There are nights in baseball that make no sense. And then there was Friday night in South Philly — when Aaron Nola, the pitcher who has spent the better part of six months looking lost, suddenly turned back into the ace who once carried a franchise. The same Aaron Nola who has been booed, doubted, and nearly banished to the bullpen delivered a performance that was as much about redemption as it was about history.
For nearly six innings, he was untouchable. Twelve up, twelve down. Every pitch on time, every out piling up like this was 2018 again. And then, in a flash, it was gone. Christian Vázquez launched a solo home run to left, a reminder that perfection never lasts. But even that couldn’t ruin what felt like Nola’s night. He retired the next seven of eight hitters he faced, allowed only one more hit — a leadoff triple to his old teammate Kody Clemens — and finished eight innings looking like a pitcher reborn.
The moment that mattered most came an inning earlier. When Nola struck out Edouard Julien in the fifth, he wasn’t just adding another to his tally. He was climbing past Robin Roberts on the Phillies’ all-time strikeout list. Roberts, the Whiz Kid who defined a generation of Phillies pitching, had held that spot since the 1950s. And now the man behind him is Aaron Nola, with 1,876 strikeouts, second only to Steve Carlton’s otherworldly 3,031. “It’s humbling, for sure, to be on the list with those guys,” Nola said afterward, still trying to wrap his head around the company he now keeps.
That it happened in a season this miserable almost feels like a Philly script. The ERA still sits at 6.01. The win-loss record will forever look like an obituary for a year gone wrong. But on the final weekend of the regular season, Nola somehow found a way to make you believe again. Eight innings. Nine strikeouts. No walks. A pitcher who looked nothing like the one who stumbled through spring, or who couldn’t stop the bleeding in May, or who wore the face of frustration all summer.
The Phillies won, 3-1, their 95th of the year, marking consecutive 95-win seasons for the first time since 2010 and 2011. Edmundo Sosa added to the theater with another one-handed swing that wound up in the seats, his 11th homer. Brandon Marsh chipped in with an RBI double. And Jhoan Duran, pitching against his old team for the first time since coming over at the deadline, wriggled out of trouble in the ninth to seal it.
But this night was never about Sosa or Marsh or Duran. It was about the one man who has been everything from ace to enigma in this town. It was about the pitcher the Phillies once trusted with October, and may yet again. With Zack Wheeler sidelined, the postseason rotation will hinge on Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, and Ranger Suárez. Nola’s role is still unclear, maybe a Game 4 in the NLCS, maybe a $172 million bullpen piece. Whatever it is, he insists he’s ready. “I’ll do whatever, man,” he said. “Whatever helps the guys win.”
That’s the paradox of Aaron Nola. The season tried to break him, but the history books say otherwise. On a night when he chased perfection, passed a Hall of Famer, and finished a lost year with his best performance, the Phillies got one more glimpse of the pitcher he once was — and maybe the one they’ll need again in October.
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