Game 2 starter Oswalt settles into his role with Phillies

There is a Mississippi wisdom and a Philadelphia candor about Roy Oswalt.

That's who he is: a little guy who throws hard and talks honest, baring himself on the mound and away from it.

It is why he rocketed from a 23rd-round draft pick to become one part of a trio of National League aces. He has been the third leg twice, now, in fact.

It is why he speaks so revealingly of the game he loves to play.

Since he landed in Philadelphia as a trade-deadline prize, Oswalt, the starter in Game 2 of the NL Division Series tomorrow against the visiting Reds, consistently acknowledges that he felt overburdened in Houston after Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte left after 2006.

"Roger and Andy left, and you feel like you have to win every game you go out there after that. You put so much pressure on yourself to win. If you lose, 1-0, you feel like you didn't do your job," Oswalt said. "You start kind of building off of a bad, I guess you'd say, attitude. Every time you go out, you think you have to throw a shutout instead of saying, 'Hey, throw a quality start up and see if I can win the game.' "

That, Oswalt believes, is what Cole Hamels felt, to a degree, before Oswalt became a Phillie. Yes, the Phillies are offensively superior to the Astros' better teams, and yes, the addition of Roy Halladay didn't leave Hamels with as much weight on his shoulders as Oswalt had the past 3 1/2 seasons.

The mitigating factor: Six times, Hamels gave up three runs or fewer and lost. His team scored three or fewer runs in 18 of his 33 starts.

"I'm thinking he probably got in a rut. Same thing I got with Houston, where you felt like you had to throw a shutout every time you went out. And if you gave up one or two, you felt like you were just pitching to eat up innings, instead of winning the game," Oswalt said.

It helped, of course, that Hamels knew that even if he pitched great and lost that both Oswalt and Halladay likely would soon pick him up - especially Oswalt. He went 7-1 in 12 starts as a Phillie, 5-0 in six starts at Citizens Bank Park, supposedly a pitcher's purgatory.

Oswalt actually likes The Bank.

"For some reason the mound here, and the way the park is set up, I feel like I'm standing next to the hitter when I'm throwing," Oswalt said. "It doesn't feel like the regular 60 feet. Feels like I'm throwing 55 feet."

It's not the first time dimensions were questioned at The Bank. But it's the first time they were questioned like that.