6 years agoPhiladelphia Phillies starting pitcher Aaron Nola was known as a pitcher that underperformed his underlying statistics. A high strikeout, high ground-ball rate pitcher, Nola had a 4.03 ERA and allowed 270 hits in 279 innings from 2016-2017, but had a 3.20 FIP and struck out 305 batters. In 2018, though, his strong performances finally yielded a top-10 SP performance with a 17-6 record, 2.37 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, and 224 strikeouts 212 1/3 innings. While there could be a case that Nola’s season was lucky, mainly based on his .251 BABIP, he did have a 50.6% ground-ball rate and had a career-low 25.1% hard-hit ball rate. Posting a 12.4% swinging strike rate and only a 73.7% contact rate, Nola was one of the nastiest pitchers of 2018. The main critique of Nola’s performance in 2018 was that his FIP (3.01) was considerably higher than his ERA and his strikeout rate was down from 9.9 per nine in 2017. While this criticism could be fair, he also allowed just 6.3 hits per nine last season and his .195 batting average allowed ranked seventh in baseball as well. There was a bit of a drop off in some statistics for Nola in the second half, namely allowing 11 home runs in just 83 1/3 innings. This came with a slight drop in hard-hit ball rate (25.2 to 24.9%) and a slight rise in fly-ball rate (29.7 to 31.2%), but a leap in HR/FB% (6.3 to 17.2). Considering the jump in home runs, Nola still had a strong 2.48 ERA in the second half, maintained a .192 batting average allowed and struck out 93 batters in 83 1/3 innings. Look at Nola as an SP1 with top-five SP upside, currently taken with an ADP of 23.--Chris Zolli