The Phillies have had a very interesting four-game series against the Colorado Rockies. They started out with a massively disappointing shutout loss on Thursday night, then won back-to-back 4-3 nail biters, and entered Sunday with a chance to take home a series win. Fortunately, they broke out the bats and finally started to homer on their way to an easy 9-3 victory.
Zack Wheeler started off hot, striking out seven of the first nine outs he recorded. He ran into a bit of trouble in the top of the fourth, surrendering three runs on three hits, a walk and a hit batsmen. That gave Colorado a short-lived 3-2 lead, but overall it was a vintage wheeler start. He punched out 11 and tossed 111 pitches and made it through 6.0 strong innings, taking home both a win and quality start.
The real story in this one was the offense, as Phillies hitters had a field day with the over-the-hill José Ureña and the Rockies beleaguered bullpen. They lit up the former Marlins starter, tagging him for four runs on three hits and four walks in only 3.2 innings of work. They put up five more runs in the last two frames against Dinelson Lamet and Ty Blach for a comfortable 9-3 margin of victory.
It was homers galore as Trea Turner got the Phils on the board with a solo shot in the first, followed by a Kody Clemens solo bomb, his first in a Phillies uniform, in the third. Bryson Stott hit his second homer of the year, a two-run blast in the seventh, and Brandon Marsh sent a two-run dinger over the wall in right-center in the top of the eighth to cap off the scoring. It was a much needed homer barrage from a Phillies team that has struggled to hit bombs to start the year. Perhaps most impressively, it wasn’t just the big boppers that got in on the action, with more contact-oriented hitters blasting off.
Sunday’s win improves the Phillies season-long record to 11-12, a much more palatable mark than the 8-11 record they came into this homestand sporting. Hopefully their newfound ability to homer will continue into Tuesday night’s matchup against the Seattle Mariners.