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The starters may have been fantastic at preventing walks for the Phils in 2011, but the relievers were a different story. The bullpen walked a whole lot of folks last year.

For each of the NL teams, here’s the percentage of batters faced by relievers that walked in 2011:

By percentage of batters faced that were walked, the Phillies relievers were 14th in the NL in 2011.

Phillie starters faced the most batters in the NL by a wide margin in 2011, so it makes sense that the relievers faced the fewest. The Dodgers were the team that faced the second-fewest and they faced 127 more. Despite facing the fewest number of hitters, by a lot, there were four NL teams that walked fewer batters overall than the Phillie relievers did.

Here are the numbers by innings pitched rather than batters faced:

The Phils were 14th in the NL in walks per nine innings pitched per relievers. Again, this underscores the amazing job the starters did at preventing walks given that overall the team walked fewer total batters than any NL team had since 1995.

The Phils played the Pirates yesterday, winning 5-4 when Lou Montanez hit a walkoff homer off of Michael Dubee in the bottom of the tenth to improve to 3-3.

Cole Hamels got the start for the Phils and was fantastic. He went 3 2/3 scoreless innings before allowing back-to-back singles. He should have been out of the inning, but the next batter, Nate McLouth, reached on an error by Wiggington at second to keep the inning alive. Bush followed Hamels and went 1 1/3 scoreless innings before running into trouble in the sixth. In the sixth, the Pirates scored three runs charged to Bush on three singles and a double, puffing Bush’s Spring Training ERA to 8.31. Bastardo, Aumont and Schwimer all threw scoreless frames for the Phils. Lefty David Purcey went in an inning as well and allowed a run on a solo homer by Starling Marte.

Wigginton started at second and made an error, but went 1-for-1 with an RBI-double and two walks. Pence was 2-for-3. Victorino went 1-for-3 with a two-run homer. Still no hits for Nix, who’s now 0-for-11 after an 0-for-2 with two walks. Montanez won it in the tenth — he’s 3-for-6 so far with two doubles and a home run. He has four RBI — Hector Luna still leads the team with five.

Wigginton has seen a lot of time at second over his career. He didn’t play there in 2011, but he started 35 games at second for the Orioles in 2010 with an UZR/150 of -14.3.

The Phillies play Detroit this afternoon.

Domonic Brown has a sprained right thumb. The linked article suggests he will sit for at least a few more days.

This says that Contreras will throw batting practice today, but is not scheduled for any game action in the next week. It also says that Dontrelle Willis has a sore left forearm and will rest a couple of days.

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.

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.”

Remember this from about a year ago? In 2010, Phillies pitchers overall combined to walk 416 batters for the year. That was the fewest number of walks issued by an NL team since the 1995 Mets walked 401.

We can now add 2011 to the list and again the Phillies have walked the fewest hitters of any NL team. Here’s the NL team that has issued the fewest walks overall since 1995 (the last time any NL team walked fewer hitters than the Phillies did in 2010 or 2011):

I have mixed feelings about the Phils cutting down their walk rate even further, cause if they knock or four more walks in 2012 I’m probably going to have to look more stuff up.

It was pretty much a three-man show for the Phils in terms of preventing walks in 2011. As I mentioned in a recent post, Halladay, Lee and Hamels all pitched a ton of innings and excelled at preventing walks. Here’s a look at the walks per nine innings rate for Halladay, Lee and Hamels as a group compared to the rest of the team for 2011:

So that trio walked less than half the hitters per nine innings that the rest of the team did. They also threw a tremendous number of innings, 46.2% of the total innings thrown by the team.

Hamels had the worst walk rate of the group of Halladay, Lee and Hamels at 1.83 walks per nine. No pitcher on the team in 2011 when threw at least 45 innings had a walk rate under two — Blanton threw 41 1/3 innings with a walk rate of 1.96 per nine frames and Joe Savery and Wilson Valdez combined not to walk a hitter over 3 1/3 innings. Among the guys who had at least 50 innings pitched in 2011, Oswalt was the pitcher other than the big three with the best walk rate — he allowed 2.14 walks per nine.

The Phils beat the Yankees 9-3 yesterday and are 1-2 in official action so far in Spring Training.

Blanton got the start and allowed two singles in two scoreless innings. Scott Elarton followed Blanton and went two frames as well, setting down all six men he faced. Austin Hyatt was charged with two runs over two innings. Brian Sanches pitched the seventh and was charged with a run on four singles before Herndon went two scoreless frames.

Domonic Brown continued his reign of butchery in the outfield, misplaying then diving at and missing a ball hit by Brett Gardner in the sixth inning that was called a triple. Kevin Frandsen threw the relay away on the same play for an error, allowing Gardner to score.

Still real early, but Brown has already looked terrible in the outfield.

Martinez hit a two-run homer for the Phils in his only at-bat. Rollins was 2-for-2 and stole two bases. Hector Luna was 1-for-2 with a three-run double, which comes after a home run in the game against Florida State. He seems like a tough guy for the Phillies to carry if he can’t play short. Polanco started at third and went 2-for-3 with a pair of singles.

The Phils play the Blue Jays this afternoon. Cliff Lee and Kyle Kendrick are expected to pitch.

Charlie Manuel suggests it’s going to be a while before Utley plays in this article.

Cole Hamels has been pretty fantastic over the past two seasons, making 65 appearances (64 starts) in which he threw to a 2.92 ERA with a 1.08 ratio. He’s gotten just 26 wins over those 65 appearances, though, and part of the reason for that is that the Phils just haven’t scored a lot of runs in the games he has started.

Here’s how the runs the Phillies scored have broken down by starting pitcher over the past three seasons:

So, for example, the table says that over the past three years, Hamels has started 96 games in which the Phillies have scored 393 runs. That’s 4.09 runs per game. Over the same three years, the Phillies have played 390 games that Hamels didn’t start. In those games, the Phillies scored 1,912 runs, which is about 4.90 runs per game. Finally, the column on the far right for Hamels suggests that in the games Hamels started the Phillies scored about 84% of the runs per game than they did in the games he did not.

There are nine pitchers who have started more than 20 games for the Phils over the past three years. Of those, Blanton, Worley, Kendrick, Happ and Moyer have seen the team score more runs per game in the games they started than the games they did not.

For Halladay, Oswalt, Lee and Hamels, the Phils have scored fewer runs in the game they started than the games they did not.

Of the more than 20 starts group, Blanton and Hamels are the guys at the extremes. 5.40 runs per game for Blanton (117% of the runs the Phils have scored in the games he hasn’t started since the end of 2008) compared to 4.09 for Hamels (84%).

Official Spring Training action got underway this weekend with the Phils and Yankees squaring off twice.

The Yankees won Saturday’s game 8-5. Kevin Frandsen and Pence both homered for the Phils. Tyson Gilles was 2-for-3 with a double.

Hamels started for the Phils and allowed a run on a bloop RBI-double by Ibanez over two innings. Bush followed and allowed a run on a solo homer over two frames. Willis, Qualls and Stutes all allowed runs for the Phils — that trio combined to give up six runs on seven hits and two walks over three innings. Qualls allowed three runs in his frame.

The Phils made four errors yesterday as the Yanks topped them 7-4.

Halladay allowed a run in two innings. Piniero charged with three runs over two innings, only one of which was earned. Phillippe Aumont allowed three runs on four hits in an inning, but only one run was earned. Martinez made two errors in the game and Wigginton one. Brown dropped a fly ball in left with some discussion of whether he dropped it while he was transferring the ball from his glove after a catch.

Pence homered for the second straight day. Brown was 2-for-4 with a triple. Freddy Galvis started at short and went 2-for-4 with a double.

The Phils play the Yankees again today with Blanton scheduled to pitch. Talk of Martinez’s errors yesterday and today’s lineup here. Kevin Frandsen seems like a good guy to keep an eye on in the early going — the linked article suggests he will start at second today.

Ryan Howard is in a walking boot and there is no timetable for his return.

This article points out that former Phillie Travis d’Arnaud was great at Double-A last year, hitting .311 with 21 home runs. You know who else is great? Roy Halladay.

This says Jose Contreras looked good throwing on Sunday and that Justin De Fratus has been cleared to play catch.

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Remember this? About a year ago I wrote a post that said that despite the fact that in 2010 Hamels had a walk rate that was worse than Halladay, Moyer, Blanton, Oswalt, Kendrick or Lee, his walk rate still wasn’t awful if you compared him to other NL pitchers who made 30 starts in 2010.

In 2011, one of the things Hamels did well was reduce his walk rate. He walked 44 in 216 innings, or 1.83 per nine innings. It was the first time in his career he had walked fewer than two hitters per nine innings. That includes his time in the minors. Hamels’s overall walk rate in the minor leagues was about 3.31 batters per nine innings and he wasn’t under two for any full year in the minors.

Hamels lowered his walk rate against both left and right-handed batters in 2011, but the results were more impressive against lefties. Coming into 2011, Hamels had walked about 6.0% of the right-handed batters he had faced for his career and about 7.9% of the left-handed batters. In 2011, he walked about 5.2% of the righties and 5.1% of the lefties.

Here’s what the chart for 2011 looks like — again, it’s the walk rate per nine innings of NL pitchers who started at least 30 games:

Halladay one, Lee two and Hamels three.

That’s a change from 2010, when it went Halladay one, Hamels 14 and Lee in the American League. Had Lee not been in the American League in 2010, he wouldn’t have been on the chart anyway cause he didn’t make 30 starts. Had the 2010 chart shown NL pitchers who made 30 starts and guys name Cliff Lee, regardless of their league or number of starts, Lee would been at the top of the list in terms of fewest walks per nine, right above Halladay. In 2010, Lee made 28 starts in which he threw 212 1/3 innings while walking 18. That’s a silly 0.76 walks per nine.

If you’re having trouble following any of this, is pretty much goes like this: Halladay and Lee really don’t walk much of anyone and probably won’t in 2012, either. And Hamels got a whole lot better at not walking anyone in 2011.

This article about how the Phillies evaluate players and don’t evaluate players is, um, memorable. Seriously, if they’re not relying on advanced metrics that suggest Polanco belongs on the field because of his defense, it’s hard to understand how they would let him play. On the other hand, if math is the enemy it does go a long way towards explaining letting Wilson Valdez and Michael Martinez combine to get 534 plate appearances in 2011. On the other, other hand, if they’re going to keep leading all of baseball in wins every year, they might just wanna keep up the good work.

This suggests that Contreras is not expected to appear in the first week of games, but could get into a game shortly after that.

The article linked above suggests there is increasing pessimism about Justin De Fratus’s right elbow.

Phils play the Yankees three times in the next three days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

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Cole Hamels made 31 starts last year in which he threw 213 innings, or 6.87 innings per start. Rotation-mates Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee each went more than seven innings a start — 7.30 innings per start for Halladay and 7.27 for Lee.

So, should we be worried that Hamels isn’t going as deep into games? Not so much.

First of all, Halladay and Lee are workhorses who were at the top of the innings pitched list in the NL in 2011. Halladay was second in the NL in innings pitched with 233 2/3 and Lee was fourth with 232 2/3. Hamels himself was tied for ninth with 216 innings.

The other issue is that Hamels is a whole lot younger than either Halladay or Lee.

Table below shows, for Halladay, Lee, Hamels and Oswalt, the number of starts each of the four pitchers got by age and the average number of innings they threw per start that year:

Or, for those of you who prefer your data harder to understand, here’s a picture (points are plotted for years in which each of the pitchers started at least ten games):

During his age 27 season, Hamels went about 6.87 innings per start. That mark is higher than Halladay (6.33 over 21 starts at age 27) or Lee (6.08 over 33). It’s about the same but a little worse than Oswalt. In 2005, Oswalt made 35 starts for the Astros in which he threw 241 2/3 innings, which is about 6.91 innings per start.

I do want to acknowledge that the squiggly line graph is nearly incomprehensible. One thing I think it does illustrate, though, is that after their age 27 seasons, the innings pitched per start numbers for Halladay and Lee generally went up. Oswalt was a different story. He topped out in innings per start during his age 27 season and has been generally downwards since then.

The other thing is that Hamels has made a lot more starts through his age 27 season than the rest of the group has. Having just completed his age 27 season, he has 180 career starts. Through their age 27 seasons, Oswalt led the group of Halladay, Lee and Oswalt with 145. In terms of innings pitched per start through age 27, Hamels has thrown more innings per start than Lee, but a little bit less than Halladay or Oswalt.

The biggest point for the day, though, is that Hamels doesn’t have any problem with not throwing enough innings per start. He does throw fewer innings per start than Halladay or Lee, but so does pretty much everyone else in the world. In 2010, for example, Lee made 13 starts with the Mariners in which he threw 103 2/3 innings, which is a silly 7.97 innings per outing.

Phils beat Florida State 6-1 yesterday. Pete Orr made a couple of defensive miscues in the top of the seventh on a ball through his legs and a bobble of a mighta-been double-play as Florida State scored a run to tie the game a 1-1. Orr led off the bottom of the seventh with a double, though, and the Phils went on to score five times in the frame. Hector Luna hit a two-run shot in the rally. Hunter Pence doubled and walked in two plate appearances. Mayberry started at first and went 0-for-3 with five men left on base.

Austin Hyatt started for the Phils and struck out three in two perfect innings.

This says that Ryan Howard will be sidelined indefinitely after a procedure on Monday “to clean an infection from his surgical wound.” I’m not a medical expert or anything, but I think this might mean it’s okay to call it a setback now.

Erik Kratz says that Phillippe Aumont is a bulldog in this article. I don’t think he’s being literal. I think we would need to start to seriously consider the effectiveness of the scouting process if the fact that Aumont was a bulldog rather than a baseball player had somehow slipped through the cracks before trading for him.