PHILADELPHIA —Aaron Nola left Game 4 of the World Series on Wednesday in the fifth inning, having not allowed a run. Funny, how a sentence can be factually accurate yet convey nothing close to the proper context of a situation, of this tenuous situation that the Phillies now face. Yes, the Houston Astros hadn’t scored while Nola was in the game, but he had allowed seven hits, hit a batter, and exited with the bases loaded with no outs, hardly a seamless baton handoff to José Alvarado. And soon enough, the Astros started a conga line to home plate.
The reasons for Nola’s struggles Wednesday — physical, mental, something else — don’t matter now. Perhaps he was tiring at the end of a long season, though 24 hours earlier he had said he felt good. Perhaps he wasn’t capable of meeting the moment, though he had pitched brilliantly in the National League wild-card round and divisional series. Perhaps the Houston Astros — a team that won 106 regular-season games and its first seven of the postseason — were just due not merely to thump the Phillies like they did, 5-0, but to tag them with the embarrassment of becoming just the second team to be no-hit in a World Series game.
But again, the details of the Phillies’ first bad night at Citizens Bank Park in more than a month are irrelevant. Game 4 is over. The series is tied. And for the first time in these playoffs, the Phillies are in peril of breaking — either at the hands of an opponent that was better than they were for most of this season or from the attrition to their pitching staff.
