Phillies, Aaron Nola agree to 7-year, $172 million deal: Source

Publish date: 2024-05-25

By Ken Rosenthal, Matt Gelb, Tim Britton and Eno Sarris

The Philadelphia Phillies and starting pitcher Aaron Nola have agreed to a seven-year contract, president of baseball operations David Dombrowski announced Sunday. The deal is worth $172 million, a major-league source said. Here’s what you need to know:

Nola, 30, has spent his entire nine-year career with Philadelphia and became a free agent this offseason.
Nola is the No. 2 ranked free agent on The Athletic’s 2023-2024 MLB Top 40 Free Agents Big Board.
He posted a 4.46 ERA and 1.15 WHIP with 202 strikeouts through 193 2/3 innings last season.
Nola will become the highest-paid pitcher in Phillies history once this contract is finalized.

Phillies lock up their homegrown starter

Plenty of labels have applied to Nola over the years in Philadelphia — homegrown ace, inconsistent in September, durable workhorse, solid No. 2, then big-game pitcher — but there is no debating this one now.

This contract is not a stunning development. Maybe this was the deal both sides should have done last February when they opened negotiations but stalled. Nola’s camp, according to major-league sources, was seeking more than $200 million at the time. The Phillies were not willing to go beyond six years, per major-league sources. The wide gap prompted Nola to try free agency.

And, in the end, they met in the middle. Nola received the seven-year deal he desired. The Phillies kept the average annual value in a reasonable ballpark.

Now, if Nola spends the duration of the contract with the Phillies, he will break Steve Carlton’s record tenure of 15 years. He will, at the very least, be second in franchise history to Carlton in strikeouts. He might trail only Carlton and Robin Roberts for all-time games started by a Phillies pitcher.

Nola has a chance to leave a legacy as one of the greatest pitchers the franchise has ever known.

That doesn’t preclude this contract from the standard risks. Nola turns 31 in June and has started more games than any pitcher in baseball since 2018. His carrying trait is his durability and too many pitchers see their bodies fail them as they advance in age. The Phillies, with this commitment, believe Nola can age well.

They also understood the market and the club’s current situation. There was no one else who offered the stability that Nola does. Signing any other top pitcher would have required surrendering draft capital and, perhaps, more money. The Atlanta Braves, the Phillies’ chief division rival, had a legitimate interest in signing Nola.

So, here they are. The Phillies and Nola are linked again and forever. — Matt Gelb, Phillies senior writer

GO DEEPER

The Phillies and Aaron Nola — forever linked: What the $172M deal means for both sides

Evaluating the deal

Any deal Nola signed in Philadelphia was likely to sacrifice some on the average annual value in exchange for a longer term. That’s how the Phillies have operated in the past with their big deals for Bryce Harper and Trea Turner.

While Nola doesn’t land the $30 million per season I’d suggested, he does get a seventh year — as long a deal as any free-agent starter has signed in the last four winters. Only Jacob deGrom has topped the $172 million total guarantee Nola received in those last four winters. The contract takes Nola through his age-37 season, by which point he’ll have played 16 seasons with the Phillies — two more than Roberts and one more than Carlton. — Tim Britton, Mets staff writer

Nolas has the durability for this deal

Nola, on a per-game basis, is probably not as good as Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and deGrom were when they signed their biggest deals. So, when it comes to average annual value, his $24.6 million per year comes up short in comparison. Per year, Nola got a contract that puts him in the back end of the top twenty pitcher deals of all time.

But Nola, on a per-season basis, ranks among the best in the game. He strikes out a lot of players, has excellent command and puts up innings every year, so he’s got the fourth-most Wins Above Replacement in the last three seasons (and third-most innings). If you look beyond ERA, which you probably should because he’s played in front of some of the worst defenses of all time (possibly THE worst of all time) and in a tougher park for pitchers, he’s been a front-of-the-rotation stud. And so the years (seven) and the overall guarantee ($172 million) puts him just outside the top ten for pitchers deals of all time.

How he ages will be fascinating, as he’s already started to lose some stuff off his fastball, which at 92.4 mph was already below average by velocity last year. But starting pitcher production is less tied to fastball velocity than it is for relievers as they age, and Nola has the secondary weapons (that knuckle curve is top five by its physical characteristics) and command (third-best in the league in the last three years) to continue to mix it up into his mid-thirties.

Nola doesn’t put up the elite ERAs of his compatriots, but under the hood, he has elite characteristics and has shown the durability to deserve a contract of this length and size. — Eno Sarris, MLB senior writer

Backstory

In his last five full seasons, Nola — a 2018 All-Star — has recorded at least 200 strikeouts as a staple of Philadelphia’s rotation.

The righty posted a 2.35 ERA and 23 strikeouts in 23 innings during the 2023 postseason as the Phillies fell to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series.

Nola has made 235 total starts with Philadelphia. The Phillies selected him with the No. 7 pick in the 2014 MLB Draft out of LSU, and he debuted with the team a year later.

Required reading

(Photo: Eric Hartline / USA Today)