By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Whether he ends up being a No. 2 on a contending team or not, when he’s been healthy in 2016 and 2017, Aaron Nola has, unquestionably, been a No. 1 caliber starter.
Since June 6, the 24-year-old has totaled 80. 1 innings over 12 starts. In that period, he has a 2.32 ERA.
This comes after the former first-round pick struggled to open the season. After posting a 4.50 ERA over his first three starts, Nola had over a month between starts for the Phillies because of a lower-back strain that landed him on the disabled list. In the final 10 days of May, Nola made three more starts for the Phillies, which weren’t encouraging, as he lost all three starts. During those three starts, he averaged just 5.33 innings, while posting a 5.63 ERA.
As noted above, something clicked for Nola once the calendar flipped to the summer months. It’s possible that he felt healthy for the first time in over a year.
Through the first two months of the 2016 season, Nola looked very much like the potential ace that he’s pitched like this summer. Save for allowing seven runs over five innings to the Washington Nationals in his third start of the 2016 season, Nola was very effective in April. Just prior to the Eagles selecting Carson Wentz in the NFL Draft, Nola made a dominant start on April 28 against those same Nationals, allowing just two hits across seven shutout innings.
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His most dominant start of his career propelled him to a month of May that was, at the time, the best month he’s had in the majors. In 39 innings in May of 2016, Nola struck out 39 batters and allowed just 10 earned runs.
Of course, the magic didn’t continue for Nola, as he posted a 10.42 ERA in June, which he followed up with a 6.30 ERA in July. The Phillies would shut Nola down after July, after Dr. James Andrews diagnosed Nola, who had suddenly lost his signature control, with “low-grade strains and sprains” to the ligaments and tendons in the elbow of his throwing arm.
So a slow start for Nola in 2017, coupled with an unrelated trip to the disabled list, certainly raised red flags to those around the team. Since June, however, he’s eased concerns about his health and eliminated any questions about whether he can be a front-end starter on a contending team.
Nola’s 2.32 ERA since June 6 is extremely impressive, but it’s still not a giant sample size. However, if you combine April and May of 2016 with June, July and his first two starts of August 2017, he has a 2.60 ERA in 152.1 innings. That’s a pretty large sample size. There are World Series teams that have No. 2 starters that have a 2.60 ERA in the regular season, but there are examples (see: Phillies, 2008) of teams that didn’t have a No. 1 starter that pitched as well as Nola has in the past two regular seasons when he’s been 100 percent healthy.
On top of the success that a healthy Nola has had in the past two years, Jerad Eickhoff appears to be back-on-track, which should give the Phillies a steady No. 4 starter. The team reportedly ‘poked around’ on controllable starters at the trade deadline, something they probably will continue to do rather than looking to the free-agent market for front-end starting pitching. Oh, and Sixto Sanchez, Franklyn Kilome, Adonis Medina and JoJo Romero are among the potentially elite pitching prospects in the team’s organization.
The feeling that you are left with is that the Phillies have a chance to have a special rotation by the end of this decade. If Nola can stay healthy, he may just be at the top of it.
