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Aaron Nola Tells Some in Twitter Chat

The Phillies had Aaron Nola answer some questions on Twitter this afternoon in an attempt to find his personality. The state of that project remains incomplete.

By Eric Chesterton
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

After a misleadingly advertised young players news conference during which no young players actually spoke, the Phillies let us all know to our collective relief that, yes, they, i.e. the young players you tuned in to watch, are all alive and well. More importantly, we would get the opportunity to hear from some of them. No. We wouldn't hear from them in the traditional sense in which the sounds emerging from these players' mouths physically affect our ears. Instead, we would hear from them via tweets.

Today, the Phillies allowed Aaron Nola to take over their Twitter account for 20 minutes to answer fans' burning questions. Let's take a look at the highlights.

In this, the fourth question he answered, Aaron Nola calls out Phillies fans with a classic example of damning with faint praise. Nola ignores the defining characteristic of the Philadelphia fan base: insecurity. Fans of Philadelphia sports need to be told at every available opportunity that they are the greatest, smartest, and most passionate fans on this planet. As a relatively unknown personality, it is important that Aaron Nola get off to a hot start making Phillies fans feel special. Even though you pitched in front of empty stadiums last season, Aaron, you need to say something like "amazing" or "passionate." "Solid," though it may be true, ain't gonna cut it.

Two things here. First, this story isn't very funny. Sort of annoying? Yes. Lame prank? Sure. But, I don't see the comedy here and I tend to laugh more than the average person. Based on this, I'm forced to conclude that Aaron Nola, as we originally suspected, is a decidedly not funny dude.

Second, how did it take Nola five minutes to realize there weren't any clothes in his locker. I'm picturing Nola going through the motions of putting on socks, lacing up his cleats, and adjusting his jock strap. He thinks he's all set and starts jogging out to the field, but on his way, passes a mirror. There he notices that, as a point of fact, no clothes adorn his body. He then turns around and sees a pile of his clothes in the middle of the clubhouse. That's definitely what happened.

This opinion won't make you many friends around these parts. Personally, I don't care enough about the taxonomy of a hot dog to have an opinion about its sandwich status, but Twitter is unusual in how much its residents care about the hot dog issue. You don't need to appeal to your base anymore, Aaron. It's time to move toward the middle.

While I can't knock the hustle of trying to please everyone, you can't do that by literally making people up. The wise choice here is Ben Simmons for two reasons. 1) The sport he plays is currently in season making him more known to the average memory-impaired sports fan. 2) He is somewhat likely to be on the Sixers next season. You might have heard of them, Aaron: They're the basketball team that plays across the street from CBP. Developing a friendship with him now could make your experience in Philadelphia a lot more fun and social going forward.

I've never eaten crawfish, but I'm calling BS on this. Eating 730 pounds of anything in the span of three months seems impossible. That's something on the order of seven pounds per day. I'll wager all my meager savings that this didn't happen. Nola is not coming across as honest in this interview. Unfortunately, in this season of primary elections, we've seen too many public figures like Nola struggling with trustworthiness and pandering to constituents.

Not only did Nola miss out on the perfect opportunity to bring himself back into the good graces of the fans with this answer, but he managed to make himself seem even more boring than we already thought he was. He could have talked about how good the clubhouse food was or the water pressure in the showers or his thoughts on the aesthetics of the Phillies uniforms. All of these would have made him seem cool. Instead, his favorite part of being a Phillies is that the organization is old and not absolutely terrible.

That concludes today's edition of Phillies Prospects Type Some Things. Join us tomorrow for Aaron Altherr's debut appearance in this series.

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