In the past several posts I have pointed out that the Phillies starting pitchers, and Halladay, Hamels and Lee in particular, were exceptional at preventing walks in 2011.

As you know, their exceptionalness made for some nice walk numbers for the Phillie starting pitchers last year. In 2011, Phillie starting pitchers faced more batters than any other National League team. They also walked fewer batters than any NL team.

Team Batters Faced Walks % BB
PHI 
ARI 
STL 
WSN 
MIL 
FLA 
NYM 
CIN 
LAD 
SDP 
ATL 
PIT 
HOU 
CHC 
SFG 
COL 
TOT		 4318
4214
4242
3948
4160
4033
4215
4139
4119
4034
4043
4019
4174
4098
4172
4082
66010		 221
276
278
266
301
292
315
312
314
311
312
315
355
353
362
373
4956		 5.1%
6.5%
6.6%
6.7%
7.2%
7.2%
7.5%
7.5%
7.6%
7.7%
7.7%
7.8%
8.5%
8.6%
8.7%
9.1%
7.5%

After the Phillies, the Cardinals were the team whose starting pitchers faced the next highest number of hitters. They faced 266 fewer hitters than the starting pitchers for the Phillies. The Nats were the team whose starters threw the second-fewest number of walks — they walked 45 more than the Phils.

The average NL team saw their starters walk about 7.5% of the batters they faced. Phillies started walked about 5.1% of them. By percentage of batters faced that walked, the Diamondbacks were the second-best rotation at preventing walks — Arizona started faced 104 fewer batters in 2011 and walked 55 more.

The Astros hammered the Phillies 10-3 yesterday, dropping the Phils to 2-3 in Spring Training.

Worley started for the Phils and allowed two runs in two innings on five hits and a walk. Pat Misch was next. He threw a scoreless third before allowing four runs in the fourth, three of which were unearned because of a two-out throwing error by Frandsen at third. Papelbon allowed a triple and a walk in the fifth, but kept the Astros off the board. Willis was next and he got hit hard for his second time in two tries, charged with four runs on three hits and two walks while getting just two outs. Rosenberg, Qualls and Stutes finished it out, combining to throw 3 1/3 shutout innings.

Nice to see Qualls and Stutes both put up some zeroes after each were hit hard in their first official Spring Training appearance.

Willis says he’s sore and tired in this article. Rich Dubee also says the Phils won’t carry two left-handed relievers for the sake of having more than one lefty in the pen. In two outings so far, Willis has allowed five runs in 1 2/3 innings on five hits and three walks (that’s a 27.00 ERA and a 4.80 ratio — opponents have hit .500 against him).

The Phillies had five hits in the game. Podsednik doubled in his only at-bat of the day, his third double already, and is 4-for-8 so far. Lou Montanez was 1-for-2 with a double. Hector Luna homered yet again — 3-for-7 with a double and a home run in official action with another homer in unofficial action against FSU.

Frandsen started at third and went 0-for-4 with an error. 1-for-12 with nightmareish defense so far. Nix is still looking for his first hit — he’s 0-for-9 after going 0-for-3 yesterday.

The Phillies play the Pirates this afternoon with Hamels and Bush expected to pitch.

Harold Garcia, he of the 40-man roster, had surgery on his right knee and will miss four to six months.

Thome will play first base in a minor league game on Monday. The same article says that Laynce Nix had “been bothered with a sore muscle near his left groin.”