Phillies: Time to worry about Aaron Nola’s road woes?

Any early struggles by Aaron Nola last night were masked by the Philadelphia Phillies anemic offense, and the fact that he ended up giving the team 6.2 innings of length left some feeling rather good about the Louisiana born right-hander moving forward. However, allowing three runs and ten baserunners is still not what we’ve come to expect from Nola throughout his career, and it only adds to what’s been a lackluster string of road performances for him this season.

Having made five starts away from home this season, Nola is currently 1-3 with a 5.65 ERA and a 1.256 WHIP in said games. Opposing batters are hitting .277 with an .802 OPS, and Nola’s already been hit by the long ball five times.

Compare that to his home stats, where Nola is 2-0 with a 1.40 ERA and a 0.896 WHIP, and it’s not all that challenging to make the case that Nola has looked like two different pitchers this season.

For what it’s worth, it’s not uncommon for players to have better home stats than road stats. There’s something to be said about feeling more comfortable when pitching at your home ballpark, and the Phillies in particular have one of the better “home field advantages” in baseball due to their fanbase.

Nola’s career home/road splits tell a similar story. He’s 35-17 with a 2.90 ERA in his career when pitching at home, compared to 26-26 with a 4.13 ERA when playing on the road. A significant enough discrepancy for us to begin questioning if this is a dilemma worthy of our concern, especially when you consider how the start to this year’s season has played out.

Time to worry about Phillies RHP Aaron Nola and his road struggles?

While Nola’s current season ERA of 3.64 is still rather respectable compared to other starting pitchers around the league, the large variety of start quality that we’ve seen from him when pitching on the road has put the Phillies in a handful of tough situations as of late. His outing against the Atlanta Braves this past weekend was just downright bad, and while he did battle last night against the Blue Jays, he still spotted Toronto a 3-0 lead to start the night, which isn’t what you typically want out of your staff Ace.

Obviously it didn’t really matter in the long run seeing as the Phils’ offense put up a goose egg, but it was a less-than-sharp start nevertheless.

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There’s still a ton of baseball left to be pitched this season by Nola, and I expect his road ERA to start slowly creeping down over time. 5.65 is excessive, even considering his historical struggles when pitching away from home.

However, there’s still an argument to be made that the Phillies need Nola to start playing far better away from home this season, as opposed to being elite at home and then “just okay” on the road. If Philadelphia is going to actually end their decade-long postseason drought in 2021, consistently winning Aaron Nola road starts is going to be something that has to happen on a consistent basis.

That’s partially on the offense to start giving their pitcher better run support, and partially on Nola to keep more runs off the scoreboard.