CLEARWATER, Fla. – Sometimes it's the simple things.
Aaron Nola struggled in the early months of the 2023 season. As the postseason approached, it became more urgent to get everything right. Then one day late in the season, Nola said, Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham suggested he stop looking at the pitch timer on the right side of home plate, especially off the track, and instead look at the pitch -Timer to look on the left. Nola had a 2.27 ERA in his last six starts, including the postseason. He had a 4.62 ERA in his first 30.
“You pretty much throw where your eyes go and where your head goes,” Nola said. “That was a big key.”
Nola pitched two perfect innings in a 4-0 victory over the Yankees on Sunday in a Grapefruit League game at BayCare Ballpark. He struck out three.
Nobody should put too much stock in the first game of spring, but Nola has never been a good spring training player and he looked good. Since its first big league camp in 2016, Nola has a spring ERA of 5.34 (73 earned runs in 122 2/3 innings). Nola's mechanical adjustments at the end of the season and his comfort with baseball's new rules have many people believing he will experience a resurgence in 2024.
Perhaps Sunday offered some insight.
“He has an incredible sense of what’s going on,” Cotham said. “Last year he felt like he couldn’t see where he wanted to go. His eyes were late. His crotch was a little across his body. His upper body was somewhat closed. We can observe such things in some things that we have. He was watching a video. I watched a video. He looks at the correct pitch clock. So when a runner is on base, he comes into the set, he looks at the clock, the batter, the runner, the batter, that pitch clock. So there was some kind of impetus [his front shoulder] This way [to the right].”
But when Nola started looking at the timer on the left, his body straightened up, which helped him stay online while he threw to the plate. That meant better pitches, especially on his glove side, i.e. inside throws for lefties and outside throws for righties.
“You could look at the data and say stay more closed, stay more open, or just go online more,” Cotham said. “But for him it’s about finding something in the game that helps him slow it down. So I think it's two things. It helped him perform, but it also helped him manage the game better. Because at that exact time he also added a sliding step. This lowered the volume of the game so he could think more clearly.”
Nola freely admits that he struggled with the introduction of the pitch timer last season. He didn't like it. In the past, when he had runners on base, he slowed the game down to a minimum.
Nola couldn't do this anymore. He was too focused on the timer.
Nola said those problems are a thing of the past.
“This year, focus mostly on the hitter,” Nola said. “The batsman and myself in terms of delivery and pitches and not the clock. This year feels better. My main focus is the batsman and that’s how it should be.”
Nola introduced the slide step on August 21, around the time he made the pitch timer adjustment. Before the slide step, runners gained 15.4 feet from the time he began throwing the ball to the time he released the ball.
A foot can make a big difference in Nola's mindset, a catcher like JT Realmuto and a team's willingness to run.
“I’m glad we were able to find something because it helped toward the end of the season,” Nola said. “I hope it continues throughout the season.”
When asked last June for tips he would give to parents wanting to help their children play baseball, Cotham said, “It's very simple, but pay close attention to where you're throwing it as often as possible.”… Your eyes determine where you go, your eyes determine where you go, your eyes determine where your balance is. So if I look somewhere and my eyes are sluggish or late, I can become unbalanced.”
A few months later, Cotham applied the same principle to Nola's delivery.
“If my eyes are always like this [looking right], then my body kind of goes that way,” Nola said. “It was a big help. I never thought of it, but that’s Caleb for you.”