By Sam Bush
Jerad Eickhoff pitched 2 2/3 innings of shutout ball, struck out a pair and allowed two hits during the Phillies’ 4-2 win over the Blue Jays.
“I was locating pretty well with the exception of a couple pitches, but I was really mixing up pitches well to keep them off-balance as best I could,” Eickhoff told MLB.com.
“The biggest thing is understanding sometimes you’re going to have to get four, five and hopefully not six or seven outs in an inning,” Eickhoff said. “To be able to work around that, that’s huge.”
“[My spring has] been progressing as it usually has and as I anticipated,” Eickhoff said. “You try to tweak a couple things, and you don’t know how quickly you’re going to adjust to them. I have confidence in myself that I can figure it out sooner than later.”
Eickhoff started 24 games, going 4-8 with a 4.71 ERA before a hand injury at the end of August ended his season.
“Getting hurt allowed me to sit down and look at some things,” Eickhoff said. “It’s a good time to change some stuff and clean some stuff up, and it’s going to help propel me down the road. I’ve been working on that all offseason, and I think it’s starting to translate here.”
