A pitcher from the Bayou State came to town, and stayed for good.
Among all the acronyms deployed by baseball fans (a particularly acronym-loving people, it must be said), there’s one that carries a particular melancholy: TINSTAAPP. There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. The latter half of that sounds rather like someone shouting “stop” in some sort of accent—STAPP! I hear it in the voice of a nasally New York gal; you may differ. However you hear it, it’s a fitting homonym, because STOP is generally what a baseball aficionado says when they hear their prized young hurler is going under the knife, or has paired a cavalcade of hits with a shocking dearth of outs, or somehow lost both the strike zone and their wallet, or found some other devastating yet apparently inevitable way to fall off course . Watching a pitching prospect can feel something like watching a car trundle over a narrow, winding, railless mountainside path, and it is forgivable, if perhaps somewhat insulting to the prospect in question, if you choose to do so through your fingers.
When you think about all the ways a pitching prospect’s career can go wrong, and all of the manifold, forgotten moundsmen for whom it did go wrong, it starts to seem rather incredible that any pitcher makes it to the majors at all. More incredible still for a pitcher become a regular. Even more incredible if they become an above-average regular and franchise mainstay. When you think about it, it’s really rather extraordinary that we have Aaron Nola.
In the beginning (2011), he was a draft pick of the Blue Jays. He chose not to sign, which can’t have bothered Toronto too much, since they’d only spent a 22nd round pick to get him. 3 years later, after Nola had spent a few years wearing the purple and gold of the Louisiana State University Tigers (picking up no small amount of hardware along the way, including the 2014 National Pitcher of the Year award), the Phillies drafted him. And they’d have been quite bothered had he chosen not to sign, since they’d spent the 7th overall pick of the draft to get him. But he did sign, and from there, things moved fast. He was quickly assigned to Clearwater, and then sent up to Reading, where he remained to start the 2015 season, By the time June rolled around, he was called up to Lehigh Valley and the IronPigs, and then about a month later he was taking the mound in Philadelphia, starting an interleague game against Tampa Bay.
Someone in the crowd that night pulled out their phone and filmed his first pitch (a ball to John Faso). Maybe they had some sense they were watching something special. Maybe they just wanted to play it safe in case they were; it costs nothing to film with your phone, and who wants to be the guy who was in the crowd for a special debut and has nothing with which to prove it?
Nola allowed Faso to double to center, then struck out the next two (one looking, one swinging), and induced a groundout. Cool and unflappable, even in the callow youth of his MLB career. The only hitter to get anything substantial off Nola was, of all people, the Tampa Bay pitcher, Nate Kearns, who took Nola deep to left for a solo round-tripper in the third. Allowing a pitcher (and one from the American League, no less!) to homer off you might precipitate a crisis of confidence for a young hurler, but not Nola: he allowed 2 fruitless singles over the next 3 innings and ended his night with 1 ER, 5 hits, 6 K. It was an excellent debut marred only by the presence of a single “L” next to his name, placed there less by his own work and more by the silence of the Phillies bats, which did not produce a single run.
Todd Zolecki, writing for MLB.com, noted “he looked like he belonged.” That was the general theme of a scouting profile published on the same website in August 2015, which noted he “brings a very mature demeanor and presence to the mound”. His pitching mechanics and confidence were praised, his only listed weakness, a difficulty with throwing elevated pitches, was softened with a note that he generally finds a way to adjust course. Writer Bernie Pleskoff stated “The future is now for Nola. It is likely he can retain a role in the Phillies’ rotation”. Tasked with summing up Nola in a single word, he chose “ready”.
And Nola was. His next start was a little rougher than his first; he allowed 4 runs (3 of which came via the long ball), in the friendly fonfines of Wrigley Field in his next start, but nevertheless picked up his first major league win. His next 6 starts featured 4 wins and 2 no-decisions; he didn’t taste defeat again until September, when he allowed 6 runs in a 4 inning start against the Mets. By that time, Nola had established enough of a track record to firmly define that performance as an exception to his norm. It was also the last time he’d lose in 2015. He won his next start (7 innings of shutout ball against Atlanta), then finished off his introduction to the majors with a trio of no-decisions (although one of those, a 6 ER clunker against the Nationals, was more of a bailout by the Phillies bats).
When 2015 was said and done, Nola had a 3.59 ERA and a 6-2 record, More importantly, he had an unquestioned place as a member of the Phillies rotation going forward. That, more than anything else, describes Nola’s 2015: he looked, from the beginning, as if he was in the right place. His presence was unobtrusive, which is not damning with faint praise, not when it’s being used to describe a rookie, and especially a rookie pitcher. It is easy for a pitcher to draw attention through blowups and meltdowns, all of which carry additional salience when the pitcher is a rookie, for whom each mistake seems to be a sign or portent, and making it through a campaign without raising doubts is an accomplishment.
So: TINSTAAPP? Not in the case of Aaron Nola. His time in the minors was brief, and he performed like an experienced vet as soon as he was called up to the big league club. After Nola’s debut, Cole Hamels praised his poise, noting that the corresponding ability to inspire confidence in teammates turns a rookie into a regular fast: “So if you already have it, you’re already on your way. You’re accelerating yourself to be in a good position in the big leagues”.
Just as Athena sprang fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, Nola seemed to spring fully fledged as a major league pitcher from the forehead of the Phanatic. If he didn’t prove to be an exception to the TINSTAAPP rule, it’s only because he never really looked like a prospect in the first place.