Eickhoff fans 9 as Phillies beat Padres

It was a curveball count. Two strikes, a runner on third in a tight game Wednesday night defined by Jerad Eickhoff's curveball. The pitch had buckled the knees of Padres hitters all night. It had to be a curveball.

Eickhoff stared at Cameron Rupp. The catcher wanted fastball. So did the pitcher.

"I was going to get into one," Eickhoff said.

This is promise, a 2-1 Phillies win over San Diego, when a 25-year-old righthander is on the same wavelength as his 27-year-old catcher to fool the best hitter on the other team in the most crucial moment.

Eickhoff reached back with his right arm in the sixth inning. He threw Wil Myers an elevated 95-mph fastball, the hardest pitch he threw all night. Myers flailed at it; the curveball had become such a weapon that it made Eickhoff's fastball even more powerful.

The Phillies are 4-5, and this does not feel like a losing team because the rotation's unbridled promise has carried each game. Eickhoff looks every bit like the pitcher who sealed a rotation spot last season with a strong eight-start impression.

"I can't say enough good things about him tonight," Phillies manager Pete Mackanin said. "He was in total command for the entire time he was in the game."

Eickhoff struck out nine Padres in seven innings. He used his devastating curveball to register seven of the strikeouts. San Diego hitters were 1 for 12 against the curve. But to conquer Myers, he unleashed the fastball.

Their previous encounter, in the fourth inning, reached a 2-2 count. Eickhoff dropped a curveball. Myers was caught looking. Now, in the sixth, the pitcher remembered. Eickhoff had thrown the curveball for strikes all night.

"Once you're able to to show that kind of command of your curveball, the hitters start looking for it," Mackanin said. "You sneak a fastball by them."

That pitch to Myers was the most stressful of the night. For the most part, Eickhoff made dominance look simple. He used just a fastball and curveball in the first three innings of the game. He mixed in a slider and a change-up later.

No moment better demonstrated the curveball's viciousness than when Melvin Upton Jr. batted in the second inning. Eickhoff threw Upton a one-strike curve, and the man formerly known as B.J. crumpled. He bent his knees. He never moved his bat. The looping curveball cut the plate in half for a called strike two.

Eickhoff, of course, threw it again. Upton swung through it.

"Whenever I can find that curveball early, since it's a feel pitch, I'm going to continue to go to it until the hitters tell me otherwise," Eickhoff said.

Maikel Franco produced the runs. He blasted a Colin Rea two-strike fastball in the first inning. It landed deep in the left-field seats for his second homer of the season. In the third, after a Padres error prolonged the inning, Franco mashed a run-scoring double to left.

"I'm hitting the ball pretty good," Franco said.

The Phillies survived a near-meltdown from the bullpen. David Hernandez escaped a bases-loaded jam with three strikeouts. Jeanmar Gomez earned his fourth save in four chances, but not before he fumbled the team's shutout bid with two strikes and two outs in the ninth.

San Diego does not possess a good lineup. The Padres scored 32 runs in three games played at thin-aired Coors Field and five runs in six games played everywhere else. That did not stop Mackanin from heaping superlatives upon Eickhoff. The stuff is that good.

"It can be an unhittable pitch," Mackanin said of the curveball.

As a small crowd exited Citizens Bank Park seven years to the day of Harry Kalas' death, the fans heard "High Hopes," and they dreamed of a young pitcher's potential.

mgelb@philly.com

@MattGelb