Brault: ‘Throwing strikes is not good enough’

PHILADELPHIA — Six starts into his Major League career, Steven Brault has learned maybe the most important lesson to be taught at the highest level of baseball.

“If you execute your pitch,” the rookie left-hander said, “it’s going to work.”

And when you don’t, when you miss by even the smallest of margins, you get an outing like Brault’s 3 2/3-innings learning experience in a 6-2 loss to the Phillies on Wednesday night at Citizens Bank Park. He was hit often and hit hard, allowing five runs (three earned) on nine hits. He struck out three and didn’t walk anybody, but the walk-free night demonstrated another lesson about life on a Major League mound.

“Throwing strikes is not good enough,” Brault said. “Throwing quality strikes is what we need to do. I’m going to take that and move forward with it, then we’ll learn. … It’s never fun to get hit around, but we’ll learn from it.”

After a clean, eight-pitch first inning, Brault found himself struggling to locate his fastball. He threw 20 sliders, according to Pitch F/x and Statcast™ data, and seven of them were put in …

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