Hellickson impressive on hill, at plate
D-backs righty stifles Phillies, drives in three runs
PHOENIX -- D-backs starter Jeremy Hellickson doubled his career RBI total in the second inning of Tuesday's 13-1 win over the Phillies, knocking in three runs with a pair of singles during the 11-run outburst.
But that wasn't Hellickson's favorite part of the win. Instead, it was what the right-hander was able to do on the mound in limiting the Phillies.
Hellickson completed eight innings for the first time since May 23, 2013, when he was with the Rays, allowing just one unearned run and striking out six with no walks.
"The last couple games, I wasn't throwing enough strikes and getting ahead of guys," Hellickson said. "The game plan was just get strike one and I thought my curveball was pretty good tonight, too, but I can't throw that when I'm not getting ahead of guys."
Most of Hellickson's success this season has come at home. He is 6-1 with a 2.12 ERA in his past seven outings at Chase Field.
Despite falling behind, 1-0, Hellickson was pitching with a quite sizable lead soon enough after the D-backs rallied for 11 runs in the second. D-backs manager Chip Hale said he was impressed how Hellickson's demeanor didn't change despite the club holding such a large lead.
"He had situations where they could have scored runs and he kept pitching and pitched like he was one run down instead of that many runs up," Hale said. "It was very impressive."
While the pitching performance may have been Hellickson's favorite part, he did a nice job with his bat, too. He became the first D-backs pitcher to have two hits in an inning since Edwin Jackson in 2010 and the first pitcher in the Majors to have a pair of run-scoring hits in the same frame since the Braves' Greg Maddux in 1999.
Both of Hellickson's hits in the frame were singles, the first one knocking in a pair and the second scoring a run that pushed the lead to 11-1.
"It's a big part of the National League. I was just trying to put the ball in play," he said. "I absolutely take pride in it. We work on it every day and I'm up there with runners on base every once in a while, so it's something we work hard at."