While they haven’t reached the territory of playoff lock just yet, the Phillies are playing better baseball since the All-Star break and have October dreams on their mind. Once they get there, the pressure will be intense, and the Phillies have their share of star players who will have an opportunity to shine on baseball’s biggest stage.
It’s a team effort for sure, but you can always point to one or two players on any successful club who gave their team an edge in a certain area or provide a timely boost to make the difference between a long playoff run and an early exit. In his latest piece for The Athletic, former MLB general manager Jim Bowden looked for these margins by identifying one or two ‘X-factor’ players for every team currently in the wild card chase in each league (subscription required).
Two Phillies pitchers could be X-factors for the team when the season is on the line in October.
Many names on Bowden’s list are centerpiece players who are in the process of coming back from injuries, names like Aaron Judge and José Ramírez. But when he turns to the Phillies, Bowden assesses the situation correctly and points out two active pitchers — Aaron Nola and Andrew Painter — who could be the ultimate determiners of the team’s postseason fate in 2026.
The Phillies’ rotation triumvirate of Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, and Jesús Luzardo matches up with any trio in baseball, giving the Phillies’ a formidable staff that can compete in any series. But it’s been the soft underbelly of the rotation that has hurt the Phils this year, with the team putting up a combined record of 17-25 in games started by Nola or Painter. Thankfully, the results have been better of late, as the team has won three of Nola’s last four outings and Painter’s last two starts, emphasizing the critical nature of their continued progress in preventing the team from giving back the gains made from efforts by the “Big Three” at the top of the rotation.
Nola and Painter are also important pieces to the puzzle because of what’s behind them, which is essentially next to nothing, aside from the just-signed Nestor Cortes. Likely signed just to give the Phillies some September innings and provide extra rest for the front-line pitchers entering October, Cortes won’t even be with the team for a while, so there really are no other options. Nola and Painter have to pitch well, right now and in the immediate lead-up to the postseason, to give the Phillies any kind of margin for error.
Teams with two or three reliable starters, if they even get to the playoffs, can only mix and match pitchers for so long until they are exposed. But a viable fourth option, either or both of Nola or Painter, would make a world of difference for the Phillies’ full-season outlook and confidence within the locker room. The Phillies can’t put themselves in the position where a misstep by any of their top three pitchers spells doom.
While the team isn’t out of the woods yet, recent performances by Nola (2.51 ERA over his last five starts) and Painter (2.93 ERA over three starts prior to Sunday’s outing vs Minnesota) have inspired more confidence that the pitching side of things could be in order for the postseason. Hitting is a separate issue that the Phillies’ hurlers can’t control, of course, and it remains to be seen how the team’s big bats react in pressure situations this fall.
It’s accurate to affix the ‘X-factor’ label to Aaron Nola and Andrew Painter for the Phillies because the team will need a real contribution from at least one, and probably both, of them if the World Series is in the cards for this team. As Bowden notes, “Even if they barely squeak into the playoffs, the Phillies will be in much better position to succeed as a postseason team than they have been in the regular season because they won’t need more than four starters in any series.”
The Phillies could be just one more reliable arm from a World Series appearance or even winning it all, and that arm could already be here. Nola and Painter are basically ‘Plan B’ for each other as the Phillies’ staff walks the tightrope into the playoffs. If they lose their balance, there is no safety net. Not this year for this team.
Add us as a preferred source on Google