Phillies bash five homers to rout Astros 7-0 and take 2-1 lead in the World Series

The World Series returned to town for the first time in 4,747 nights — and the Phillies tied a Fall Classic record with five home runs.

Rhys Hoskins hits a home run in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the World Series on Tuesday.Read moreJose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published Nov. 1, 2022, 11:19 p.m. ET

As Bryce Harper jogged the final 45 feet of a home-run trot in the first inning Tuesday night, he looked directly into a handheld Fox television camera that followed him up the third-base line.

“This is my house,” he said.

Sorry, but for the first time in this serendipitous ride of a Phillies postseason, Harper was wrong. No disrespect to Mr. October/November — and let there be no doubt that Harper owns both months — this house belongs to you. All of you. The 45,000-plus who keep packing the place, rocking the joint, and generally turning Citizens Bank Park into the place to be in South Philly again.

It was raucous in the divisional round, eardrum-shattering in the National League Championship Series, and when the World Series returned to town for the first time in 4,747 nights — and the Phillies tied a World Series record with five home runs in a 7-0 Game 3 throttling of the Houston Astros to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series — well, you just had to be here.

You had to feel the concrete shake beneath your feet and hear the screams of “Chea-ters!” directed at the Astros, residue from their 2017 sign-stealing escapades. The noise began through pregame introductions and kept on building. It grew positively deafening when Nick Castellanos made another of his patented sliding catches on the first pitch of the game to steal a hit from Jose Altuve and got louder with every home run.

From Harper’s two-run shot to solos by Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh in the second inning, Kyle Schwarber’s massive two-run clout off the shrubbery on the batter’s eye in the fifth inning, and Rhys Hoskins’ missile to left field five pitches later, the decibel level grew by a magnitude.

”It’s second to none, man,” Castellanos said. “It’s tough to play here. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the Astros right now. They just really have zero breathing room, and that’s a good thing. The only thing I can compare it to really is a European soccer game.”

Castellanos speaks from experience. He once attended a Liverpool soccer match and was told that the family section for the opposing team was secured by armed guards.

“Other than now playing here in Philly, it was the best sporting event I’ve ever been to,” Castellanos said. “They take everything over there very serious. Those fans don’t really care about being polite. They just want to show up and see their soccer team win.”

Sound familiar?

Game 3s tend to be a bellwether. In 61 previous World Series in which the teams split the first two games, the Game 3 winner went on to win 41 series (67.2%). In the last 24 World Series that were tied 1-1, the Game 3 winner won 19 times, including 2017, 2020, and last year.

There couldn’t have been a better time, then, for the Phillies to become the first team to smash five homers in a World Series game since those trash-can-banging Astros in Game 5 in 2017. The bash-brothers Oakland A’s did in Game 3 in 1989. So did the New York Yankees in Game 4 in 1928.

Move over, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Make way for Bryce and Schwarbs.

Harper, as usual, took the biggest swing. He teed off on a first-pitch curveball from Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr., who throws his breaking ball as frequently as almost any pitcher in baseball. Harper’s first swing at home in the World Series produced the same outcome as his last swing in the NLCS, a home run that gave the Phillies a lead.

Make it six postseason homers, a franchise-record 12 extra-base hits, and a 1.232 on-base plus slugging percentage for Harper, who has every right to claim ownership of this house.

“He’s kind of like a machine,” shortstop Bryson Stott said. “You know what time it is by what he’s doing.”

Said Hoskins: “I’m running out of stuff to say about the guy. It’s just really cool to see him be ‘The Guy’ on baseball’s biggest stage. He’s the most talented player that I’ve ever played with, so in tune to the game and what’s going on.”

To wit: A few minutes after circling the bases, as Bohm stood on deck, Harper called the young third baseman to the dugout and said something in his ear, prompting social media sleuths to suggest that McCullers must have been tipping his pitches.

But Harper may have been simply reminding Bohm that McCullers threw only three curveballs to right-handed hitters all season. If Bohm was able to forget about the curveball and sit on a sinker, his chances of driving the ball improved dramatically.

Sure enough, Bohm led off the second inning, got a first-pitch sinker from McCullers, and drove it into the left-field seats for a 3-0 lead.

What exactly did Harper tell him?

“Nothing,” Bohm said, smiling.

Did whatever it was help?

“Maybe,” Bohm said, still smiling.

“I think any time you have information, you want to be able to give that to your teammates at any point,” Harper said. “Throughout the whole season we’ve done that.”

The crowd — 45,712 strong — was still going bonkers two batters later when Marsh lifted a homer over leaping right fielder Kyle Tucker’s glove and the outstretched mitt of a 10-year-old boy to pad the margin to 4-0 and keep the party going.

And the good times were rolling so well that, a few innings later, Castellanos inadvertently flipped a ball to the same child who dropped Marsh’s home run.

“I didn’t know that,” Castellanos said. “I just look for a kid, man, [to throw a ball to]. I wasn’t trying to do that or anything. Fate’s on the Phillies’ side, bro. Good for that kid.”

McCullers gave up a total of one homer in 96 plate appearances by left-handed hitters during the regular season, but Harper, Marsh, and Schwarber took him deep in Game 3. Schwarber’s moonshot was measured at 443 feet, marking his fourth 400-plus-foot homer in the playoffs.

“We could all see that [McCullers] was kind of iffy from the start of the game,” Castellanos said. “I think that we, as a group, sensed that, and we didn’t let our foot off the gas.”

The Phillies’ offense reaches a different gear at home. In six postseason games here, they have hit 17 homers compared with five in eight playoff games on the road.

Astros manager Dusty Baker stuck with McCullers so long that he became the first pitcher ever to allow five homers in a World Series game. Meanwhile, the Phillies won without having to use leverage relievers José Alvarado, Seranthony Domínguez, or Zach Eflin, all of whom should be available to go back-to-back in Games 4 and 5.

“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Hoskins said.

Neither can the loudest crowd in baseball.