Not as Easy as 1-2-3

An easy 1-2-3 inning is an anomaly for Phillies relievers. It's worse than that—it's downright rare. I looked at the stats of the relievers on the active roster to see how any of them had faced three hitters in an inning and retired all three. And guess what—the numbers stink.

The relievers I included in the data dump include Hector Neris, Brandon Workman, Tommy Hunter (pictured above), Heath Hembree, Adam Morgan, David Hale, David Phelps, JoJo Romero, and Blake Parker. Between them, they've thrown 78 innings. And they've retired the side in order just 15 times (19.2 percent). Hunter has the most clean innings (5 out of 17), followed by Neris (3 of 14) and Romero (3 of 6).

Oakland's Liam Hendricks, the AL saves leader, has pitched 20.1 innings this season and has 11 1-2-3 innings (54 percent). And just for shits and giggles, I looked at Aaron Nola and Zach Wheeler, the Phillies top two starters, to see how they fared.

Going into tonight's game, Nola has pitched 49.1 innings and 23 of them have been perfect, which works out to 46.6 percent. Wheeler has 16 1-2-3s in 51 innings (34.4 percent). 

This isn't rocket science. You can just look at the Phillies bullpen and see they haven't been very good. But when you compare them to the starters, it looks a lot worse.