Phillies' Ryan Howard showing he can't take heat

NEW YORK - What you are about to read comes with the usual April warning. Eight games worth of at-bats is not nearly a big enough sample to make definite judgments on player performance.

For example, a quarter of the Phillies games have featured Matt Harvey and Max Scherzer, two of the hardest throwing starters in the major leagues. So when we talk about Ryan Howard's performance against the fastball, it is important to keep that caveat in mind.

Still, eight games are what we have at our disposal, and the fact is Howard has been abysmal against a pitch he used to destroy with regularity, a pitch whose obliteration used to make up for the flaws in his swing. Heading into last night's game against the Mets, in which Darin Ruf started at first base against lefty Jon Niese, Howard was averaging a swing-and-miss every five fastballs, nearly double his career whiff rate against the hard stuff. And he has seen plenty of hard stuff. Nearly 65 percent of all of his pitches have been four-seamers or sinkers. Seven of his 10 strikeouts have come on those pitches.

The regularity with which pitchers are attacking Howard with fastballs, and his struggle to answer the bell, is what manager Ryne Sandberg notices, way more than his overall numbers (4-for-27 with 10 strikeouts and no walks as of yesterday).

"With the amount of fastballs he's getting, he should look fastball and disregard the breaking ball until he gets two strikes," Sandberg said.

While Howard has been noticeably late on pitches throughout the spring, Sandberg said he does not think the first baseman's issue is bat speed.

"I do see bat speed," Sandberg said. "Now it's about going up and being on the pitch."

Howard's absence from the lineup last night was his second of the season, the other coming in the Phillies' only other game against a lefthanded starter.

"It's a chance for a righthanded bat to get in there," Sandberg said. "We'll kind of take that one series at a time."

Righthander Chad Billingsley said yesterday he hopes to make three more starts at Triple A Lehigh Valley, which would put him on pace to join the Phillies rotation in the first week of May. Billingsley tossed five scoreless innings for the IronPigs yesterday, allowing two hits and two walks, with three strikeouts. He threw 73 pitches, 44 for strikes. Billingsley is attempting to come back from a pair of elbow surgeries that have limited him to two starts since the end of the 2012 season.

"The strength is there, my arm feels good," Billingsley said. "I talked to my doctor who performed the surgery, and he said if I can get through a month and a half of pitching in games with no pain, I'll be in the clear."

Billingsley started pitching in minor league games in the last week of March.

Ben Revere entered last night 5-for-32 (.156) with no extra-base hits, one walk and five strikeouts. He started last season hitting .266 with a .281 on-base percentage and just two-extra base hits in his first 147 plate appearances. Over the rest of the season, he hit .319/.338/.382. In 2013, he started the season 12-for-62 (.194) with no extra-base hits in his first 71 plate appearances. He then hit .332/.362/.391 in his next 269 plate appearances until a broken foot ended his season. Odubel Herrera entered the night 4-for-23 with six strikeouts, two walks and one extra-base hit.

Ryne Sandberg said outfielder Domonic Brown is getting close to taking the next step in his recovery from a sore Achilles'. That will likely mean moving him to Triple A Lehigh Valley from Clearwater, where he has spent the first six games of his rehab assignment. Brown was 3-for-10 with a home run and four strikeouts in his first four games. Sandberg did not provide an ETA on Brown's return to the active roster, but it sounds as if the Phillies want to give him time to accumulate some of the at-bats he missed in spring training, while also monitoring his Achilles' to make sure it has fully healed.

Blog: ph.ly/HighCheese