The Phillies announced Sunday that their opening day starter would be a pitcher named Jeremy Hellickson. Thankfully, the Phillies employ a pitcher with that name, so they don’t have to find someone with that name to start the very first game of the entire year.
This will be Hellickson’s second opening day start with the Phillies. In 2016 he started on the road in Cincinnati, and that was just the start of Hellickson’s unexpectedly effective and productive season. He had a 3.71 ERA over 189 innings and 32 starts. That’s as close as he’s come to recapturing the early-career magic that catapulted him to the 2011 Rookie of the Yar
Some people might be upset that Jerad Eickhoff wasn’t named the opening day starter.