All in a day’s work: Phillies 12, Cubs 3

Over the past week, not much has gone the Phillies way. They lost five games in a row, including a 10-1 shellacking at the hands of the Cubs on Friday night. But on Saturday afternoon, everything came up Phillies, and they snapped that losing streak in a big way, handing the Cubs a shellacking of their own, by a score of 12-3.

You could tell this might be the Phillies’ day when they did a most curious thing in the first inning: They got three runners on base and brought all three of them home with a home run.

That was the Phillies’ first grand slam of the season, and only the second home run with more than one runner on base. Apparently not content with just one home run in the inning, Kody Clemens followed with a two-run shot three batters later.

This wasn’t the first time the team had provided Aaron Nola with an early lead, and it hasn’t always ended in victory. The difference was that Nola pitched very well and didn’t let the Cubs mount any sort of a comeback. He struck out ten batters in seven innings, and the only runs he allowed came from a Dansby Swanson after the game was already out of reach.

Part of the reason the game was out of reach was because the Phillies didn’t stop scoring after their initial outburst. They scored two runs in the third, two more in the fifth, and solo runs in the seventh and eighth.

This isn’t the first time that a struggling team ended a losing streak with a lopsided victory. It feels like more often than not, that team will revert to its losing ways the following game. The Phillies need to come out tomorrow and show that today’s effort wasn’t an aberration, and they can consistently play like a winning team.