Baton Rouge, LA born Austin Kyle Nola is a baseball catcher and infielder for the Milwaukee Brewers organization. He previously played for the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres. Austin’s grandparents hail from the town of Nola, Italy a small town outside Naples and about 30km from Mount Vesuvius.

He attended Louisiana State University (LSU), where he played college baseball for the LSU Tigers and was a member of the 2009 College World Series champions.

In his first taste of the majors in 2019, he hit .269 in 79 games, with 10 homers and 31 RBIs, for an OPS+ of 115. He played mainly first base - 59 games, making him the player who saw the most action at the position for the Mariners that year - but also appeared 15 times at second base, 7 at catcher, 4 at third base, and twice in the outfield, in both left and right field.

In 2020, however, the Mariners made Nola their starting catcher at the start of the season and he responded well as he hit .306 with 5 homers and 19 RBIs over his first 29 games. His OPS+ was an outstanding 150, and at 30, with the Mariners going nowhere and looking to build for the future, he was a perfect trade chip. On August 30th, he was a key part of a seven-player trade with the San Diego Padres. He finished the season with an OPS+ of 129.

His younger brother Aaron is also a major league player. In the 2022 NLCS, for the first time in MLB playoff history, two brothers faced off against each other in a game, with Aaron the starting pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies and Austin the starting catcher for the San Diego Padres in Game 2 of the NLCS. Their father, A.J. Nola, was in the stands in San Diego, wearing a Phillies jersey and a Padres cap.

(excerpted from Baseball Almanac, BR Bullpen, and Wikipedia)