While I think we can all agree that Aaron Nola's career has been a big success and he stands as one of the best drafting and development stories that the Philadelphia Phillies have ever had, sometimes you have to wonder why certain things happen to him. This is particularly relevant right now in the wake of Wednesday night's beating at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals, which saw Nola surrender a career-high nine earned runs over 3 2/3 innings.
As Nola himself said, "I don’t really have another answer for tonight besides: Terrible," per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki.
It's hard to argue.
Aaron Nola's strange career trajectory hits a new low after latest dismal start
The 2025 season is becoming just another part of a bizarre career trend for Nola, which has seen him alternate objectively good years with objectively bad ones. His ERA marks from 2017 through 2025 read as follows: 3.54, 2.37, 3.87, 3.28, 4.63, 3.25, 4.46, 3.57, 6.16. It's been a pattern of "that's good!" immediately followed by "that's bad," and it all reads like my favorite ever Simpsons bit.
This year, however, it's particularly bad. Instead of Nola's ERA going up or down by a full run like it has tended to for almost a decade, it's shot up by over 2 1/2 runs from last year to this year. Now, I don't think anyone actually believes that he's going to end his 2025 campaign with an ERA over 6.00. But a horrid start like this will make it very difficult to even get it back down to the 4.78 range, the worst mark he's ever had, which he produced over 20 starts in 2016.
We've seen subpar performances — long stretches, in fact — from Nola numerous times before. When you start almost 300 MLB games and continuously take on a heavy workload (Nola has six top-eight seasons of innings pitched among NL pitchers), it's bound to happen. But this is the worst possible version of Aaron Nola. He tied for the NL lead in home runs allowed last year, and he is in heavy competition for the dubious distinction once again this season. Beyond his well-documented problems with the long ball, however, there are numerous other flashing lights on his dashboard so far in 2025.
Aaron Nola is now 1-7 with a 6.16 ERA in 9 starts so far this season. No one has more losses in baseball this season. His ERA is fourth worst in the majors. This is tough to see. pic.twitter.com/UCDNlcIpDG
— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) May 15, 2025
Hitters are absolutely teeing off on Nola through his first nine starts this year, producing an average exit velocity of 89.3 mph and a staggering hard-hit rate of 43.6 percent. The exit velocity is currently tied for the highest mark of his career, set in 2019, and the hard-hit rate easily eclipses his previous career-worst, with the 42.4 percent he saw against him in 2019 the only rate remotely in the ballpark.
The bad news doesn't stop there, as Nola's walk rate has risen to 7.3 percent, which is the highest he's had since the shortened 2020 season. And perhaps most concerning of all is the dip in velocity that we've seen from him over the first six weeks of the season, as evidenced at FanGraphs.
It seems the only silver lining is that the amount of ground balls, line drives, and fly balls which he is allowing are staying very consistent with what we've seen from him since 2022. Perhaps this indicates that maybe it's just some very bad luck (a .350 batting average on balls in play against him this year) that's to blame. His career mark in that area is under .300, so a correction is in order at some point. Whether or not it comes in a timely enough fashion is a different story.
Is Aaron Nola working through something physically and can't overcome it? Or is this perhaps the beginning of age-related decline and eventual breakdown for Nola, who turns 32 next month? The Phillies, on the hook for five more years and over $120 million, had better hope not.
Nola's performance on Wednesday should not have been allowed to go off the rails as much as it did, and manager Rob Thomson needs to keep a closer eye on the pitcher that was somehow considered a "co-ace" alongside Zack Wheeler not too long ago. It remains to be seen if Nola will take his next regular turn, which is scheduled to come against the anemic Colorado Rockies but unfortunately features the looming specter of Coors Field, where pitching goes to die. Nola, to his credit, has a respectable 4.03 career ERA in 38 innings pitched there, but the team may want to evaluate if he might be best served taking a breather on the next trip through the rotation.
A pitcher's win-loss record can be misleading up to a point, but this is one case where 1-7 is fully deserved at this point. When you add up Aaron Nola's struggles so far, he is well on his way to eclipsing the highest loss total of his career (13 in 2022) unless injury strikes or things get too bad that the team has to re-evaluate his rotation spot.
As MLB blew past the quarter-pole of its season this week, we are no longer dealing with small sample sizes. And it's up to Thomson, pitching coach Caleb Cotham, and Nola himself to make sure that he will be a functional piece of this rotation during the stretch drive and any playoff run the team hopes to put together. If the pieces don't fall into place, it will severely hamper the Phillies' designs on the 2025 World Series.