'Pretty dang good': Nola looked like old self in dominant outing for Italy

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Phillies manager Rob Thomson was at dinner on Wednesday night, so he couldn’t watch Italy play Mexico in the World Baseball Classic.

But he followed the action on his phone because he wanted to follow Aaron Nola, who pitched for Italy.

“Every time he threw a pitch it was right on the corner, corner, corner, corner,” Thomson said on Thursday at BayCare Ballpark. “He was really sharp.”

Nola pitched five scoreless innings in a 9-1 victory over Mexico. He struck out five batters. He allowed four hits and one walk. Nola not only helped Italy go 4-0 in Pool B, but he saved Team USA’s hide. Because if Mexico had won, Team USA could have been eliminated via tiebreaker.

“Amazing,” Phillies left-hander Jesús Luzardo said. “Vintage Nola.”

It was the continuation of an encouraging spring for Nola, who is trying to bounce back from the worst year of his career in 2025.

Nola went 5-10 with a 6.01 ERA in 17 starts. He battled injuries -- he had a sprained ankle and a fractured rib -- but it was fair to wonder if Nola’s workload had caught up with him. He had thrown more regular-season innings (1,527) than anybody in the Majors since the beginning of the 2017 season.

But Nola’s fastball touched 94.5 mph on Wednesday. It touched 94.5 mph just three times last year.

His four-seam fastball averaged 92.8 mph. It averaged 91.9 mph last year.

Nola has credited the uptick in velocity to more long tossing in the offseason.

Is it really that simple?

“The physical piece of his whole game is very good,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said. “He’s very strong. He’s very mobile. He takes care of his body at such a high level. I think the long toss case for him is more of an opportunity to reveal velocity that’s there. It’s just touching high intent more. Because I think there is an element of, if you want to throw hard, you need to practice throwing hard, so that at some point you can throw hard easy. Versus, if you’re always down regulating, you’re always nice and easy, touch and feel, it’s harder to expect your body to know what to do if you’re trying to throw hard. And that’s when guys over try.

“With Aaron, it’s more just raising the floor so that he still feels like his normal self where he’s throwing hard, but it’s easy. It’s smooth.”

Another benefit of long tossing is seeing how the ball moves. If a pitcher is long tossing from 180 to 200 feet, he gets better feedback because the ball has more time to break.

“If you want to throw a ball pretty straight with good carry from 180 feet, 200 feet, you need to be behind the baseball,” Cotham said. “You can’t get around it or fly open. So there’s an element of command in it for him, too. It’s touching high intent more effectively, appropriately, to feel what that feels like again. His control and his command game, it’s hard to squeeze more out of that at times, but when he’s throwing a little harder, I think the command gets better.

“In a lot of ways, you’re building the chamber vs. saving bullets. You’re adding more to the magazine. What Nole's super power is is that he’s a master at regulating intent. He throws a lot. He throws long bullpens. And he manages his intent really well. So his volume is out the roof, and guys that have good volume control, they can touch intent. They might have to pull back with the volume a little bit, so you’re just redistributing maybe some of his throws.”

It's early, but it’s encouraging.

“He looks pretty dang good,” Cotham said.