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The Phillies won their first spring training game in four tries yesterday, topping the Yankees 4-3.

No Phillie had more than one hit in the game. Down 1-0 in the sixth, Rollins walked with one out and scored on a double by Frandsen to tie the game at 1-1. The Phils trailed 3-1 when they hit in the seventh. Brown hit a solo homer to cut the lead to 3-2. Cody Asche doubled with two outs and Tommy Joseph followed that with a two-run homer to left that put the Phils up to stay.

Brown’s homer was pretty and went real far. Look. Now if we can just get Zach Nuding to start 35 games or so for the Nats or Braves we should be all set.

Howard was 1-for-2 with a walk. Michael Young remains hitless after an 0-for-3, he’s 0-for-8 so far. Revere is 1-for-6 with an error on the spring after an 0-for-3 with a strikeout. Mayberry 0-for-7 with three strikeouts in the early going after going 0-for-1 with a strikeout yesterday.

Kendrick started the game for the Phils allowed a first-inning run on a double and a single. He threw a scoreless second and was followed by Aaron Cook, who tossed two scoreless frames.

Durbin, Cesar Jimenez and Horst all threw a scoreless inning. Horst started the ninth with a one-run lead and got the save. He gave up back-to-back hits with two outs and nobody on, putting runners on first and third, but got someone named Cito Culver, who is 20-years-old and slugged .283 at Single-A in 2012, on a fly ball to right to end the game. Culver was a first-round pick in 2010 draft, taken by the Yankees in that round ahead of some people you may have heard more about, like Taijuan Walker, Nick Castellanos, Chance Ruffin and Mike Olt.

Look for the Phillies to take Culver in the 2019 Rule V draft and give him 587 plate appearances as their starting shortstop. You heard it here first.

After Kendrick’s run in the first inning, the only other Phillie pitcher who was scored on in the game was Zach Miner. Miner threw a scoreless sixth. He returned for the seventh with the game tied at 1-1 and yielded a pair of runs on a one-out single that was followed by a home run.

Not a great day for Zachs. Miner and Nuding combined to go three innings in the game, allowing five earned runs on six hits, three of which were home runs.

Second official appearance for Miner. He’s allowed four runs, three of which are earned, on six hits over three innings.

Chase Utley was scratched from yesterday’s lineup due to wet weather conditions.

Delmon Young suggests that his ankle problems significantly impacted his performance during the last two season. That’s discussed in this blog post.

This suggests that Mike Adams could pitch tomorrow, which would be earlier than expected.

Lannan is expected to pitch this afternoon as the Phils face the Twins.

Even with Delmon Young likely to start the year on the DL, I’m still not sure we’re going to see Darin Ruf playing a whole lot of left field in 2013, unless he demonstrates real soon he can handle the position defensively. Given that Ryan Howard plays first and will for a while, I’m not sure there’s anywhere else for him to play.

Either way, Ruf got 37 plate appearances with the Phils in 2012 and walked in just two of them, a walk rate of 5.4%. So should we be worried that he’s going to continue to drag down the Phillie walk rate in left field in 2013?

I don’t think so. First, cause I’m still not sure how much we’re going to see Ruf in left field in 2013 and second because he’s likely to walk a lot more than 5.4% if he’s given enough chances to hit.

Here’s how Ruf’s walk rates at various levels compare to fellow corner outfield candidates Domonic Brown and John Mayberry:

Couple of things. First, Darin Ruf is old. He turned 26 in July. Mayberry is really old, but we’ve had time to get used to that. The Phils took Ruf out of Creighton University and he didn’t get his first minor league plate appearance until his age 22 season. In 2011, he had a very nice year at Clearwater, hitting 308/388/506, but did it during his age 24 season. Domonic Brown, on the other hand, was taken out of high school and had already been to Double-A (for 162 plate appearances) by the end of his age 21 season. Brown reached Triple-A during his age 22 season while Mayberry and Ruf were both in A-ball or lower during their age 22 year.

Mayberry played three years at Stanford before debuting in the Northwest league in his age 21 season.

Bottom line for me when you look at the walk rates for those three guys across all levels, Brown is going to walk the most of the three. I’d guess it will be close between Ruf and Mayberry, but I’d bet that when their careers are over, Ruf will have walked in a higher percentage of his plate appearances than Mayberry. Especially in the unlikely event that he keeps hitting 50 or so home runs a year.

Mike Schmidt seems more optimistic about Michael Young’s chances of being a first ballot Hall of Famer than I am.

Laynce Nix has a bone spur in his right foot. The linked article suggests he’s not expected to miss time as a result of the bone spur.

The Phillies play an intrasquad game today. They play the Astros on Saturday and the Tigers on Sunday.

In 2012, Phillie left fielders walked in about 6.3% of their plate appearances, which was the 15th-best walk rate in the 16 team NL. So what went wrong? Well, the Phillies gave about 80% of their plate appearances at the position to Juan Pierre and John Mayberry and those guys didn’t walk.

Here’s how the percentages of plate appearances and walks for the Phillie left fielders break down for 2012:

Juan Pierre just doesn’t walk and you shouldn’t expect him to. His career walk rate is 5.7% and he was around that mark while playing left field at the position last year.

Mayberry has been better at drawing walks than Pierre for his career, walking in about 7.4% of his chances, but walked in just 5.8% of his plate appearances while playing left field for the Phils in 2012.

Below them there’s some weird stuff with the guys who got a smaller number of plate appearances. The walk rate for the team would have been even worse had Wigginton and Nix not combined to bizarrely walk 10 times in their 51 plate appearances (about 19.6%). The left fielders other than Wigginton and Nix combined to walk in about 5.3% of their plate appearances for the Phils.

To the degree there’s good news on this front, it’s that Brown, and hopefully Ruf, are both likely to walk at much higher rates going forward than they did in their time playing left field for the Phillies in 2012.

The most recent post suggested that there are two positions where the total number of walks the Phillies drew in 2012, when they were terrible at drawing walks overall, was better than it was in 2007, when the Phillies were very good at drawing walks. One was center field and the other was shortstop.

Shortstop for the Phils is all about Jimmy Rollins and has been for years. He got about 95% of the team’s plate appearances as a shortstop in 2012 and just over 99% in 2007. For years we had been pleading with Jimmy Rollins to improve his walk rate. Not sure everybody noticed, but he did.

Through the end of the 2009 season, J-Roll had one year in his career in which he walked in 8% or more of his plate appearances (9.3% in 2008). Over the last three years his lowest walk rate is 8.9%. Here are his career numbers through 2009 and for 2010-2012:

From 2003 to 2007, the Phillies were either first or second in the NL in walk rate in every season. Rollins was the everyday guy at shortstop, walking in the same 7.2% of his plate appearances as his career mark for walk rate going into 2010.

So even when the Phillies were an elite walking team, they didn’t draw a ton of walks at the position. They’re no longer an elite group of walkers, but they are getting more walks from short because Rollins has improved his rate.

Center field is the other position where the Phils drew more walks in 2012 than they did in 2007. Again, the issue there is that their walk rate in center was pretty low in 2007. Rowand was miserable at drawing walks in 2006, walking in just about 4.1% of his plate appearances in center. He got better in ’07, getting the vast majority of the PA at the position and walking in about 6.9% of his chances to help get the team’s rate up to 7.0%. Led by Victorino, the team has been in the 8% range over the past four years and were at 8.5% in 2012. Victorino walked in just 8.1% of his PA with the Phils in ’12, his worst mark since 2008, but the Phils got up to 8.5% at the position with some unexpected help from Mayberry. You probably don’t think of Mayberry as a walk machine, but he walked in about 9.7% of his 227 plate appearances as a center fielder in 2012.

Delmon Young is coming off of surgery on his right ankle. Amaro suggests that he might not be able to play in games competitively until the middle of March in this article. The same article suggests that Valdes and Stutes could both be near 100%.

Brief aside. John Mayberry got 479 plate appearances in 2012 in which he hit into 17 double-plays. Seventeen double-plays was ninth-most among NL hitters in ’12, but virtually all of the eight players who hit into more than 17 double-plays in ’12 had a lot more plate appearances than Mayberry. Houston’s JD Martinez is the only NL player with more than 400 plate appearances to hit into double-plays in a higher percentage of plate appearances than Mayberry.

Here’s how the top of the list of players with the highest percentage of plate appearances in which they hit into double plays (for NL players with at least 400 plate appearances in ’12):

Overall in the NL in 2012, batters grounded into 1,840 double-plays in 98,063 plate appearances. That’s about 1.87% or one GDP per 53.3 PA. The Phillies overall grounded into 114 double-plays in 6,172 plate appearances, which is 1.85% of their PA and one about every 54.14. The Phils other than Mayberry registered GDP in just 1.7% of their PA or one every 58.7.

The good news for Mayberry and the rest of the Phillies is that none of them are likely to eclipse Wilson Valdez’s double-play pace from 2010, hopefully for a long time. In 2010, Valdez got 363 plate appearances and hit into 20 double-plays. That’s about 5.51% of his PA and once every 18.15 times to the plate.

This article looks at position battles for spring training and offers a projected lineup that looks like this:

1. Rollins, SS
2. Utley, 2B
3. M Young, 3B
4. R Howard, 1B
5. D Young, RF
6. TBD, LF
7. Ruiz, C
8. Revere, CF

Again, I still think Delmon Young won’t see much time in right and will play mostly in left when he plays. I think Revere will hit higher than eighth, especially against righties. I think Brown will be a regular guy at one of the corner positions — I’m hoping left, but think that right is more likely.

This article reviews the NRIs for the Phils.

It will be here before you know it. You just don’t want to go into the season without someone you can trust in the net. I don’t mean to quibble, but they’re never going to get the Golden Snitch without a decent Seeker, either.

The Phillies have signed the right-handed, oufielder-like Delmon Young to a one-year deal worth $750,000. The first pick of the 2003 draft, Young has struggled over the past two years, hitting 267/299/403 while playing miserable defense in left field when he got the chance.

He didn’t get the chance a whole lot. In 2012, Young started 145 games — 116 at DH and 29 in the outfield.

All that said, I think this is a good move for the Phillies. As bad as he’s been over the past two seasons, the Phillies are super-thin in the outfield and Young comes off an impressive post-season in which he hit 313/365/542 over 52 plate appearances. He was named MVP of the ALCS, hitting 353/421/765 with a pair of home runs as the Tigers swept the Yankees. At the what-would-be-the-peak of a career that’s been plagued by poor performance and despicable mistakes that raise serious questions about his character, you have to believe he is desperate to get himself on track.

Word is that the Phillies want Young to start in right field, a suggestion that seems so bizarre it’s a little hard to believe. While it’s true the evidence Young can’t play right field isn’t as massive as the evidence he can’t play left, a lot of that has to do with the fact that he hasn’t gotten a chance in right in a long time. Young hasn’t played a single inning in right in the last five seasons. It’s a little tough to think the Phillies are going to slot him in there given how bad he’s looked in left in recent history.

The part I do like about that idea is that I do believe Brown would be better off in left than right. Still, I don’t think letting Young be the everyday guy in right is the way to do it and I will be surprised if that happens.

The possibility is real that the Phillies could have a defensive alignment on Opening Day that includes Brown and Young at the corner outfield positions, Michael Young at third and Howard at first. That would be four positions where you have to hope the other team never, ever hits the ball. Four is too many.

Let’s forget the defense for a second. Is Young a better hitter than his fellow right-handed outfielder John Mayberry? Mayberry turned 29 in December. Young turned 27 in September. For me, the answer is that I’d much rather give a ton of at-bats to Young than Mayberry, but I think the case can be made that Mayberry has been better overall over the last two seasons.

Here are some of their numbers against lefties over the last two years:

First of all, Young has more than three times as many plate appearances against lefties as Mayberry does for his career. Mayberry was a lot better in 2011 and Young a little better in 2012. Mayberry has better career numbers against left-handed pitching, delivering much better power and walking at a slightly higher rate. Mayberry has walked in about 5.5% of his career plate appearances against lefties while Young has walked in about 4.7% of his.

Here are the numbers against righties:

Again, Young has had way more chances against righties. Almost five times as many as Mayberry, who is, again, about two years older.

For the career numbers, it’s advantage Young. Mayberry still has more career power, but has hit just .232 against righties while Young has hit .275.

Looking at the last two years, Mayberry was a lot better against righties in 2011 and the two were about the same by wOBA in 2012 with a slight advantage to Young. Young’s best year against righties doesn’t make the table. In 2010, he hit 292/317/463 against righties with a wOBA of .339. Notably, Mayberry’s .343 in 2011 topped Young’s .339 mark for 2010.

Again, over the last two years, you can make the argument that Mayberry has been just as good or better offensively. There’s no question he’s a better corner outfielder, mostly because Young is hugely terrible.

Again again, I’d still rather give Young the at-bats.

Young is working to change his image.

His image is bad.

The Phillies now have nine outfielders on their roster. Lefty Jermaine Mitchell is expected to be in camp as an NRI. Revere, Young, Brown, Nix and Mayberry seem like good bets to start the year with the Phils, which makes it a little tough to see how they would carry Darrin Ruf unless he takes Mayberry or Brown’s spot or someone is traded.