Aaron Nola got a gauge of his training with a ‘master class’ start for Italy. Will it lead to a bounceback season?

CLEARWATER, Fla. — For years, the sun rose and set, the Earth rotated on its axis, and the most durable pitcher in baseball made 32 starts per season for the Phillies.

Why would Aaron Nola change how he trains?

But Nola is 32 now and coming off an injury-interrupted season of less than 100 innings and a career-worst 6.01 ERA. So he modified his training routine by reinstating a more rigorous long-toss program.

And he signed up to pitch in the World Baseball Classic.

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“It was just him wanting to feel that adrenaline early to kind of stress-test the stuff that he’s practiced,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said Thursday after Nola dominated for Italy in the WBC. “We talked through the pros and cons, and there weren’t really any cons for me.”

The plan worked perfectly. Nola faced Canada in a spring training game March 4, then left the Phillies to join Team Italy. (He qualified because his great-grandparents on his father’s side were from a town in the Campania region in southern Italy.)

And with the upstart Italians needing to defeat Mexico to lock up the top seed in Pool B — and help Team USA survive pool play, too — Nola delivered five scoreless innings on 69 pitches in a playoff atmosphere (announced attendance: 39,894) Wednesday night in Houston.

Nola allowed four hits and one walk. He struck out five. He dialed his fastball up to 94.5 mph, with a 92.8-mph average that topped his 91.9 mph mark from last season. And he didn’t face a triple-A lineup. Mexico’s first four hitters are All-Stars: Jarren Duran (Boston), Randy Arozarena (Seattle), Jonathan Aranda (Tampa Bay), and Alejandro Kirk (Toronto).

“It’s obviously a little bit different than a spring training start,” Nola told reporters. “A little bit more fun, I feel like.”

Spring training can get monotonous for 11-year veterans, no matter how diligent they are about preparation. Pitchers use Grapefruit League starts to refine specific pitches; hitters might be more aggressive one day and more patient the next. It’s glorified practice.

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Cotham said Nola wanted a more accurate reading of his offseason training. He focused on keeping the ball down below hitters’ thighs. He wanted to regain a tick on his heater. He tried to make his signature curveball break later and on two planes, vertically and horizontally.

And what better way to find out if he achieved those goals than by facing hitters in a game with actual stakes?

Nola struck out Duran and Arozarena on curveballs in the first inning. He got Arozarena on a curve in the fourth. In every case, the breaking ball was set up by fastballs that had more oomph and were down in the zone.

“Just kind of a Nola master class,” Cotham said.

“Vintage Nola,” lefty Jesús Luzardo said.

As one rival scout who attended the game described it, “Everything looked crisper.”

It was intentional.

Nola strayed from his long-toss program for a few years to give his arm more recovery time after long playoff runs. This winter, he ramped it up from longer distances.

“Too much run, not enough carry, a little bit of cut, too much sink, it’s easier to hide all that at 60, 90, 120 [feet], but once you get out to 150, 180, and even pushing a little over 200, you can’t hide from that,” Cotham said. “The ball’s going to tell you. For a guy like Noles, it’s more about analyzing the flight of the ball and then revealing some velocity that’s already there.

“That was kind of the hope in training that way. We want him to throw harder, he wants to throw harder, but I didn’t want it to be from trying necessarily that much harder. That game last night, it didn’t look any different. Maybe he stepped on a couple to finish an at-bat. But he’s throwing harder easier. For what he’s getting for the same level of perceived effort, it’s just coming out a little better.”

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Based on what they witnessed from Nola before he left camp and in his WBC cameo, Phillies officials can envision a bounceback season.

But it isn’t often that a pitcher goes from posting a 6.00-plus ERA in 90 or more innings one season and a sub-4.00 mark in at least as many innings the next. Pittsburgh’s Mitch Keller turned a 6.17 ERA in 100⅔ innings in 2021 into a 3.91 ERA in 159 innings in 2022.

With a return to normalcy, Nola would be a middle-of-the-rotation anchor behind Cristopher Sánchez and Luzardo. Zack Wheeler, Nola’s running mate atop the rotation for years, has thrown five bullpen sessions and continues to make progress in his return from thoracic outlet decompression surgery.

Cotham said Nola plans to stay with Team Italy through at least Saturday’s quarterfinal in Houston against Puerto Rico. If the Italians advance, he could pitch in the semifinals Monday night in Miami and still be in line to start for the Phillies in the season-opening series against the Rangers at Citizens Bank Park.

Cotham wouldn’t be opposed to it, just as he endorsed the change in Nola’s offseason program.

“He’s a pro, so the chance to go and compete, it’s not a bad thing,” Cotham said. “Getting a rep or two at something real for him, it’s a good thing.

“And he was pretty dang good.”