Hellickson, Hernandez impress in Phillies win over Astros

Tim Kelly

March 20 2016

Philadelphia Phillies starter Jeremy Hellickson throws a pitch in a Spring Training game at Bright House Field, Spring Training home of the Phillies. (Frank Klose/Philliedelphia)

Final: Phillies 5, Astros 4 ❖

CLEARWATER, Fla. — It's true that getting excited about Spring Training wins is a fairly silly exercise, but when players who are likely to make an impact on the regular season play key roles in spring wins, it's a little more fair for fans to be excited about that.

Sunday afternoon, Cesar Hernandez and Jeremy Hellickson were among those who those expected to make an impact this season that had impressive afternoons en route to a Phillies win.

Hub: Game Summary ❖ Starting Pitchers ❖ At the Plate ❖ Bullpen ❖ What's Next

Game Summary

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
HOU	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	4	3	0
PHI	1	0	0	0	2	0	2	0	0	5	6	1

After five scoreless innings from Jeremy Hellickson, the Phillies seemed to get two key insurance runs off of familiar friend in the sixth inning, when both Cedric Hunter and Cesar Hernandez drove in runs off of Ken Giles. These runs were in addition to the first inning run that the Phillies got on a Hernandez opposite-field home run.

Just when the Phillies seemed on their way to an easy Sunday afternoon win, the Astros hung four runs on Hector Neris in the sixth inning, including 2015 playoff hero Colby Rasmus smashing a three-run home run.

The Phillies nearly got the run back in the bottom half of the inning, as Cameron Rupp turned on a pitch that he hit well out of the park, but the ball sailed just to the left of the foul poll.

However, in the seventh, the Phillies tied the game on Hernandez's third RBI of the game — this time a triple, and then took the lead when Freddy Galvis brought Hernandez home on a safety squeeze. The inning capped an encouraging day for Hernandez, who is on-pace to receive the most extended playing time of his short big league career in 2016.

Two lefties competing for spots in the team's bullpen — Daniel Stumpf and Bobby LaFromboise — finished the game out by keeping the Astros off of the board in the eighth and ninth innings.

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Starting Pitchers

	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Wandy Rodriguez	4.0	2	1	1	0	5	1	2.25
Jeremy Hellickson	5.0	0	0	0	3	6	0	0.00

Due to being scratched with the flu prior to his most recent scheduled start and yesterday's game being rained out, today was Hellickson's first spring start at the major league level since his March 4th start against the Atlanta Braves.

To a degree, Hellickson did show some rust early on, throwing five balls to start the game. With the exception of those five balls, Hellickson was pretty impressive Sunday, however. In five innings of work, Hellickson did walk three, but he also struck six out, including striking the final three batters he faced out.

It's unclear when the Phillies will announce their Opening Day starter, but Hellickson has done little, save for getting sick, to hurt his case.

Wandy Rodriguez, much like Hellickson, struggled against his first few batters, only to settle in.

Cesar Hernandez hit a leadoff home run off of Rodriguez and Maikel Franco singled later in the inning, before Rodriguez retired the next 11 batters that he faced.

Rodriguez, who is a non-roster invitee to Astros' camp, probably helped what case he has to make the team today.

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At the Plate

Phillies