Aaron Nola has not had the season that he or the Phillies wanted, but it hasn’t fully cost them yet. They entered Sunday 9-8 in games he’s started this year.
Often, the Phillies haven’t left him in long enough to turn his rough outings into uncompetitive laughers. And that’s where Nola’s struggles this season have arguably hurt the most: by taxing the bullpen.
So, with the Phillies playing their 15th game in a 22-game, 23-day stretch before the All-Star break, the deepest outing of Nola’s season came at a good time. He worked seven innings of three-run ball against the Royals on Sunday, the first time this season he’s gone seven innings.
But the other half of Nola’s season so far — the run support — didn’t follow. The Phillies scored two runs against Luinder Avila and the Royals, dropping the second game of the series 5-2.
Early on, it looked like Nola’s outing was trending toward the kind that has sunk his 2026 so far. Kansas City scored twice in the first, requiring 23 pitches.
But he settled in. He surrendered four hits across the following six innings. He didn’t walk a batter all day. He struck out seven. Nola induced 19 whiffs on 55 swings.
The Phillies couldn’t break through against Avila, who entered Sunday with a 5.40 ERA in 16 games (seven starts) this year. He scattered three hits and a run in five solid frames.
That run came when Bryson Stott, who had two of the Phillies’ five hits overall, tripled in the fifth, before Gabriel Rincones Jr., who doubled in the third and is 5-for-13 in July, drove him in with a sacrifice fly.
Stott singled in the seventh, then scored when Garrett Stubbs beat out a double play ball.
That was all the offense could muster. The top three in the order went 0-for-11, including three strikeouts by Bryce Harper. One of those came against former Phillie Matt Strahm, who threw a scoreless sixth.
Kyle Backhus couldn’t strand a pair of runners, inherited from Seth Johnson, in the eighth to keep it a one-run game. Salvador Perez hit a two-run double to make it 5-2.
The Phillies are 50-40. The rare wraparound series ends with Monday’s rubber match behind Cristopher Sánchez.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source philliesnation.com ’
