Aaron Nola finds perspective at the end of an MLB-leading streak

In April 2017, Aaron Nola was placed on the 10-day injured list with a lower back strain.

At the time, it was seen as a sign that he might not be capable of pitching through an entire Major League Baseball season. It was the second time in less than 10 months that he had been sidelined with a significant injury, coming just after an elbow injury had cut his sophomore season with the Philadelphia Phillies short.

Instead, Nola recovered from that back issue to become one of the most durable and effective starting pitchers in modern baseball history. In seven seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies between 2017 and 2024, Nola never missed one of his 208 starts. Since 2017, he has logged more than 1,482 innings, the most of anybody in MLB in the last eight years.

But now that streak has come to an end.

After a career-worst outing against the St. Louis Cardinals in which he gave up 12 hits and nine earned runs in just over three innings, Nola has been placed in the injured list with an ankle sprain. Now he’s left to wrestle with the kind of setback he hasn’t experienced for years in the midst of struggles on the mound that he’s never seen before.

“Right now, I feel like I haven’t been helping the team as best as I could,” Nola said in an interview with The Sporting News just before the team announced that he would be moved to the injured list. “Overall, so far, it hasn’t been that good. And hopefully that can turn pretty quick and we can get back on that winning train.”

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Even before Nola’s most recent start against the Cardinals, something seemed off. In nine starts this season, he suffered seven losses and gave up 34 earned runs. His fastball velocity had fallen and his breaking pitches were hanging over the plate. 

But Nola is an 11-year big-league veteran who has performed as one of the most dependable arms in the sport, and nothing about those struggles has pushed him to panic.

“We tweak some things, obviously, going into bullpens, what I really need to work on and hone in on,” he said regarding any mechanical changes he’s considering after his last start. “But overall, just pretty much staying with the same process of my routine… Just tweaking things here and there, nothing really big.”

Still, moving Nola to the injured list for the first time since 2017 suggests the Phillies are looking for a more drastic reboot to his season. He’s in just the second season of a $172 million seven-year extension he signed with the team in November 2023.

The Phillies told reporters that they feared Nola’s ankle injury, if unaddressed, could change his pitching mechanics and drive problems in his back, shoulder or elbow. And Nola noted that he was compensating for the injury in his recent starts. 

The team is hopeful that Nola can return shortly after a 15-day stint, though it’s hard to say how he might bounce back after so many years of dependability. 

Nola opened up about his early season struggles the day after hosting a charity poker tournament at Citizens Bank Park, which raised money for veterans support organization Team Red, White & Blue. It’s a cause that Nola has championed for years in work that recently earned him recognition from the Players Association as a “Most Valuable Philanthropist.”

Off-field work like that can be a “reset,” he said. But he also underscored how the responsibilities he now has as the father to a one-year-old daughter are helping him maintain his perspective in the middle of the sudden changes to his on-field results.

“Once I leave the baseball field, no matter how good it goes, no matter how bad it goes, I’m a dad too and a husband and I want to be the best dad and husband I can to my wife and daughter,” Nola said. “So, I go home and don’t bring baseball into the house.”

At this point, it’s still unclear if the end to Nola’s healthy starts streak will be enough to reset his mechanics and rejuvenate his season. A sore ankle might have been throwing the rest of his delivery off or it might be the team’s scapegoat for some bigger problems. But if there’s one thing that he has gained by becoming baseball’s most durable pitcher, it’s a healthy perspective for times like this.

“I try to stay level headed with it all,” he explained. “Sometimes, as athletes and obviously in everyday life, we go through struggles and I try as best as I can to handle it the best way possible… I’m going to keep on working as hard as I can and competing and being as healthy as I can and try to make every single start that I can.”

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