Hellickson’s effort worthy of ticket out of town

PHILADELPHIA » Perhaps on the verge of entering another mid-summer’s night stream of trade rumors, Jeremy Hellickson finally put himself in position Tuesday night for such talk to carry some weight.

Hellickson was terrific in a seveninning stint in which he gave up just a single run — a mistake pitch that Jedd Gyorko powdered for a home run — on six hits ... and despite that the Phils lost to the Cardinals 8-1.

For Hellickson, however, it’s not about a win here and there and so many daily losses ... it’s about a future elsewhere.

It seemed that way when Hellickson was going good last season and his team wasn’t nearly this bad. Maybe he performed too well, GM Matt Klentak not swinging a deal to send him away near the end-of-July trade deadline selloff.

This time around, Hellickson went through a stretch of unimpressive starts. But a simple slide-step adjustment he made had the Cardinals swinging at a lot of air over the first seven inings Tuesday night.

As manager Pete Mackanin noted, Hellickson induced “18 swings-and-misses, and the previous three outings he had a total of 25. So he made some adjustments.”

“I thought they worked a little bit,” Hellickson said of his changes. “I just switched some things out of the stretch, gave myself some time to get my arm up, and just give myself more time. It’s something I’ve been messing with for a while. I’m not the quickest when I do it to the plate but my command is a lot better just off the slide step every pitch.”

So maybe some weeks of speculation is in the cards for Hellickson and veterans like Pat Neshek and Howie Kendrick for which contending teams may be interested in swapping some draft pick assets before the trade deadline.

“Nah, that’s not in my mind,” Hellickson said. “Getting on a nice little groove, a nice little run here is definitely on my mind. It’s not fun sitting around for four days after a bad start, so I just have to try to fix some things, bear down a little bit and hopefully get on a nice little run here before the break and get more consistent.”

*** NOTES » Jerad Eickhoff went on the 10-day disabled list, probably not a surprise with him at 0-7 with a 4.81 ERA through 14 starts. “You looked at his velocity his last start, and I think everybody saw it, it was down a little bit,” Mackanin said of Eickhoff. “Thankfully it wasn’t his arm. It was some kind of issue in his back. He has a strain. I’m just happy it wasn’t his arm.” ... Mackanin on two of the Phils’ three relievers in the seven-run Cardinals 11th, Edubray Ramos (two batters, two walks) and Casey Fien (5 hits, including two homers, 5 runs and 3 earned in two-thirds of an inning): “Ramos couldn’t throw stikes and Fien threw too many good, hittable strikes.”