Nola, Phils Win Again

Ryan Howard went long (415 feet to right center), his 6th in the 6th off Michael Wacha and starting pitcher Aaron Nola made it stick with 7 strong shutout innings to give the Phils a 1-0 win in St. Louis in the 2nd of a 10-game road trip.

Nola seems better with every pitch.

After a scoreless 9th, Jeanmar Gomez is now 9-for-9 in saves (2nd in MLB).  Recently, he said of the closer role, "I don’t think too much about that.  I just focus on my pitches, focus on keeping the ball down and making quality pitches.”

Aaron Nola was majestic.  St. Louis is the #1 ranked offense in all of baseball.  They lead MLB in batting average (.275), HR (40), Total Bases (446), SLG % (.487), OPS (.836) and Runs scored (153).

Tuesday, Aaron Nola surrendered just 2 hits, muting the Cardinals over 7 dominant innings in St. Louis.  He walked 1, while striking out 7.  His control was astounding.  He threw a remarkable 76 of his 111 pitches for strikes.

He has now S.O. 44 batters so far this year (#4 in all of MLB).  His WHIP has fallen to 0.80 (also #4 in MLB).  He is the best young pitcher Philadelphia has seen in a long, long time.  To put it in perspective, the pitchers who have struck out more batters or posted a better WHIP than Nola this year are a whose-who of major league pitching stars:

Madison Bumgarner, S.F. Giants. 2015 Salary: $6,916,667.  Claim to fame: WS, NLCS MVP '15

Clayton Kershaw, L.A. Dodgers. 2015 Salary: $31,000,000.  Claim to fame: 2014 NL MVP, Cy Young: 2014, 2013, 2011

David Price, Boston.  2015 Salary: $19,750,000.  Claim to fame: 2012 Cy Young

Jake Arrietta, Cubs.  2015 Salary: $3,630,000.  Claim to fame: 2015 Cy Young.

Drew Smyly, Tampa Bay.  2015 Salary: $2,650,000.  Claim to fame: Silly name.

Noah Syndergaard, 23 years-old, 2016 salary: $531,875.  Claim to fame:  Looks like superhero Thor.  After 2015 Worlds Series splash, widely considered one of baseball's best young arms.

Well, count Nola in.

Nola set the bar high, yet keeps getting better.

Nola is making around $600,000 in 2016.  He was taken #7 overall by the Phils in the 1st round of the 2014 draft.  He has been fantastic ever since.  In his debut 7/21/15, he allowed 5 hits, 1 run, 1 walk and S.O. 6 in 6 innings.  He is 7-4 in his young career.

He has now gone 20-consecutive shutout innings, allowing just 6 hits and 4 walks, while striking out 21 over that span. The best is yet to come.

The Phillies are now 10-2 in their last 12.  They are 16-11 and have gone 16-7 since their 0-4 start.  They gained a full game on First Place Tuesday, when Washington and the Mets each lost, leaving the Phils just 2 1/2 back in the NL East.  The Phillies have the 6th best record, yet have produced the 4th fewest runs in all of baseball.  That is thanks, of course, to their awesome young starters and surprisingly effective bullpen.

The Phils young guns trio of starters, Aaron Nola, Vince Velasquez and Jerad Eickhoff helped the Phils set a MLB record of strikeouts per 9 innings in April.

Their strikeout-to-walk ratio is: Aaron Nola, 44-7, Jerad Eickhoff, 32-5 and Vince Velasquez, 39-10.  That's 115 S.O. to just 22 walks-- and it's May 3rd-- and that's just 3 guys.

What the Phils have is lightening in a bottle: dominant young starting pitching.  Eickhoff is 25, Velasquez 23 and Nola 22.

Velasquez, Phils young arms firing everyone up.

Now, it's true that Houston dealt Velasquez because they doubted his post-Tommy John ability to stay healthy for the long haul.  Time will tell.

And yes, much is being made about the Phils poor run differential (the accumulative amount they score vs. the amount opponents score against them), which is 9th worst in all of baseball.  They have been outscored by 22 runs in their 1st 27 games and have been outscored 10-4 in the 1st 2 games of their current series in St. Louis, although they won 1 and lost 1 of those games.

However, that is missing the bigger picture.  Nobody took the Phils to win the World Series this season.  In fact, almost all 'experts' took them to finish dead last.

Yet, here they are, creeping into some experts 'Top 10'.

They can't score, but they can compete.  They won't beat you with the long ball (although Howard did Tuesday for old times sake in his home town), but man will they make you whiff.

Ask any owner, any manager, any player, any 'expert,'  "What's the one component you would choose to build a team around?"  The answer across the board will be, "Starting pitching."

Eickhoff is Phils 3rd Young Gun in rotation.

The Phils, in an unlikely short amount of rebuilding time, have a foundation for future winning.  Instead of showing concern for their run differential as though the house of cards is about to topple, enjoy the ride and remember nights like Tuesday, when future all-star, perhaps future NLCS MVP Aaron Nola took the mound on a cloudy night in St. Louis the 1st week of May in front of 40,000 baseball devotees and S.O. 7 (mostly) World Series winning batters.

Remember Rollins-Utley-Howard and Hamels when they were emerging.  In 2006, when the team shed high-paid stars OF Bobby Abreu and RP Rheal Cormier for what they saw as a long term rebuilding effort, nobody would have predicted the Phils would win the division or make the playoffs the next year, but they did both.

That's not to say this team is a replica of that one or that in 2 years these Phils will win the World Series, which those Phils did.

It's that the excitement that this team is now generating is awesome-- and it's for real.  As is the nucleus of pitching talent on display, which is as good a young core as the Phils have displayed in a long time.

The Phils have 2 more games in St. Louis, where they split the first 2.