Imagine you’ve just arrived in Arizona to enjoy some Spring Training action. In exchange for sitting through two dozen enthralling exhibition baseball games in less than a week, you’ve agreed to first take your sweetheart on a day long horseback riding excursion. You’re about to pay full freight for this pricey little adventure when a shady looking cowboy pulls you aside whispering tales of an unadvertised, half price donkey option.

It’s a pivotal crossroads: Do you forfeit a few servings of nachos at the ballgames and pony up for the trustworthy horse, which you’re confident will deliver you to the promised land? Or do you gamble on the cagey donkey, which may nibble on your girl’s foot halfway through the trek before taking a nap in the middle of the desert?

The Horse Case: In 2018, Aaron Nola made the leap from “up and coming miniature horse” to “purebred stallion”. This pony made strides across the board. Most every metric we care about saw marked improvement for A-A-Ron last season: ERA, FIP, xFIP, WHIP, SwStr%, F-Strike%, Barrel%, even all three of his FICO credit scores saw a major improvement! So the question for me isn’t so much, “Is he legit?”, as it is, “Is he worth the top 25 overall price tag?”.

With a 2.37 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, and 224 Ks in 212.1 IP, Nola was so good last year that we have to dig pretty deep to find reasons for concern. One number that does jump out is his 87.6% 2nd half strand rate which was the 8th highest in the majors. Great pitchers do tend to buckle down once runners are on base, but I still think this number comes down a bit next year. Another minor concern is the innings jump…