Major League Baseball

'Unflappable' Aaron Nola silences D-backs as Phillies take 2-0 NLCS lead

Updated Oct. 18, 2023 4:55 a.m. ET

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Jake Mintz

FOX Sports MLB Analyst

PHILADELPHIA — If Tuesday was Aaron Nola's last home start in red pinstripes, what a farewell it was. 

Nola, the longest-tenured member of the Phillies, the longest-tenured pitcher in the entire MLB playoffs, in fact, delivered the best outing of his postseason career in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series. The bushy-haired 30-year-old's dominance — coupled with yet another hailstorm of long balls from his fully-operational offense — pushed Philadelphia to a definitive 10-0 victory over the Diamondbacks. 

The series now heads to Arizona and resumes Thursday, with the defending NL champions just two wins from repeating the feat. Philly's starting pitching continues to make that possible, if not inevitable. 

In a contest that, despite the final margin, stayed close and tense until late, Nola allowed just three hits across six scoreless innings while punching out seven Diamondbacks.

"He just looked like he was one step ahead of us today," Arizona skipper Torey Lovullo admitted afterward.

A Trea Turner fielding error on the very first batter of the game couldn't rattle the ever-calm Nola, who struck out the next two batters before ending the frame on a Christian Walker popup. Turner redeemed himself almost immediately with a solo homer. Kyle Schwarber crushed a pair himself. Those three blasts knocked out Merrill Kelly, and what was briefly a pitchers' duel morphed into a blowout. The Phillies obliterated the D-backs' bullpen for six more runs over the sixth and seventh innings and improved its postseason run differential to +33, setting an MLB record for an eight-game span. 

But this night truly belonged to Nola, who will become a free agent for the first time in his career at season's end. His future in town is murky; those in the know see his return as a coin flip. If the NLCS ends in Arizona, Nola will not pitch again until the World Series. And with Texas also up 2-0 on Houston in the ALCS, a Rangers-Phillies Fall Classic would commence in the Lone Star State, with Nola presently in line to start only on the road. 

That's a lot of qualifiers, of course. But there's a legitimate chance Nola just made his 120th and final start at Citizens Bank Park with the Phillie. Only Cole Hamels, with whom Nola was briefly teammates with, has more in the ballpark's 20-year history. The past nine seasons have been a roller-coaster for Nola, who slogged through years of a soul-sucking rebuild in order to reach this raucous October promised land.

"I knew it was gonna happen eventually," Nola said of the Phillies' ascension following his gem Tuesday.

But that faith didn’t always seem like it would be rewarded. There were some real down years, as the franchise went 10 years without reaching the postseason. A lot has changed in Philly since the crafty right-hander showed up.

Nola debuted in July 2015, just 13 months after the Phillies selected him seventh overall out of LSU. At the time, the then-22-year-old had a noticeably thick Louisiana accent. It wasn't quite the luscious, oozing Ben MacDonald, James Carville-style bayou drawl you'll find south of Interstate 10, but a regional identifier nonetheless. Nearly a decade in the northeast has damped that drawl to just a slight tint of southernness. 

There are other signs of change. Nola wears less camo than he once did. He lives in Florida, not Louisiana, in the offseason. The man who once claimed to have eaten 730 pounds of crawfish in a single winter now travels with an intricate, barista-level pour-over coffee apparatus in a hard shell case.

"When Aaron showed up at LSU, he was incredibly Louisiana," retired college coaching legend Paul Manieri told FOX Sports.

Phillies mash three homers in 10-0 victory vs. D-backs

But while his voice and some hobbies have changed during his time in the bigs, Nola’s on-mound presence remains the same. When he arrived on campus in 2012, Manieri saw a mature, polished pitcher with a slow heartbeat well beyond his years.

"I never had to babysit him. He never got emotionally bent out of shape," Manieri, 66, remembers. "When you talk to him one on one you get a sense for the quiet confidence. It's not an act. 

"The one word I would use to describe him is unflappable."

Former LSU teammate and Louisiana native Mikie Mahtook added of Nola: "Very, very competitive, but also very much in control. Has been like that since high school."

Nola displayed those exact traits against the Diamondbacks on Tuesday night. With Arizona threatening in the fourth inning, down just 2-0 at the time, Nola hardly flinched, retiring Lourdes Gurriel Jr. on a grounder to short. Two frames later, with the dangerous Walker up and a runner on second, Nola struck out the slugger with a curve on the sixth pitch of the at-bat.

As the crowd erupted, cheering on yet another scoreless inning, Nola remained emotionally unmoved. There was no fist pump, no "LET'S GO!" no sign of anything resembling excitement. He simply strolled quietly, head down, back to the Phillies dugout.  

Nola made that very walk after another six-inning start more than eight years ago. It was his MLB debut, and he'd allowed just one run — a solo homer from Rays pitcher Nathan Karns. Those Phillies fittingly lost 1-0 that day. But Nola’s performance was impressive to all those who witnessed it, including Hamels, who would be dealt to the Rangers 10 days later. 

"That is somebody you're going to have faith in when the game is on the line," Hamels told MLB.com immediately afterward. "Especially when you're in pennant races and getting to postseasons.

"He seems like that type of big-game pitcher."

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.

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Jake Mintz