Phillies win behind Asche's homer, Eickhoff's pitching

Aside from Aaron Nola, there aren't any shoo-ins to make the Phillies' 2016 opening-day starting pitching rotation.

Jerad Eickhoff is probably the closest, though. The 25-year-old righthander held the playoff-bound Chicago Cubs to only three hits - one a Kyle Schwarber home run - over seven innings on Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park.

The Phillies won, 7-5, when Cody Asche hit a two-out, two-run, pinch-hit, walk-off home run to right field off Cubs reliever Hector Rondon. It came one year to the day since his last walk-off homer, against the Miami Marlins.

Eickhoff, who projects as an end-of-the-rotation starter, has a 3.90 ERA through five major-league starts. He has logged at least six innings in all but one of his starts and twice completed seven, a rarity for Phillies starters this season. On Saturday he became the first Phillies rookie starter to strike out at least eight and allow three or fewer hits since Cole Hamels - the man he was traded for - in 2006.

When Eickhoff was told in the dugout his outing was over, the Phillies bats had yet to offer any run support. A five-run seventh inning put the rookie in line for his second win before the duo of Luis Garcia and Jeanmar Gomez coughed up a four-run lead.

Eickhoff's eight strikeouts were his most since the last of his three starts for triple-A Lehigh Valley. Seven came on his curveball. National League rookie of the year candidate Kris Bryant struck out in each of his three at-bats against Eickhoff, twice looking. Javier Baez was punched out twice on Eickhoff curveballs.

The pitcher's night was far from perfect. He issued three walks, two in a first inning in which he struggled to find the strike zone. But in both the first and sixth innings he came up with key strikeouts to strand a runner in scoring position. He stranded another in the seventh. He threw 95 pitches in all, 61 for strikes.

Schwarber's home run, the hot-hitting rookie's third in a span of seven plate appearances, came on a first-pitch fastball on the inner half of the plate in the third inning. No Cubs player mustered another hit against Eickhoff until the seventh inning, when Miguel Montero and Baez tallied back-to-back one-out singles.

The Phillies' recently anemic offense was silent through six innings, mustering only three hits and striking out eight times against the duo of Travis Wood, who logged the first three innings of a de facto bullpen game, and Trevor Cahill.

Justin Grimm opened the seventh with two fairly quick outs against Odubel Herrera and Jeff Francoeur but then imploded. The righthander issued three walks in the five-run frame, which also featured an Anthony Rizzo fielding error and doubles by Ryan Howard and Cesar Hernandez. Howard's, of the pinch-hit variety, scored the tying run, and Hernandez's drove in three insurance runs.

For Howard, the extra-base hit was the 643d of Howard's career, tying him with Chuck Klein for fourth place on the Phillies' all-time list. He trails only Mike Schmidt (1,015), Jimmy Rollins (806), and Ed Delahanty (670).

kaplanj@phillynews.com

@jakemkaplan