Less is more for Aaron Nola?

In Thursday night’s Field of Dreams game, Aaron Nola pitched five innings and looked very good in doing so. Yes, he gave up the obligatory home run, and he had to pitch out of a bases loaded jam in the fifth, but he only allowed one run while striking out nine.

Pitching well, but not very deep into games has been Nola’s thing lately. In his last eight starts, he’s pitched a total of 48 innings (5.6 per game) and given up an average of 2.5 earned runs per game. While that isn’t going to put him in contention for the Cy Young Award, he’s largely been keeping the team in games which is fine for a back of the rotation starter.

I wonder if this “quality over quantity” run has been by design. Nola has been one of the most durable pitchers in baseball throughout his career. From 2018 to 2024, he made 30+ starts every season (except for 2020) and was right around 200 innings pitched in each of them. That’s a lot of pitches on his arm, and at age 33, it’s understandable that he’s not the same pitcher he used to be, and adjustments have to be made.

When a pitcher expects to go six or more innings, he may not go all out from the start, hoping to have something left in reserve for later in the game. But if Nola – or perhaps the team – has decided that he’s only going to pitch into the fifth or sixth, then he might be giving maximum effort in the early innings. Obviously, it’s not ideal for one of your starters to never go deep in the game, but if he’s getting knocked out early, there doesn’t seem to be much difference.

How does this work come playoff time? Perhaps a lot like last year when in his only appearance, Nola was only asked to pitch the first two innings of a game. I could see the Phillies handling the fourth starter spot by having Nola pitch two or three, and Andrew Painter coming in after him. While the Phillies would likely prefer to have a stud pitcher with longevity in that spot (who wouldn’t?) at least a potential fourth starter game doesn’t look like a guaranteed loss the way it did a couple of months ago.