ATLANTA _ For three months, the Phillies fought the urge to push Aaron Nola. They kept his pitch count reasonable and used every available day off to give him additional rest.
But now, in the final week before the All-Star break, they are pressing his foot to the gas and telling him to floor it.
And wouldn't you know it, Nola responded on Tuesday night with his gutsiest, if not his best start of the season.
Not only did the Phillies tweak their rotation to give Nola an extra start before the break, but in the opener of a three-game series against division-leading Atlanta Braves, they turned him loose for a career-high 117 pitches over eight innings in a taut 2-0 victory before a sellout crowd at SunTrust Park.
In outdueling Dallas Keuchel, the starter that Phillies fans clamored for before he signed last month with the Braves, Nola also dialed back the calendar to last season, when he was as good as any pitcher in baseball. He stared down the top of the Braves' order in the bottom of the eighth. He struck out Ronald Acuna Jr. on his 106th pitch, a 95-mph heater. He got Dansby Swanson to fly out on his 112th pitch, a biting curveball. And he froze Freddie Freeman with a sinker on the inside corner.
Hector Neris shut the door in the ninth inning, assuring that Jay Bruce's two-out double in the fourth would hold up. The Phillies won for only the second time in nine games in Atlanta dating to last season, shaving the Braves' lead in the National League East to 4 { games in the process.
Nola will pitch again Sunday in New York against the Mets, with the Phillies using Monday's day off in the schedule and next week's All-Star break to keep him on his normal rest rather than give him an extra day. But why now? Why deviate from how they have handled Nola so far, especially since he hadn't reprised his 2018 success until the last few weeks?
"It's based on how well Nola's pitched the last couple of times out," manager Gabe Kapler said before the game. "It's based on the fact that he's bouncing back."
Nola's previous start in Atlanta didn't go well. On June 15, he gave up five runs on six hits in 4 1/3 innings and saw his earned-run average swell to 4.89.
But since then, he has allowed a grand total of one run in 23 innings, struck out 28 batters and walked only five in three starts. Against the Braves, he gave up only four hits and racked up eight strikeouts against three walks.
Nola's fastball had a little extra giddy-up, topping out at 95 mph and averaging 93.8, according to Statcast. As ever, though, it starts with his curveball. He threw 38 of them against the Braves, and got eight swings and misses.
For seven months, Keuchel was available to the Phillies _ and every other team, for that matter _ in a free agency that dragged on longer than War and Peace, and for seven months, the Phillies suggested by their lack of interest that they didn't believe the veteran lefty represented an upgrade over their internal options.
Keuchel's rebuttal: seven innings, five hits, two runs, two walks, three strikeouts.
It was hardly a dominant performance, but then Keuchel doesn't dominate. He merely keeps his team in the game, which was exactly what he did for the Braves. The Phillies had him on the ropes a few times: their second-best opportunity of the night came in the sixth inning, but after Rhys Hoskins walked and J.T. Realmuto clubbed a double off the base of the right-field wall, Keuchel got Bruce and Cesar Hernandez to ground out, keeping the Phillies' lead frozen at 2-0. In the end, he gave up little more than Bruce's double, and he would have gotten out of that jam, too, if only his first-pitch slider hadn't stayed up just a hair too much.
