Brewers batter Eickhoff and beat Phillies

MILWAUKEE - Cameron Rupp lowered his right hand and signaled for a fastball in the most crucial moment of an 8-5 Phillies loss to the Brewers. Jerad Eickhoff did not flinch. He stared at his catcher for three seconds to express his disapproval. Rupp flashed a new call.

The curveball.

"If I get beat on my curveball," Eickhoff said later, "I'll live with it."

On Sunday, he was beaten again and again on the curveball. Eickhoff allowed a career-high seven runs. Ten Brewers batted in the decisive six-run sixth inning. Eickhoff's best weapon wilted as hard-hit balls sprinkled Miller Park.

Still, he leaned on the pitch. With runners on second and third and no one out in the sixth, Eickhoff jumped ahead 0-2 on Kirk Nieuwenhuis with two straight curves. Rupp considered an elevated fastball to make Nieuwenhuis chase.

"That's something that I wanted to do and it didn't happen," Rupp said. "He was confident in the pitch he wanted to throw."

Eickhoff remembered previous encounters with Nieuwenhuis when he played for the Mets. He wanted the curve. He threw a third consecutive one in almost the same exact spot as the first two, down and in.

"In my mind, I was thinking I'm going to get him with that," Eickhoff said. "Even though it's 0-2, I was confident I would get him with that third one, but I left it up just a little bit."

Nieuwenhuis golfed it past a diving Ryan Howard. The scorched ball nicked off Howard's glove, and it is a ball that other first basemen may have fielded. The double scored two Milwaukee runs. The Brewers never trailed again.

Growing pains for a young pitcher are to be expected; Eickhoff is not a polished product, even though flashes of brilliance can cloud the fact that Sunday marked just his 12th major-league start.

The 25-year-old righthander's curveball is a pitch that buckles knees and elicits praise. But, on Sunday, it looked like a pitch the Milwaukee hitters anticipated. Nieuwenhuis was ready for it.

"With him and his confidence in his curveball, I had no problem with it," Rupp said. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with him throwing that pitch. He just didn't execute it. It's what happens."

Before the Brewers battered it, the opposition had hit a career .081 (6 for 74) against Eickhoff's curve. Just two of those hits were for extra bases. In the span of three innings, Milwaukee smashed three extra-base hits on curveballs.

He hung a 1-2 curveball to Phillies killer Ryan Braun in the fourth inning. Braun launched it to deep right for an opposite-field homer. Eickhoff had not allowed a home run on a curve in his brief career.

Two batters after Nieuwenhuis' double, a prolonged battle with Jonathan Villar became Eickhoff's final act. The Brewers shortstop and former Phillies prospect worked a full count. Eickhoff threw him a fat curveball, belt high and over the plate. Villar crushed it for a run-scoring double.

Finally, Phillies manager Pete Mackanin emerged to remove Eickhoff.

"They just kind of all together seemed to know what was coming," Mackanin said. "They hit him pretty hard, which is hard to figure."

The curveball could be Eickhoff's ticket to a lengthy career in the majors. On Sunday, he resembled an inexperienced pitcher. Eickhoff, at times, lacks confidence in his fastball and becomes curveball-happy. He threw just one slider Sunday.

Twice, when a pitch out of the zone would have sufficed in the two-strike counts to Braun and Nieuwenhuis, Eickhoff threw a feeble curve. Each time, he paid for it.

"Your confidence is saying they're not going to hit this, no way," Eickhoff said. "But a big-league hitter can hit a poorly located pitch no matter what it is, so I could have been a little better from that end."

mgelb@philly.com

@MattGelb