Hoskins, Harper homer, Phillies rout Braves in NLDS

Rhys Hoskins burst out of his postseason disquietude with a three-run homer and spiked his bat in win and Bryce Harper hit a two-run shot that sent Philadelphia Phillies fever taking off and helped convey them to a 9-1 win over the Atlanta Conquers in Game 3 of the NL Division Series on Friday night.

Harper added an RBI double as Philadelphia took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five matchup against the reigning World Series champs. The Phillies can advance to the NL Championship Series with a Game 4 win at home on Saturday.

The Phillies and a sellout crowd of 45,538 fans waited 11 mostly miserable years — 4,025 days, to be exact — to host a playoff game again at Citizens Bank Park.

Phillies fans ought to save the meeting towels — the Phillies played like a group that needs to keep Red October alive

The bats erupted in a six-run third inning that will forever be stamped on a Philly sports highlight reel. Bryson Stott got the rally going with an RBI double off Braves rookie Spencer Strider. Kyle Schwarber drew an intentional walk to set the stage for Hoskins.

Hoskins, buried in a 1-for-19 postseason droop, squashed a 94 mph fastball into the left field seats for a 4-0 lead. Hoskins brought his arms up in festival, hammered his bat into the grass and he skirted his approach to initially base.

The exit velocity? It took about 2 seconds for Harper to bounce out of the dugout and toss his helmet in the air. Hoskins leapt into a violent elbow forearm exchange — think, Bash Brothers — with Stott as he crossed the plate.

“I don’t know if my feet touched the ground,” Hoskins said.

Strider, who pitched the first time in almost a month because of a strained left oblique, gave up one more single before he was lifted for Dylan Lee.

 

Playing his most memorable season finisher home game with the Phillies, Harper pounded the ball into the dusk for his second postseason homer and a 6-0 lead. Phillies fans that held hand-cut letters that explained “Harper” bobbed in take pleasure in stands that totally shaken. Harper, who embraced Philly and the Phanatic and the fans from the second he marked a $330 million, 13-year bargain in 2019, highlighted a fan that held a “Hit That Jawn” sign behind the burrow.

“I was just fired up, ready to go,” the two-time NL MVP said.

Aaron Nola, pitching the best baseball of his career, was an October ace again in shutting down a Braves team that won 101 games and the NL East. He gave up five hits, walked two and struck out six in six-plus innings.

Nola, the longest-tenured Phillie, was on it from the jump. He needed only 10 pitches in the second inning to strike out the side. The Braves touched him for only an unearned run in the sixth. He left the game in the seventh to a tremendous standing ovation.

The Phillies played their first postseason home game since a 1-0 misfortune in the 2011 NLDS to Chris Craftsman and the possible hero St. Louis Cardinals. They held up 11 years — and an incredible 14 straight street games since September — to get back. The Phillies finished the season on a 10-game excursion and afterward played their initial four season finisher games out and about.

Phillies fans — and the Phanatic from atop the dugout — mocked Atlanta’s tomahawk chop, and red rally towels spun like helicopter rotor blades from the moment they snagged them off the seats. As Strider trudged off the mound in the third, one Phillies fan gleefully wagged his middle finger toward the pitcher for his entire walk to the dugout.

Strider could only shake his head as the shortest start of his brief career was over in just 2 1/3 innings.

The Phillies had never scored five runs in a postseason inning before 2022. They’ve done it two times now, the initial time, obviously, the six-run rally in the 10th inning to beat the Cardinals in Game 1 of the NL special case series.

Harper rocked an RBI double to center in the seventh and Game 1 star Nick Castellanos drove in two runs in the inning for a 9-1 lead

PHELAN HONORED

The Phillies held a moment of silence for Corey Phelan, a 20-year-old minor league pitcher who died Wednesday of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He last pitched in the minors in 2021.

“We got to know him. Got to meet him, got to meet the family. Colossal family,” supervisor Ransack Thomson said. “Furthermore, you simply see the strength he had, the certainty he must have the option to traverse this. It was hard to take since we got to realize Corey a smidgen and truly loved him and enjoyed his personality and preferred every little thing about him. So it’s intense.”

CAPTURED CRITTER

First, a goose was on the loose in LA. In Game 3, a squirrel was briefly trapped near the Braves dugout before it was released and it, well, squirreled away.