"In his first time on a mound since June, Roy Oswalt was not as dominant as most IronPigs fans were probably hoping he'd be.

The Phillies pitcher — who has made just 13 starts in the majors this season — took the ball at Coca-Cola Park on Wednesday and pitched four innings against Pawtucket in a rehab start. He faced 15 batters, giving up a run on one hit, walking two and striking out four in front of a full-capacity crowd of 10,000.

"It went all right," Oswalt told reporters after he came out of the game. "I'm probably going to have to do another one before I get back in Philly."

The only hit he yielded was a long one that didn't come down until it cleared the right-field fence. Lars Anderson turned on a 2-0 change-up for a home run in the fourth inning to make the score 3-1.

That was as bad as things got for Oswalt, though, who was expected to throw in the neighborhood of 60 pitches, but ended up with 72. He was perfect in the first and third innings — the latter of which required only 13 pitches to get through.

In the second, the Red Sox had runners on first and second with one out after a couple of walks. But Oswalt induced a flyout from Tony Thomas and a groundout from Jose Iglesias to end the inning.

"It wasn't bad," said Oswalt, upon being asked about his command. "When I missed, I didn't miss real bad. I just missed a little bit.

"All the pitches are coming around actually pretty well. The curveball was pretty decent tonight. I jerked a few but overall it wasn't too bad.""