As this is written—just before nine o’clock on Wednesday night— it is not yet clear who will start for the Phillies in the deciding game of their Wild Card series. The information is being held, kept close to the vest, perhaps not actually decided. Maybe they’ll sleep on it. Still, one thing is certain: Aaron Nola is going to pitch. Perhaps as the starter, perhaps in relief. But he will pitch. (UPDATE: he will start)
Despite a very solid second half of the season for Nola (3.33 ERA), this fact may
prompt some consternation among the fanbase. He is not long separated from a stretch in which he was utterly out of sorts. Even in this late-season surge, he’s been tremendously homer-prone. In the postseason, when a single moonshot can spell the end of everything, it is entirely reasonable to be nervous about his presence. That being said: Aaron Nola is the perfect man for this moment.
Not necessarily in terms of how he will perform. Not being psychic, and being skeptical of fortune telling, crystal balls, horoscopes, and the reading of tea leaves, I do not propose to predict how his performance will go. But symbolically, nobody is more suited to this moment. Bryce Harper is the team’s biggest star, the one most associated with the city the team represents. Zack Wheeler and Cristopher Sánchez are the aces. But nobody, I would argue, represents the Phillies, and these Phillies in particular, than Nola. Being the longest-tenured member of this team, his career overlapping, if only just, with the Phillies’ tenures of Utley and Howard and Hamels, he is a bridge between eras. He was present when this era began, whether you wish to date it back to the signing of Bryce Harper, the 2022 pennant, or the finalization of this current core with Trea Turner’s arrival. If this era should end, with the Phillies being sent ungently into a less-than-good-night, it is fitting that Nola should be present for the curtain’s fall as he was for the rise. If it should continue, with the Phillies raging against the light, and against the hated Braves, it is fitting that Nola should be there as the trail goes on.
But it is not merely his seniority that makes him the most fitting representative of these 2026 Phillies. This year’s Phillies team has been erratic, up and down, magnificent and maddening. Capable in a short period of time of looking unbeatable and looking utterly vincible. And so, too, is Nola. At his best he pitches like a star, dicing and darting with his dervish of a knuckle curve. And his worst, he looks utterly lost, bereft and baffled. The same is true of his team. If the Phillies hack Atlanta’s chophouse to bits with a parade of homers today, it will not surprise. If the bats fall silent, it will not be a surprise. If Nola should demolish the Braves hitters (with, yes, perhaps a solo shot scattered in there somewhere), it will not be a surprise, and if his pitches should be tossed and batted around like a cat’s favorite toy, it will not be a surprise.
Bryce Harper is the icon of the Phillies, the poster boy. He, too, is Philadelphia. But his lows, while attention-grabbing, are not low enough to truly capture the up and down nature of this team, the essence of erraticism that suffuses it, makes their down periods feel endless and the best stretches feel eternal. Yes, he is not always elite. But he has never truly had the variance that Nola does. In Nola’s stretches of brilliance, in his periods of maddening struggle, he is the truest avatar for this team. He is not the anointed hero, and he is not the everyman, he is both and he is in between and he is neither. He is the potential for brilliant leaps and terrible faceplants. He is the embodiment of these Phillies. And no matter what he does in game three, it will be fitting.
