Not much has gone right for Aaron Nola over his last two starts.
Janson Junk, however, couldn’t have pitched much better over his last two trips to the mound.
Nola (1-3, 6.03 ERA) will look to alter his current fortunes on Monday as the Philadelphia Phillies complete a four-game series against fellow right-hander Junk (2-2, 3.00) and the host Marlins.
The Phillies have won two of the first three games of the series, with Bryson Stott belting a three-run homer in both Friday’s 6-5 victory and Sunday’s 7-2 triumph. Before these blasts, Stott last went deep on Sept. 24 of last season.
Philadelphia has won five of its last six games since the team fired Rob Thomson and tabbed Don Mattingly as interim manager. Nola has been idle through all of that, as he last pitched on April 26.
“Eight days is a lot,” Nola said of the time off, per the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I’m not going to lie.”
The numbers don’t lie either, and they leave plenty to be desired. He has allowed 11 runs on 13 hits — including three homers — and seven walks over his last two starts (nine innings).
Nola has struggled to paint the corners of the plate this season, and let’s not even get him started on the ABS challenge system.
“Yeah, I’ve got to be me and pitch how I usually pitch,” Nola said. “I think all our guys are like that. That’s just kind of how we’ve been programmed to pitch. I don’t throw in the upper-90s where I can live in the middle. I can’t do that.
“I’ve got to focus on throwing to the quadrants. Yeah, it does make you come in the zone a little bit more when somebody challenges one and it kind of changes the count. We just have to adjust a little bit to the ABS and not completely adjust to it. We have to stay with our strengths and then adjust to it, rather than adjusting to it and then going back to our strengths.”
Nola, 32, also has struggled in his career against the Marlins, posting a 5-12 record with a 3.72 ERA in 25 appearances (all starts).
He’d be wise to pitch carefully to Otto Lopez, who is 7-for-14 with three RBIs and three runs in the series. Lopez is carrying a six-game hitting streak into the series finale.
Junk has yielded a total of four hits over 11 scoreless innings over his last two starts. He scattered three hits — all singles — with four strikeouts in a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers last Tuesday.
“He set the tone on the mound,” manager Clayton McCullough said of that start. “He was fantastic. They know he’s going to pound the strike zone. They came out aggressive, and he really mixed things up. He moved the ball around, executed. He was able to get through six innings very efficiently.”
Junk, 30, is 0-1 with a 1.93 ERA in his lone career appearance against the Phillies.
–Field Level Media
