Aaron Nola: A Full Player Analysis

A look at the mechanics, the arsenal, the data, and the realistic outlook for the Phillies' longest-tenured starter.

Introduction

Aaron Nola has been a Philadelphia Phillie for eleven years. He's been the constant in a rotation that has cycled through Velasquez, Arrieta, Eflin, Gibson, and Walker. Through all of that, he took the ball every fifth day. He didn't miss a start between mid-2017 and May 2025. He led all of MLB in innings pitched from 2018 through 2024 (1,264.2), and he did it without ever throwing hard.

Aaron Nola is one of the great Phillies of his generation. Second on the franchise's all-time strikeout list, ahead of Robin Roberts. Six straight Opening Day starts from 2018 to 2023 (joining only Roberts and Carlton). Third in NL Cy Young voting in 2018, fourth in 2022. He turned down a probably bigger free-agent payday to stay in Philadelphia and signed for seven years and $172 million in November 2023. He's owed roughly $98 million across the four years remaining after this one. He won the MLBPA Players Trust Philanthropist of the Year in 2025, in the middle of the worst season of his career. He's earned a fair hearing.

This piece tries to do that. The mechanics. The arsenal. The trends. What's still elite, what has fallen off, and where things are likely headed. The data shows a more layered picture than either the optimists or the pessimists usually present. There are real, structural problems. There are also real strengths that don't get talked about because the surface results have been so loud.

A note on timing: Nola has now made eight starts on the season, the most recent two of which tell very different stories. On May 4, he threw six scoreless innings against the Marlins on 94 pitches without a walk, his best start of the year. Last game, he gave up six earned runs on 10 hits in 5.0 innings to the Rockies. The Phillies won the game 9-3, but Nola's line was the worst of his season. He's now 2-3 with a 5.14 ERA. The wider point those two starts make together is the wider point of this piece: he is not the same pitcher, he can still perform, but the floor and ceiling are now further apart than they have ever been in his career.

Part I: The Mechanical Foundation

Nola is not, and never has been, a stuff-first pitcher. His value has always come from how his stuff plays, which is a function of his mechanics and pitch shapes, not raw velocity.

The release point

Aaron Nola is what's called a "VAA monster." Vertical Approach Angle (VAA) describes how flat or steep a pitch enters the hitting zone. Pitches that enter flatter (less downward angle) play harder than their velocity suggests, because they get on hitters faster relative to their eye level. The way you create flat VAA is to release the ball from a low arm slot but locate it high in the zone. That combination is rare and very difficult to hit.

Tom Verducci, writing for Sports Illustrated in 2024, identified Nola as one of the cleanest examples of this in baseball:

•         Vertical release point: 5.03 feet. Fifth-lowest among MLB starters in 2024.

•         Average pitch height on the four-seam fastball: 2.99 feet. Top 15 in MLB.

•         Result: the toughest four-seam fastball to hit among MLB starters in 2024 (.110 batting average against).

In 2024, despite throwing only 92.5 mph, Nola allowed the lowest batting average on his four-seam fastball of any starting pitcher in baseball. Hitters who faced 99 mph from Paul Skenes or 98 from Hunter Brown were worse against Nola's 92, because the pitch entered their hitting zone flatter and from a lower angle than they expected.

This matters for two reasons. First, it tells us what Nola has actually been doing right his entire career. He's been one of the best pitch-shape engineers in baseball, hidden behind unremarkable velocity numbers. Second, it tells us what's most at risk now. When the velocity drops further (92.5 to 91.8 to 90.7), even an elite VAA can stop being enough. There's a floor below which the angle stops compensating for the speed.

Arm slot, repeatability, and tunneling

Nola throws from a low three-quarters arm slot, between roughly 1:30 and 2:00 on the clock. That arm slot generates the natural arm-side run on his fastball and the heavy glove-side break on his curveball. It's the same arm slot he's had his entire professional career.

His release points across all five of his pitches are consistent. The vertical variation across pitch types is roughly 0.3 feet (three to four inches). For comparison, many pitchers vary release points by 0.5 to 1.0 feet across pitch types, which gives hitters an early tell on what's coming. Nola's pitch tunneling, the ability to make all five pitches look identical out of the hand, has always been a clean strength. The 2026 data shows it's still intact.

Spin rates and Stuff+/Location+

Nola's spin rates are not elite, but they're solidly above average. They have held steady even as his velocity has declined:

Pitch	Spin Rate (RPM)	League Avg	Percentile
4-Seam	2,340	2,250	~65th
Curveball	2,575	2,450	~70th
Sinker	2,233	2,150	~62nd
Changeup	1,547	1,750	30th
Cutter	2,281	2,400	~45th

Spin rates often decline alongside velocity when arm strength wanes. Nola's are stable, which suggests the velocity issue is more about how he's generating force than about losing the ability to spin the ball. He also has good extension, which shaves perceived velocity by releasing the ball further down the mound.

In 2023, Nola's Stuff+ was 101 (23rd among qualified starters) and his Location+ was 107, which ranked fourth in all of baseball. That's the cleanest analytical confirmation of the eye-test scouting report on him: average stuff, exceptional command. The Stuff+ has slid since then. The Location+, even in 2025's struggling season, has remained near the top of the league. He's still painting corners. The corners just don't get called as often anymore.

What hasn't broken

Nola hasn't had any meaningful mechanical change. Same arm slot, same release point, same delivery. He has never had Tommy John surgery, never had a major arm injury. The 2025 absence was an ankle sprain and a rib stress reaction (cumulative workload), not an elbow or shoulder issue. The mechanical engine is intact. What's deteriorated is the output, not the design.

Part II: The Headline Numbers

A quick glossary: xERA is the ERA Statcast thinks a pitcher "deserves" based on quality of contact. FIP, xFIP, and SIERA are different versions of the same idea, isolating what a pitcher controls (strikeouts, walks, home runs) from defense and luck. xwOBA is the expected version of weighted on-base average. All run on the same scale as their basic counterparts.

Year	IP	ERA	xERA	FIP	xFIP	K%	BB%	HR/9	Hard-Hit%	Barrel%	xwOBA
2018	212.1	2.37	2.77	3.01	3.32	27.0	7.0	0.72	31.2	4.6	.258
2022	205.0	3.25	2.75	2.58	3.05	29.1	3.6	0.83	31.6	7.1	.262
2024	199.1	3.57	3.75	3.95	3.65	24.0	6.1	1.35	38.2	7.2	.304
2025	94.1	6.01	4.13	3.89	3.71	24.0	6.9	1.72	43.3	9.1	.315
2026 (8 GS)	~42	5.14	—	~3.55	—	~24	~7.5	~1.71	40.5	9.4	.333

A few things to notice. His K rate held steady from 2024 to 2025 at 24.0%. Whatever has gone wrong, it's not about losing his ability to miss bats overall. The estimators all liked him better than 6.01 in 2025. xFIP and SIERA both put him in the high 3s. The actual ERA was the worst of his career; the deserved ERA was middle of the road.

The contact-quality numbers tell the cleanest story. Hard-Hit% of 43.3% and Barrel% of 9.1% in 2025 were career highs. The Barrel rate has roughly doubled from 4.6% in his 2018 All-Star year to 9.1% in 2025. That's a slow wearing, not a sudden break, and it lines up with the slow erosion of his fastball velocity over the same window.

The 2026 walk rate spiked early but has cooled. It peaked above 11% through six starts, then settled to roughly 7.5% after back-to-back zero-walk outings against the Marlins on May 4 and the Rockies on May 9. That's still elevated relative to his 2022 rate of 3.6%, but it is the cleanest tell of how he is actively adjusting to ABS. Two consecutive starts without a walk is not a fluke. It is a deliberate change in approach, almost certainly involving more pitches inside the zone in exchange for losing some of the edge dominance that defined him.

Part III: The Five-Pitch Arsenal

Nola throws five distinct pitches, each with its own movement profile, role, and current state. Some are still working. Some aren't.

Pitch 1: The Knuckle Curve

This is the one that's still elite, and it deserves to be celebrated before any discussion of what's wrong. Nola's knuckle curve is one of the better breaking balls in baseball when right. It's a true 12-6 with significant horizontal break. The 2026 movement profile:

Metric	Nola's Curve	League Avg	Comparison
Velocity	78.1 mph	~80 mph	slightly slower
Vertical Drop	54 inches	54 inches	average
Horizontal Break	14.8 inches glove-side	10 inches	+48% above average
Spin Rate	2,575 RPM	2,450 RPM	~70th percentile

Brooks Baseball describes it as "a real worm killer that generates an extreme number of groundballs and more whiffs/swing compared to other pitchers' curves." That's the scouting report on a genuinely good big-league pitch. Nola throws it in roughly 30% of his pitches, which is unusually heavy curveball usage for a starting pitcher. League average is 12 to 15%.

2026 results have been excellent: 40% whiff rate (his highest in a full season since 2018, his All-Star year), .159 BAA, .273 SLG. With men on base, the pitch is holding hitters to .167/.211/.333. This is the pitch keeping him in the rotation.

The 2025 result on the curve was almost entirely batted-ball luck. The xSLG was .370 versus an actual .462. The pitch was getting whiffs at the same rate it always had; it just got punished on rare contact. That was corrected in 2026.

Pitch 2: The Four-Seam Fastball

This is where the real damage has been done. In 2024, despite averaging only 92.5 mph, the pitch held opposing hitters to a .110 batting average, the lowest of any MLB starter's four-seam fastball. That's one of the cleanest examples in modern baseball of pitch shape and location overcoming raw velocity.

Year	Velo	Whiff%	BAA	SLG	Run Value
2024	92.5	23.0	.110	.316	+9
2025	91.8	13.9	.230	.529	−2
2026	~91.5	~14	.400	.867	trending negative

The mechanical shape of the pitch has barely changed. Spin rate is the same. Induced vertical break is similar. The release point is identical. What changed is velocity. The 2026 average exit velocity against the four-seamer is 98.5 mph, nearly 8 mph above the league average against four-seamers (90.8 mph). When hitters connect with this pitch now, they crush it.

The reason this matters more for him than for someone else is the VAA dependency. The flat-angle pitch profile that made his 92.5 mph fastball the toughest in baseball stops working at 90 mph because hitters' bat speed is calibrated to higher velocities. There's a velocity floor below which the angle doesn't compensate. He's approaching it.

The pitch went from +9 run value in 2024 to -2 in 2025. That's an 11-run swing on a single pitch in a single year, which explains a meaningful chunk of the ERA jump on its own. Through six 2026 starts, hitters were batting .400 with an .867 SLG against it.

Against left-handed hitters specifically, the four-seamer has been especially bad. Lefties are 11 for 19 against it with three doubles, two homers, and an 18.4% whiff rate. On first-pitch four-seamers to lefties, lefties are 3 for 3 with two homers.

The strategic trap: Nola can't simply stop throwing it. The fastball has to threaten hitters in the zone for the curveball to work outside it. The pitch he most needs to be functional is the pitch failing him most.

Pitch 3: The Sinker

The sinker is supposed to be his way of pitching to right-handed contact. Earlier in his career it was the bread and butter of his arsenal. Now it's quietly declining.

Metric	Nola's Sinker	League Avg
Velocity	90.6 mph	~93 mph
Drop	25 inches	23 inches
Horizontal Run	18 inches arm-side	16 inches
Spin	2,233 RPM	2,150 RPM
Strike-Zone Rate	61%	~55%

The strike-zone rate hasn't moved. He's landing the pitch where he wants. The velocity has slowed by about a full mile per hour over two years, and the contact quality has followed. Brooks Baseball notes the sinker has "an obvious tail" but "results in somewhat more flyballs compared to other pitchers' sinkers," which is unusual. Nola's version is more of a tailing fastball than a true ground-ball generator at this point.

The sinker has been responsible for the 2026 home runs with men on base. The Dansby Swanson three-run shot on April 27 came on a sinker that leaked over the middle. When the pitch was 91.5 mph with sharp horizontal action, an inch of bad location was a foul tip. At 90.6 mph, it's a hit. The margin is gone.

One quiet positive: the sinker is doing its job against right-handers. RHB are hitting .224/.246/.433 against him in 2026 with a .679 OPS. That's well below league average. The sinker can't do double duty against lefties, where it doesn't have the same neutralizing effect.

Pitch 4: The Changeup

The one pitch in his arsenal that got better in 2025 even with the velocity loss.

Metric	Nola's Changeup	League Avg
Velocity	85.1 mph	~85 mph
Drop	35 inches	33 inches
Horizontal Run	13 inches arm-side	15 inches
Spin	1,547 RPM	1,750 RPM (intentionally low)
Strike-Zone Rate	35%	~40% (a chase pitch)

The changeup is an above-average diving change. The lower-than-average horizontal run is offset by the better-than-average drop, which is exactly the trade-off you want. Pitches that drop more than they run get more ground balls and chase swings.

Usage has trended up: 12.6% in 2023, 13.0% in 2024, 15.4% in 2025. In 2025, when four of his five pitches graded out as negative by Statcast run value, the changeup was the only one that finished neutral. It's the silver lining nobody talks about, and it's the most natural answer to the lefty problem. Lefties hit fastballs better than they hit changeups, and Nola's changeup has been holding up.

In 2020, briefly, Nola made the changeup the centerpiece of his arsenal. He posted a 3.28 ERA with a 33.2% strikeout rate in 71.1 innings. The pitch posted a 19.7% swinging strike rate and held opponents to an 82.5 mph average exit velocity. The grip is the same. The shape is the same.

To meaningfully attack lefties differently, he probably needs to push the pitch's usage to 20-25% to LHB. Whether his arm allows that workload at high volume is a separate question.

Pitch 5: The Cutter

The cutter is the rarest of his five pitches at around 7-9% usage. He picked it up in 2021 spring training, and it's never quite become a consistent weapon.

The funny thing about Nola's "cutter" is that it doesn't really cut. League average for a cutter is about 2 inches of glove-side break. Nola's has 0. Brooks Baseball describes it as "little cutting action and slightly below average velo." In other words, it's functionally a hard slow pitch that gets ground balls, not a Mariano-style swing-and-miss cutter.

In 2024, right-handed hitters posted a .394 batting average against the cutter, meaning the pitch was failing in its primary role of jamming RHB. It's not a pitch that has dramatically declined. It's been mediocre for several years and continues to be. The cutter is probably the pitch with the most room for redesign, either by adding cut action or by reducing usage further in favor of more changeups.

Arsenal summary

Pitch	Status	Trajectory
Knuckle Curve	Elite (40% whiff, .159 BAA)	Back to peak, sustainable
Changeup	Average-plus (only positive 2025 grade)	Stable to improving
Sinker	Below average	Slowly eroding
Cutter	Below average	Stable, but never a weapon
Four-Seam	Poor (.400 BAA in 2026)	Declining sharply

Nola has two pitches working (curveball, changeup), two that are mediocre (sinker, cutter), and one falling apart (four-seamer). At his 2018 peak, arguably four of his five pitches were above average. The ratio is the structural change.

Part IV: The Things Still Working

The surface results have drowned out a lot of legitimately good news. The genuine positives:

1.       The curveball is back to peak form. A 40% whiff rate in 2026 is his best since 2018. The single most important positive in the data set.

2.       The K rate has held. 24.0% in 2025, identical to 2024. Around 22% through six 2026 starts. A pitcher fundamentally losing his stuff sees strikeouts collapse. Nola's haven't.

3.       Chase rate is elite. Nola's 33.5% chase rate in 2025 ranked in MLB's 93rd percentile, the top 7% of all qualified starters.

4.       Edge rate of 51% in 2025 was the highest in MLB. Even in a down year, his command was the best in baseball at hitting the corners. He didn't lose his command. He lost the ability to get those corner pitches called strikes.

5.       Location+ has been top-five in baseball for years. His Location+ was 107 in 2023, fourth in MLB. Pitch placement is a skill that ages well, often better than velocity.

6.       The mechanical foundation is intact. Same arm slot, same low release point, same elite VAA setup. No Tommy John surgery. No major arm injury. The engine is still the engine.

7.       Spin rates have held even as velocity has eroded. Unusual and a positive sign. Suggests the velocity issue is workload-related, not arm-deterioration related.

8.       The Phillies still trust him in big spots. Rob Thomson started Nola in NLDS Game 3 in 2025 over Ranger Suárez (3.20 ERA that year) despite Nola's 6.01 ERA. The internal evaluation evidently saw something the surface stats didn't.

9.       WBC and best-start evidence. In March 2026 at the WBC, Nola hit 94.5 mph (a velocity he reached only three times in all of 2025) and allowed one earned run in nine innings for Italy. Final 2025 regular-season start vs. Minnesota: 8 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 9 K. The peak version is still in there on his best days.

10.   He is a proven big-game pitcher. 3-0 with a 0.96 ERA through his first three 2023 postseason starts. A stretch of 19.1 consecutive scoreless innings during the 2022 stretch run.

11.   The estimators continue to like him better than the surface stats. xFIP 3.71, SIERA 3.81, PitchingBot deserved-ERA 3.17 in 2025. Even in 2026, FIP around 3.55 against an actual ERA of 5.14.

12.   The arsenal diversity is rare. Five distinct, MLB-quality pitches is unusual. Most pitchers carry three reliable offerings and two situational ones.

None of these things by themselves change the fact that he is currently a 5.00-ERA pitcher. But all of them together suggest the floor is not as low as it looks. A pitcher with this many functional positives is more likely to stabilize at an above-replacement level than to keep falling. The May 4 outing (six scoreless on 94 pitches, zero walks) and the May 9 outing (six earned runs in five innings, but again zero walks) tell a more honest story together than either does alone. The strikeout-to-walk profile is reorganizing itself in real time. The contact quality has not yet caught up to that adjustment.

Part V: The Things That Have Genuinely Worsened

1. Velocity and the VAA arithmetic

The summary: 92.5 mph in 2024, 91.8 mph in 2025, 90.7 mph in 2026 so far. From the 20th percentile in fastball velocity to the 7th percentile.

The reason this matters more for him specifically is the VAA dependency. The flat-angle pitch profile that made his 92.5 mph fastball the toughest in baseball stops working at 90 mph because hitters' bat speed is calibrated to higher velocities. There's a velocity floor below which the angle doesn't compensate. He's approaching it.

The decline: roughly 0.4 mph per year over the last six seasons, accelerating slightly in the last two. Nola has historically gained roughly 0.9 mph from before May 1 to after May 1, so there's a reasonable chance the 2026 number ticks up to around 91.5 as the weather warms. But the 92.5 mph version is probably gone.

2. The lefty problem is structural

2025 Split	IP	HR	HR/9
vs. LHB	56.1	14	2.24
vs. RHB	37.1	4	0.96

A 2.24 HR/9 against left-handed hitters would be among the worst marks in baseball over a full season. The 2026 platoon split is even sharper. Through his first six starts, lefties were slashing .356/.451/.593 with a 1.044 OPS, 11 walks, and 11 strikeouts. Right-handers were at .224/.246/.433 with a .679 OPS, 2 walks, and 24 strikeouts. He is essentially two completely different pitchers depending on which side of the plate the hitter stands on.

The structural fix is clear (more changeups to lefties, less reliance on the four-seam) but it requires a meaningful arsenal-usage shift. The Justin Verlander post-2020 reinvention with diminished velocity is the closest available archetype, except Nola needs to do it without a surgical reset and with a shorter velocity baseline to begin with.

3. The home run problem has metastasized

Nola has always given up homers. He gave up 32 in 2023 and a league-leading 30 in 2024. But he survived them because he allowed almost no other baserunners. In 2023, despite an 11-game streak of allowing a homer, he carried a 0.99 WHIP at home and held opponents to a .206 BA. The homers were mostly solo shots in low-traffic innings. He could absorb them.

What's broken is the surrounding ecosystem. The pulled-air rate has climbed monotonically:

Year	Pulled Airball %
2018	13.8
2022	15.7
2023	19.1
2024	22.6
2025	22.9

In 2025 only six qualifying pitchers in baseball allowed more pulled contact. This is hitters timing him better and putting his pitches in the air to the pull side at career-high rates.

The home runs are also coming with men on now. Through six 2026 starts: ERA with bases empty around 2.50, ERA with runners on 13.50, five HRs allowed with runners on (most in the NL), opponent OPS with men on of 1.114, opponent OPS vs fastballs with men on of 1.406. A homer with two runners on is worth roughly 2.5x what a solo shot is worth in win probability.

His ground-ball rate, above 50% from 2016-2019, was 42.9% in 2025. The pitches he throws over the plate are increasingly being lifted rather than rolled over.

4. Injury history is now a real factor

The 2025 ankle sprain was a fielding incident, random and recoverable. The rib stress reaction is the body responding to cumulative workload. Nola threw more innings than any other MLB pitcher from 2018 to 2024.

Stress reactions in the rib cage are particularly concerning for pitchers who throw from a low arm slot, because the obliques and serratus muscles bear more load in a three-quarters delivery than in an over-the-top one. The torque accumulates across innings, and once those muscles fail, they take longer to come back than typical strains.

This is also the first stretch in his career where he's coming back from a real injury layoff. The 2026 velocity not bouncing back to 2024 levels is a data point in that direction.

5. ABS and the corner-painter problem

The Automated Ball-Strike challenge system arrived in 2026, and it's hard to think of a pitcher in baseball whose game depends more on the umpire's generosity at the corners than Aaron Nola. His 2025 edge rate of 51% was the highest in MLB. He doesn't beat hitters with stuff. He beats them with location.

In his April 26 start in Atlanta, Braves hitters challenged three of his pitches, including two in 0-0 counts, and won two of them. Each reversal turns 0-1 into 1-0. In 2025, hitters posted an .832 OPS after falling behind 0-1 versus a .925 OPS after getting ahead 1-0. That's a 100-point swing on every pitch.

There was an even cleaner version of the problem on May 9 against the Rockies. With two outs in the fourth and a runner on, Nola threw what he thought was strike three to Jake McCarthy on a full count. McCarthy challenged and ABS reversed the call to ball four. The next batter Kyle Karros singled and Colorado pushed across two more runs in the inning. That single at-bat captures the entire structural problem in one frame: Nola executed the pitch he wanted to throw, in the location he had been getting strike calls on for a decade, and the technology took it back. That at-bat doesn't happen in 2024.

Nola told The Philadelphia Inquirer on May 3: "The strike zone's a lot smaller. I don't really have as much room for play as we used to. I don't get as many calls that I used to, so that changes the whole game. You've got to be a little bit more precise nowadays with the ABS."

This is the cleanest explanation for the walk-rate spike. His chase rate is still elite (33.5%, 93rd percentile), so his stuff still induces chase. But his called-strike rate at the edges has dropped. Hitters who are looking are getting more favorable counts. The mix of plate-discipline behaviors against him is separating in a way that takes time to adjust to. The encouraging note; he has now thrown back-to-back zero-walk starts (May 4 vs Miami, May 9 vs Colorado), the first time he has done that in 2026. That is not a coincidence. That is a pitcher actively recalibrating his approach to the new strike zone, attacking inside the zone earlier in counts and accepting the cost in louder contact. The May 9 line shows the cost. The walk number shows the adjustment.

League-wide, pitchers across MLB are walking hitters at a slightly higher rate this year as everyone adjusts to ABS. The corner-painters are taking the biggest hit. Pure stuff guys are taking the smallest hit. Nola sits at the worst end of that by design. This is a structural challenge for his archetype, not a personal failing.

Part VI: The Realistic Forward Picture

What he is right now: A pitcher with an elite curveball, a working changeup, two mediocre middle pitches, and a four-seam fastball that has slipped from "best in MLB by BAA" to "below replacement level." His mechanics are intact. His command at the corners is still elite. His stuff still misses bats at an above-average clip. His underlying numbers say he should be a 4.00-ish ERA pitcher right now, not the 5.14 he is actually carrying.

What he probably will be: A 4.00 to 4.30 ERA mid-rotation arm whose value comes from the still-elite curveball, the changeup, and his ability to take the ball every fifth day. That's not what the Phillies extended him to be. It is, however, a useful starter on a contending roster, and the rest of the rotation has built itself around the assumption that he doesn't have to be the No. 2 anymore.

Comparables

Statcast's similarity-score system identifies the pitchers most like Nola based on velocity and movement profiles. The list includes Stephen Strasburg (2021), Aaron Sanchez (multiple years), Carlos Martinez, Anthony DeSclafani, Rick Porcello, and Yusei Kikuchi. A mixed bag. Some of those careers extended into useful innings-eater years. Some did not.

The optimistic comps are Justin Verlander and Adam Wainwright. Both lost meaningful velocity in their early 30s, both reinvented themselves around command and sequencing, and both extended their careers as effective starters into their mid-30s. The most cautionary comp is Rick Porcello, who won a Cy Young in 2016 with a similar low-velocity command profile, then declined to a 4.50-to-5.50 ERA pitcher and retired at 31. Nola's curveball depth and his still-functioning changeup will keep him above where Porcello finished.

What needs to happen

1.   The fastball needs to climb back to at least 91.5 mph as the weather warms. His career split says it should.

2.   He needs to push changeup usage to 20-25% against lefties. The 2023 NLCS Game 2 mix (23% changeup) is the proof of concept.

3.   He needs to figure out how to coexist with ABS. That probably means slightly more pitches inside the zone and accepting that his edge-rate dominance is over.

4.   The cutter probably needs to be redesigned as a true cutter or phased out further in favor of more changeups.

5.   Workload management may need to change. The seven-day rest before the May 4 start clearly helped. He may be a 28-start, 170-inning pitcher rather than a 32-start, 200-inning pitcher going forward.

The honest summary

What's left is a pitcher who was great, who has been honorable about his role on this team, who tried to come back early through the WBC and worked all winter to do it, and who is now figuring out how to be a different kind of pitcher than the one he used to be. The realistic version of him going forward is probably a 4.00-ish ERA mid-rotation arm whose value comes from the still-elite curveball and his ability to take the ball every fifth day, assuming the body cooperates.

That's a hard thing to watch from any seat. But it's worth being honest about, because pretending it's just a slump isn't a kindness to him either, and pretending it's the end isn't fair to a pitcher who still has genuine elite traits in his game.

There are four years left on the contract after this one. The next two months will tell us a lot. The data, looked at honestly, says there's still a real pitcher in there. Some nights it shows up. Some nights it doesn't. That's the new normal.

Sources: Baseball Savant, FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, Brooks Baseball, MLB.com, NBC Sports Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer, RotoWire, Sports Illustrated (Tom Verducci), Yahoo Sports, Pitcher List.