If the Phillies had a wish list heading into the second half, shoring up the back end of the rotation would have been near the top.
Step one was getting Aaron Nola back to being a pitcher who can consistently give Philadelphia a chance to win each time he takes the ball.
That is exactly what he has done.
His latest start, Wednesday night at Citizens Bank Park, was another clear example of the pitcher he can still be, even with diminished velocity and a big breaking ball in the ABS era.
It was key in the Phillies’ 4-1 win over the Miami Marlins, completing a sweep that pushed them to 12 games over .500 for the first time this season.
The pitch that will keep Nola afloat in this league is his knuckle curve. The biggest factor is whether he can get into enough favorable counts to use it when he needs it most.
With two strikes.
Against Miami, the longest-tenured Phillie faced 25 hitters and got into 17 two-strike counts, tying his highest tally of the season.
“Really just trying to win counts and fill up the zone,” Nola said. “Stubby caught a really good game behind the dish tonight. Just really tried to work the counts and command pitches.”
Being on the attack, pitching with confidence and not falling behind allowed Nola to play his game. He struck out eight batters, tied for his second-most this season behind the nine he had in his last start at the Field of Dreams.
He also completed seven innings for the first time since July 5 in Kansas City.
“That was good,” Nola said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in the seventh. It was good to get through seven there.”
That kind of rhythm becomes easier to find when the Phillies give him something to work with.
In the bottom of the second, Philadelphia manufactured a run with the bases loaded when Garrett Stubbs legged out an infield single. An inning later, Luis Arraez drove out his second homer as a Phillie, a two-run shot that gave Nola a three-run cushion.
That was meaningful against Sandy Alcantara, a former Cy Young winner who has routinely pitched well against the Phillies.
“We know how good Sandy is,” Nola said. “We’ve seen him a lot over the years. The runs are going to be limited when you’re facing a guy like that.”
From there, Nola settled in.
He completed five scoreless innings before Don Mattingly sent him back out for the sixth. Nola allowed a leadoff homer, which has become a recurring issue in many of his starts, then allowed two more batters to reach with one out.
The score was 3-1. The tying run was on base. Griffin Conine, one of the hotter bats in the Marlins’ lineup, was at the plate.
That is where Nola’s breaking ball took over.
He opened the at-bat with two changeups, evened the count at 1-1, then threw three straight knuckle curves. The last one got Conine swinging for a huge second out.
Heriberto Hernández followed, another power bat who has hurt the Phillies before. Nola took a similar path, starting him with the curveball and finishing him with it for another strikeout.
He bent, but he did not break.
Mattingly had already seen enough to trust him for one more inning.
“He was still throwing strikes,” Mattingly said. “I don’t think he walked anybody all night. Kept them off balance. Breaking ball was really good tonight. The mix was good with him. He’s always mixing and not really ever giving in.”
That seventh inning was a valuable development for a bullpen that has been leaned on heavily this month.
“To get to seven there was huge,” Mattingly said. “That was a pretty good outing there, and he’s been good here a long time.”
The Marlins whiffed on 63 percent of Nola’s knuckle curves Wednesday. In the 51 knuckle curves he threw against them across his first two starts versus Miami this season, they whiffed on 35.7 percent.
That is a major difference.
Nola has now faced the Marlins three times this season and allowed just two earned runs over 18 2/3 innings. His surrounding pitch mix has changed each time, and changing looks has been a key part of his recent success.
Miami is no easy assignment, either. The Marlins entered Wednesday as a top-seven offense in baseball by batting average.
The more starts Nola stacks together like this, the more confidence the Phillies can have in handing him the ball during another postseason run. That confidence is growing.
Over his last five starts, Nola has posted a 2.51 ERA across 28 2/3 innings with 34 strikeouts. He has averaged more than five innings per outing over that stretch and has looked much more like the stabilizing arm the Phillies need behind their top three starters.
“Lately, I’ve been feeling pretty good,” Nola said. “I think just all my pitches, how they feel, working the counts, winning the counts and not walking a lot of guys.”
Nola handed the ball to Jonathan Bowlan in the eighth, and the inning got tense quickly.
Bowlan put two on with one out, bringing the tying run to the plate. Then Brandon Marsh scaled the wall in foul territory to take away a potential problem for the second out.
“It was fun,” Marsh said. “I gotta thank the guy standing over there for pulling away at the last second, because I think he had first dibs on it before me. He moved over a little bit and helped me have the room to catch it.”
Bowlan finished the inning by striking out Conine, then screamed toward the Phillies’ dugout as he walked off the mound.
For a team trying to line up the bridge to Jhoan Duran, that has been under the microscope lately, too.
“[Bowlan] was grinding out there,” Marsh said. “He had a big punch at the end that got us out and kept the lead on our side.”
Duran handled the ninth for his 28th save, locking down a win built on exactly what Philadelphia needed.
And how about this?
The Phillies are now 12 games over .500 for the first time in this rollercoaster of a season. They sit 4.5 games out of first place in the National League East.
Mattingly is not looking at it that way, at least not publicly.
“It’s day to day,” Mattingly said. “This thing changes so fast. We’re playing good right now. Things change fast. Yesterday didn’t matter. Today was the only thing that mattered.”