Categories: 2018 Recaps

Surging Phillies blitz Archer, Rays

This is fun.

With a barrage of second-inning hits, the Phillies took command then pulled ahead of the Rays, ultimately winning 9-4 Saturday at Tropicana Field.

The second felt like whiplash for Rays starter Chris Archer. Nick Williams led off with a double, then Scott Kingery doubled to score him. After a Maikel Franco walk and Jorge Alfaro strikeout, J.P. Crawford doubled, and both Carlos Santana and Odubel Herrera singled. Then Rhys Hoskins grounded what looked to be a double-play ball, but his hustle to first made him safe. An errant throw home to get an aggressive Santana went awry, sending Hoskins to third.

After all that the Phils were up 6-0 and didn’t look back. Crawford added a mammoth solo home run in the fourth, and the Phils tacked on another two in the fifth.

Herrera collected three hits, while Kingery doubled twice and Crawford continued his hot hitting. The effort gave Jake Arrieta his first win as a Phillie – he gave up two earned runs in 6.2 innings, striking out just one but inducing a ton of ground ball outs. Victor Arano was sparkling in 1.1 frames (three strikeouts), while Drew Hutchison surrendered a run in garbage time.

The Phillies are now 8-5 and look to finish a sweep of Tampa Bay on Sunday.

Tim Malcolm

Tim first found the Phillies as a little infant at Veteran’s Stadium, cheering on a Juan Samuel game-winning home run in his very first game. With the pinstripes in his blood, he witnessed Terry Mulholland’s 1990 no-hitter, “Steve Carlton Night” at the Vet, game three of the 1993 World Series, countless games during the charmed 2008 championship season and various road excursions. Since November 2007 Tim’s been writing about them daily at Phillies Nation, becoming one of the world’s most popular Phillies scribes. You can catch him on Twitter and Facebook, as well. When he’s not talking about the Phils he’s relaxing with a St. Bernardus ABT 12 or one of his many favored brews.