Only one team in baseball had three All-Stars hit home runs in the same game on Wednesday night.
And only one team has eight wins all season.
Spoiler alert: They played each other. And the game went exactly how you'd expect.
The Phillies continued their stay in Denver, grabbed some more oxygen, and kept right on rolling — blasting three more homers in a 9–5 win over the reeling Rockies, extending their win streak to six and padding their NL East lead in the process. That’s 31 wins now for a team playing like it’s allergic to losing.
Meanwhile, the Rockies? They’ve now lost 16 of 18, four in a row, and they’re 8–41 — a record so astonishingly bad it requires a double take. That’s not a slump. That’s a baseball blackout.
J.T. Realmuto, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper each launched long balls, turning Denver into batting practice for the second night in a row.
Realmuto had himself a night: three hits, three RBIs, and a missile of a two-run homer in the fourth inning that left a trail and probably dented a seat. It was his first three-hit game since April 3 — and his first three-hit, three-RBI game since last August 24. He’s now hitting .357 in May, with power that’s starting to show up in box scores, not just spray charts.
Turner continued to shake off his early-season slumber with a solo shot in the second — his third of the year — and added a second hit just for fun. Harper? He did Harper things. Homered for the eighth time this year. Made noise. Smiled a lot. Finished with two more hits after a three-hit night on Tuesday. It’s almost unfair when he’s locked in like this.
Even Nick Castellanos joined the hit parade with a pair of knocks. The Phillies pounded out 12 hits overall and chased Rockies starter Carson Palmquist before he could escape the fifth.
It was Palmquist’s second major league start — and his first real lesson in how cruel the big leagues can be when you’re facing a red-hot offense in the most hitter-friendly ballpark on Earth. The rookie lefty gave up seven runs (six earned) on 10 hits and four walks in just 4 1/3 innings.
And just for the record: The Phillies have now outscored the Rockies 25–12 through the first three games of this four-game set.
Taijuan Walker, back in the rotation after a brief detour to the bullpen, gave the Phillies what they needed. Five innings, three runs, six hits, two walks, and one strikeout. Not dominant. Not dazzling. But definitely enough.
The Phillies bullpen took it from there, with Tanner Banks and Joe Ross combining for three solid innings before Carlos Hernandez stumbled in the ninth, surrendering three hits and a pair of runs before eventually shutting the door.
To be fair, the Rockies didn’t go quietly. Nick Martini hit his first homer of the season. Jordan Beck, Ezequiel Tovar, and Hunter Goodman each chipped in two-hit nights. But when your pitching staff is putting out fires with gasoline, the box score feels more like damage control than competition.
Here’s all you need to know: The Rockies’ ERA is higher than the elevation in Denver. (Not technically true, but it sure feels like it.)
The Phillies - a team that now holds the best record in the National League - will go for their second straight sweep on Thursday afternoon.
Quotable
“When you're winning games consistently, it's usually a different guy every night,” manager Rob Thomson said. “You've got one or two guys on a heater, but then it's other guys -- different guys -- contributing every night, and that's what we're getting right now.” - per MLB.com. 