Aaron Nola rocked as 12-4 loss to Braves drops Phillies to 0-2

The Phillies’ pitching staff allowed 12 runs to the Braves on Saturday.

They’ve given up 21 runs to Atlanta in the season’s first two games. On Friday, the bullpen was at fault. But on Saturday, in a 12-4 loss, it was starter Aaron Nola who let the game get out of hand.

Nola opened his 2024 season by allowing seven runs on 12 hits — including home runs by Ozzie Albies and Matt Olson — with one walk and three strikeouts. It was an uncharacteristic outing for him. He didn’t give up much hard contact, but struggled to locate his pitches and put batters away. Nola finished his day at 83 pitches, of which 54 were strikes, in 4⅓ innings.

Manager Rob Thomson said he didn’t pull Nola earlier because he wanted to preserve some of the bullpen for Sunday’s game. He’d used five relievers in three innings Friday, when they turned a 2-0 lead into a 9-3 loss. Nola said he felt fine physically but was getting behind in the count a lot.

“I didn’t get the leadoff hitter out much,” he said. “I feel like they kept finding holes. I’ll go back and look. But I feel like they only hit a few balls hard. They were just finding holes and put some swings on good pitches.”

Added catcher J.T. Realmuto: “Really, it was that we didn’t get enough swing-and-miss. It felt like they put the bat on the ball a lot, and when they did, when they put the ball in play, it seemed to find a lot of holes. I think it was just really not having a putaway pitch, necessarily. When we got to two strikes we didn’t execute enough to put guys away, and they put it in play and beat us that way.”

It was not the tone Nola wanted to set, and things got worse for the Phillies from there. Luis Ortiz relieved Nola with one out in the fifth inning. He allowed a single to Orlando Arcia, and in the next at-bat, Travis d’Arnaud hit a bouncer over Ortiz that second baseman Bryson Stott turned into an inning-ending double play. Unfortunately, Ortiz had jumped to try to snag the bouncer and said he “popped his ankle” on the way down.

Ortiz came back into the game in the sixth, only to allow back-to-back singles to Jarred Kelenic and Ronald Acuña Jr. He exited the game with a left ankle sprain. Ortiz said after the game that he was feeling “OK,” but he was walking with a limp. Thomson said the Phillies will re-evaluate him and decide if they need to make another move.

It was an unwelcome development for a team that has used 10 relievers in just over 24 hours.

Seranthony Domínguez relieved Ortiz with two on and promptly allowed a run-scoring single by Albies, followed two outs later by a Marcell Azuna’s three-run homer. Yunior Marte and Gregory Soto, who pitched the seventh and eighth, were the only Phillies pitchers to throw a clean inning. Connor Brogdon allowed a first-pitch home run to Michael Harris II in the ninth inning, and has now allowed three earned runs and three walks in his two appearances.

“I definitely never expected — with the pitching we have, we don’t expect to give up as many runs as we have the last two games,” Realmuto said. “That’s not definitely something we’ve envisioned with the staff that we have. You’ve got to tip your cap to the lineup over there, they’re doing what they need to do to get hits and score runs, and we’re just not executing.”

This series hasn’t felt like much of a rivalry. There have been dramatic moments, but every time the Phillies took some momentum, the Braves took it right back. That was the case. The Phillies erased Atlanta’s 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning when Braves starters Max Fried gave up a bases-loaded walk with two out, followed by Stott’s two-run single that gave the Phillies a 3-2 lead.

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The Braves responded immediately in the second inning, when d’Arnaud hit a two-run double and scored on a single by Kelenic. Realmuto hit a solo home run off of Braves reliever Jesse Chavez in the third, but that was the extent of the Phillies’ scoring. They went 1-for-5 with runners in scoring position, with eight hits. The Braves finished with 19.

“I think we were battling pretty good,” said Phillies shortstop Trea Turner. “They hit the home run in the first inning, and then to bounce back like like that off of Fried was big. But when you’re playing a really good team like them, you’ve got to keep doing that all game, every game, every inning, every pitch, defensively, offensively. You can’t give them anything.

“So, you tip your cap because they keep doing that, and we need to keep up with them or get out to an early lead and shut them down. So if we do a lot of things better, it’ll happen.”

The Phillies are now 0-2 to start the season. After Sunday, they don’t play Atlanta again until early July.

While attempting to catch a foul ball hit by Austin Riley in the first inning, Bryce Harper tumbled headfirst into a camera well. He returned to the game immediately and shook off the training staff, but was bleeding a bit on his hand. He had a lengthy conversation with Rob Thomson in the dugout after the inning but remained in the game until the eighth inning when he was replaced at first by Alec Bohm.

Thomson said after the game that Harper will be a little sore tomorrow but is fine. He said his decision to put Bohm at first wasn’t just because of Harper’s fall, but also to get him off his feet.

“He’s going to play the game hard, all the time,” Thomson said of Harper. “It’s tough to rein him in. But that’s just the way he is.”