For most of this uneven Phillies season, Aaron Nola’s starts have required qualifiers. Better than the line looked. One bad inning. One pitch. One sequence. One more reminder that the old Nola might still be in there somewhere, buried beneath months of missed spots and hard contact.
Sunday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, the Phillies finally got the version they have been waiting on.
Then they did almost nothing with it.
Nola delivered his longest and most encouraging start of the season, but the Phillies’ offense stayed quiet and the bullpen cracked late in a 5-2 loss to the Royals. It was not a disaster. It was not a collapse. It was worse in a different way. It was a winnable July game, there for the taking against one of the worst clubs in baseball, and the Phillies let it drift away.
The loss dropped the Phillies to 50-40 and evened the series ahead of Monday’s finale. It also spoiled the kind of Nola outing that would have felt a lot more meaningful if it had come attached to a win.
The first inning looked too familiar. Bobby Witt Jr. reached with one out and scored when Lane Thomas drove a two-out double. Michael Massey followed with a run-scoring single, and before Nola had found his rhythm, the Phillies were in a 2-0 hole.
But that was the notable part. He did find it.
Nola worked around traffic in the second, retired the Royals in order in the third and fourth, and carried the Phillies through seven innings with enough command to keep the game close. He allowed three runs on seven hits, struck out seven, and did not walk a batter. He threw 98 pitches, 68 for strikes, and gave the Phillies exactly what they have spent much of the season needing from him: length, stability, and a chance.
What they did not provide was much resistance against Luinder Avila and a Kansas City bullpen that entered the day with every reason to be vulnerable.
Avila gave the Royals five innings of one-run baseball, allowing three hits and a walk. The Phillies finally broke through in the fifth when Bryson Stott tripled and Gabriel Rincones Jr. lifted a sacrifice fly. But Kansas City answered immediately in the bottom half, with Isaac Collins doubling and scoring on Jac Caglianone’s sacrifice fly to make it 3-1.
The Phillies drew closer in the seventh, when Stott singled and the Royals failed to turn two potential double plays. Justin Crawford’s grounder produced a throwing error by Josh Rojas, and Garrett Stubbs’ comebacker brought in Stott when Kansas City could not complete the turn. It was 3-2, and the Phillies had been handed another opening.
They did not take it.
The top five hitters in the order went a combined 1-for-18. Bryce Harper struck out three times. Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Harper, Brandon Marsh, and Alec Bohm never turned the afternoon into anything dangerous enough to make the Royals sweat late.
Kansas City did the opposite in the eighth. Seth Johnson walked Witt and Thomas, and Kyle Backhus entered with the game still close. Perez drove a two-out double to the left-field wall, scoring both runners and turning a one-run game into a three-run deficit.
That was the ballgame.
The Phillies will move to Monday with Cristopher Sánchez on the mound and a chance to win the series. But Sunday was a missed opportunity, not because they were embarrassed, but because Nola gave them something real.
On a hot afternoon in Kansas City, the Phillies finally got a start worth building on from Aaron Nola.
They just forgot to build around it.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.philadelphiabaseballreview.com ’
