.brooksbaseball.net/tabs.php?player=605400&p_hand=-1&ppos=-1&cn=200&compType=none&gFilt=&time=month&minmax=ci&var=gl&s_type=2&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=05/05/2026&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1

[andyb]

I don't know how ABS impacts starting pitchers that much. All you get is fewer missed calls now and with ABS the misses are in both directions. Plus relievers are more likely to get challenged since there are only 2 challenges and teams should (read this Justin Crawford...) hold them until later in the game.

I just think Nola's command is sharper with more rest. He also had his change going last night so that might be a legit example of working on things.

[zambonir]

If Nola believes it, it can affect him.

Aaron Nola's room for error is shrinking — and fastball issues persist

Part of Nola’s career has been built on pitches near the edges. He believes that part of the job has become more difficult.

“The strike zone’s a lot smaller,” Nola said. “I don’t really have as much room for play as we used to. I don’t get as many calls that I used to, so that changes the whole game.”

Nola has always needed precision, but the ABS challenge system has made borderline pitches harder to live on.

“You’ve got to be a little bit more precise nowadays with the ABS,” he said.

[andyb]

Theoretically a smaller strike zone (and we might very well have that with walks up) would be an advantage to a precise command pitcher like Nola. Walks are up this year, but runs scored is not up by that much (maybe the warmer weather will change that).

Nola has been around long enough that all this should not matter. The key as always is to make fewer mistakes.