NEW YORK — One minute before 4 p.m. ET on the 48th day of the season, Garrett Stubbs exhaled. He held out his arms. The diminutive backup catcher who had squatted for three games in a 51-hour span draped his right arm around Aaron Nola. The shutout was complete. The Phillies were the first team in the majors to 30 wins and they did it with four infielders out of position and Stubbs catching on three consecutive days for the first time in his major-league career.
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“It was pretty incredible,” Stubbs said after a 4-0 win over the New York Mets. “And it felt like a video game back there.”
The Phillies are a machine right now. A migraine overcame their biggest star, Bryce Harper, 20 minutes before first pitch Tuesday. He was removed from the lineup. The Phillies rearranged the infield behind Nola. Then, all of them — first baseman Alec Bohm, second baseman Kody Clemens, shortstop Bryson Stott and third baseman Whit Merrifield — made strong plays for their pitcher. Nola provided the bullpen, used often in back-to-back extra-inning games, a day of rest.
The reward: A three-hour bus ride home in rush hour traffic to resume this home-and-home series at Citizens Bank Park. It’s a long season.
“Everyone here is willing to do anything they can to win,” Stubbs said. “And when you have a clubhouse like that, and guys that are going to back you no matter what, you get good results.”
No one wants to say it out loud. The Phillies have bludgeoned inferior teams. They have flexed their roster’s depth. They have padded their win-loss record with useful armor for whenever a cold streak emerges.
Is something special happening here? Rob Thomson almost frowned at the question. He responded with inaudible noises. They sounded something like, “I don’t know.” The manager doesn’t want to say it. No one in the clubhouse does.
“I mean, it’s a great start, you know?” Thomson said. “But we have to finish.”
Phillies fans stand and cheer as Aaron Nola finishes off the Mets for his fourth career shutout. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
Nola finished it on Tuesday afternoon. He did it with 109 pitches, and something incredible happened in the ninth inning. He threw two fastballs at 93.8 mph — harder than any pitch he had thrown in 2024. The last pitch he fired, a 93 mph fastball, landed in center fielder Johan Rojas’ glove for the 27th out. Nola had carried a perfect game into the sixth inning. He threw three pitches in the seventh inning.
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Until Tuesday, he had not looked like vintage Nola this season. He now has a 3.10 ERA.
“I got every pitch I wanted,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “I was able to get the barrel to it. Some of them, I squared up. Some of them, I just missed them. … That’s what good pitchers do. They throw pitches that look very hittable and then they move at the end.”
This is the distillation of what these Phillies have done in the first 43 games of the season. It is not complex. They pitch. They catch the ball. They have timely hitting. They have injuries, the next man fills the spot. They have six starters, fine, Spencer Turnbull is volunteering to pitch on back-to-back days for the first time in his life if needed.
The Phillies did not need an 11th inning on Monday night. And they did not need a single reliever on Tuesday. Nola, afterward, could see the bigger picture. That’s all the Phillies have asked their players to do in 2024 — be better every day, but not at the expense of the ultimate goal.
“That’s what all our starting five train for,” Nola said. “We want to go deep in the games. We want to throw complete games. It helps our bullpen out. It helps our bullpen late in the season. It keeps them fresh. We need those guys fresh late in the season. Because we know the past couple postseasons, they’re super important. Right? They pitch a lot. We have a lot of really good arms down there that throw really hard. As starters, if we can keep going deep in the games, it helps those guys out a lot down the road.”
Aaron Nola lowered his ERA to 3.10. The Phillies’ rotation leads the NL with a 2.65 mark. (Brad Penner / USA Today)
Only the 1976 Phillies reached 30 wins in fewer games (41) than this version did. The season is 48 days old, but a scorching start offers some advantages. It’s why the Phillies won’t push Harper or J.T. Realmuto, who sat again with a sore right knee. It’s why every step Trea Turner takes in his hamstring recovery will be cautious.
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“More depth,” Nola said, “than we had in the past.”
Harper was available to pinch hit Tuesday, Thomson said. He’ll play Wednesday. So will Realmuto, barring an unexpected development. Stubbs, who hadn’t caught on three consecutive days since 2019 at Triple-A Round Rock, can sit. “Get him a massage,” Matt Strahm yelled as reporters congregated around Stubbs’ locker.
“Stubby, it looks like he’s losing some weight,” Thomson joked before Tuesday’s game. “I think he has to jump around in the shower just to get wet.”
They’re having fun.
“Everyone likes each other,” Stubbs said. “We feel like every single guy in this locker room has a role, knows their role, fills that role.”
There is value in that. It’s a dynamic that Thomson has created. The stars will guide this team in October — if the Phillies return to the postseason — but they need help along the six-month journey. For all of the talk about the Phillies’ rotation this season, Nola has almost taken a back seat. He has been good, not great.
He looked different Tuesday — and not just because he faced the Mets. His stuff was better. It had more life.
“I think it definitely helped,” Nola said. “Maybe guys couldn’t sit off-speed on me. I did feel like the fastball was coming out a little bit better than it has in previous starts.”
He finished strong. Phillies starters have logged almost 20 innings more than any other rotation in the National League. They’ll need to be managed, too, but Nola is right. They have trained for this. The Phillies have made it a priority.
“It really does feel like a video game,” Stubbs said. “And I’m not a big video game player, but I have to imagine that’s what it feels like. Because I felt like anywhere we called a pitch, it was going in that direction — with some velocity and with the shapes that you’re looking for.”
Stubbs smiled.
“And,” he said, “when you have that with a guy like Aaron Nola, you get the result that we got.”
So, now, it’s Ranger Suárez’s turn.
GO DEEPERMLB Power Rankings: What a difference a year makesGO DEEPERThree Phillies takeaways: Bohm and the first-inning bats, Stott's next step, Kerkering's fastball usage— The Athletic’s Will Sammon contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Garrett Stubbs and Aaron Nola: Brad Penner / USA Today)
Matt Gelb is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Philadelphia Phillies. He has covered the team since 2010 while at The Philadelphia Inquirer, including a yearlong pause from baseball as a reporter on the city desk. He is a graduate of Syracuse University and Central Bucks High School West.
