PHILADELPHIA — It’s still May, and in baseball terms, that means a manager will lean on a player’s track record. It is why Rob Thomson sent Phillies starter Aaron Nola back to the mound Wednesday night after a five-run third inning in which everything went wrong. The game, an eventual St. Louis Cardinals 14-7 win in the second game of a doubleheader, was still tied.
“With him, you always think that he’s going to find it,” Thomson said. “And we’re right in the game.”
Nola surrendered a 381-foot homer on a first-pitch 93 mph fastball to Masyn Winn, but that was sandwiched between two outs to start the fourth inning. Thomson saw a path for Nola to escape with three consecutive righty hitters. All three reached on singles, two of them little dribblers to third base. That’s when Tanner Banks entered to face a lefty, Alec Burleson, who singled to center on a 1-2 slider down and away.
The damage was done. Nola had allowed a career-high nine runs on a career-high 12 hits.
“I mean,” Thomson said, “you could look at that a lot of different ways.”
Thomson was talking about his decision to keep Nola in the game, but it also applies to Nola’s season. He slogged to a 6.65 ERA in his first four starts while pitching with diminished velocity. His next four starts yielded a 3.33 ERA with better command and more juice. Then, on Wednesday, he looked so vulnerable. He could not miss bats. He permitted six two-strike hits because he could not put away hitters.
Said Nola: “I don’t really have another answer for tonight, besides: ‘Terrible.’”
He has a 6.16 ERA. The Phillies have 18 losses this season and Nola has accounted for seven of them.
The first four clunkers were easier to disregard. Nola’s stuff was down; he lived around 89 mph. But against the Cardinals, Nola’s fastball sat 91.8 mph. He threw everything harder than his season averages to date.
The Cardinals were not fooled.
“They didn’t miss any balls over the plate tonight,” Nola said. “I didn’t do my job well at all.”
Opponents are hitting .229 with a .597 OPS against Nola in two-strike counts. Those numbers were .146 and .466 a season ago. Nola has never been this bad in two-strike counts. He’s allowed 26 two-strike hits in 2025; only Atlanta’s Chris Sale has permitted more.
All of these trends are concerning for a soon-to-be-32-year-old pitcher in the second season of a seven-year, $172 million contract.
But it’s May, so the Phillies will relegate those concerns. Maybe the Cardinals can really hit. Maybe Nola just had a bad night. His whiff rate is on par with his career norms. But there has to be a modicum of concern about inconsistent swing-and-miss stuff.
“No,” Thomson said. “Because I think he’ll find it. You got to trust he’s going to find it. He’s going to work at it, that’s for sure. And he’s going to figure it out.
It’s May, so there is nothing else to do. For now, Nola is a strong rotation’s weak link.
“I mean,” Nola said, “what can go wrong went wrong. My mistakes were hit really well. They found holes when I did make a pretty good pitch, I feel like. They didn’t miss too many balls.”
Romano’s resurgence
Jordan Romano and catcher Rafael Marchán shake hands after the Phillies’ 2-1 win in Game 1. (Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)
Jordan Romano has a slight tell when he’s feeling right. He’ll sometimes take a bit off his slider in the first pitch of an at-bat, usually against a lefty, and try to drop it in the back door for a strike.
“When I’m going good,” Romano said this week, “I feel like I can get that pitch.”
He started doing it again over the past two weeks, plopping an 83 mph slider in some 0-0 counts for a called strike. Everything feels different now for Romano, who struck out the side for the save in the Phillies’ 2-1 win Wednesday in Game 1. He’s pitched eight times since the infamous six-run implosion in late April. Romano has allowed one earned run with 10 strikeouts and two walks during those 7 2/3 innings.
He has recaptured some confidence.
“Just kind of feeling more like myself out there,” Romano said. “Not pressing as much. Just kind of being me.”
The biggest difference is that slider, a pitch he is now throwing for strikes and for whiffs out of the zone. As a two-pitch reliever, Romano must be able to throw the slider for quality strikes. Hitters could sit on certain zones or shapes earlier in the season when Romano was often behind in the count, needing a strike.
The club spent considerable time in April searching for clues that Romano had been tipping his pitches. Some were convinced Romano was. No one has provided conclusive evidence. Even Romano is skeptical. Tipping is a convenient excuse for ineffectiveness.
“That’s the thing, right?” Romano said. “Like, it’s easy to say, ‘Yeah, I was just tipping during those bad periods.’ Right? That was just an extremely bad period — like an outlier, I think.”
The slider is a feel pitch, Romano said, and much of his recent work has focused on the grip. The Phillies, like most teams, have high-speed cameras that can help a pitcher analyze finger placement. That removes some of the feel element. Romano wants a slider with late life. He found something.
It’s helped him regain his status in the bullpen.
“The break on the slider is really good right now,” Thomson said. “And he’s landing it. It’s almost like a short curveball. It’s really late. It’s really deep. He’s got a lot of confidence right now.”
Luzardo’s evolution
Jesús Luzardo has a 2.00 ERA in nine starts with the Phillies. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
For the third time in nine starts with the Phillies, Jesús Luzardo went seven innings. That’s already tied for the second-most starts of seven innings Luzardo has had in a season. His fastball sat at 96.7 mph in Wednesday’s outing. He used more changeups and sinkers than he had in recent starts. He’s navigating lineups in different ways.
“It’s just all about keeping hitters off your pattern,” Luzardo said. “We kind of got sweeper-happy a good bit the last couple of times out. And this time through, we just wanted to mix it up a little bit. Keeping them off balance. Keeping them guessing.”
The sweeping slider, a new pitch for Luzardo, has morphed into an incredible weapon. He threw it 25 times Wednesday, and 14 were either swinging strikes or called strikes. It was still his most-used pitch, but he diversified his arsenal more Wednesday than he had in weeks.
Even in Luzardo’s career season, 2023 with the Miami Marlins, he stumbled when facing an opposing lineup for the third time in a start. He permitted an .855 OPS in those situations. It remains a work in progress with the Phillies; Luzardo’s only run allowed Wednesday came in the seventh inning. Opposing hitters have a .753 OPS against him the third time through the order.
Luzardo has wanted to revive his sinker to help with sequencing. Under pitching coach Caleb Cotham, the Phillies believe their starters should have two different fastballs. That offers more paths through a lineup. He threw more sinkers against St. Louis after some recent tinkering.
“Having two fastballs is a big key for me,” Luzardo said.
Luzardo is the first Phillies pitcher with a 2.00 ERA or lower in his first nine starts with the Phillies since Aaron Harang in 2015 (1.82 ERA), according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The last lefty to do it was David West in 1994 (1.87 ERA).
Luzardo has fit right into this rotation.
“The part that helped me was facing this team so much in the past,” Luzardo said of joining the Phillies. “I felt like they already knew me and knew what I could do. But, at the same time, it’s tough to come to a new environment. Especially a team like this, with so much potential and so much talent. You just want to show that you can be here.”
(Top photo of Aaron Nola exiting in the fourth inning of the second game: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)