Phillies continue historic start to season with 11-4 blowout win over Texas Rangers

This is what history looks like.

It’s a swift reply to an early two-run deficit against, well, yes, the Rangers, who are the reigning World Series champs even though they don’t look the part. It’s the first career three-run homer by an understudy who isn’t making anybody pine after the injured $300 million leading man. It’s the majors’ co-RBI leader dropping a two-run flare between three defenders in center field.

And it’s another victory, the Phillies’ 36th against only 14 losses, the best 50-game start in the history of a 142-season-old franchise.

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The score — 11-4, by the way — almost doesn’t matter. Neither do the stars du jour, although we’re obligated to mention that fill-in shortstop Edmundo Sosa clocked an opposite-field three-run shot, J.T. Realmuto hit a go-ahead homer and drove in three runs, and Bryce Harper crushed his team-leading 12th homer in the eighth inning.

Here’s the important part: The Phillies are unstoppable.

Not only do they have the best record in baseball — and a six-game cushion over the second-place Braves before Memorial Day weekend — but since a 2-4 start, they are 34-10, the first time ever that they have won 34 of 44 games within a single season.

Want more? OK, after months of dwelling on the importance of starting faster than the last two seasons, the Phillies are off to the best start of any team since the Pat Gillick-built 2001 Mariners.

“What did they do?” manager Rob Thomson said.

Uh, they won 116 games.

“But what did they do at the end?” Thomson said.

They lost in the American League Championship Series.

“That’s right,” Thomson said, “so you’ve go to keep going. You’ve just got to keep grinding, keep pushing, all the way through.”

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Thomson is all but required to say that. It’s his job to ensure his players stay levelheaded. Maybe it explains calling on Matt Strahm to replace starter Taijuan Walker — one out shy of qualifying for a win — after Walker gave up a two-out RBI single to cut the lead to 6-3 in the fifth inning.

And the players are buying in. As Walker stood on one side of clubhouse and said he “didn’t do my job tonight” — “Four walks isn’t going to cut it,” he added — Harper took less satisfaction from a garbage-time homer than frustration from three strikeouts.

“Like Thomper said, we’ve got a long way to go,” Harper said. “Obviously we’re playing good baseball right now. But you know how I am, man. Each day’s a new day.”

That’s fine. Everyone else can sit back and enjoy. And judging by another midweek packed house — 39,595 paying customers after 41,083 on Tuesday night — you’re all soaking it in perfectly fine.

For all of their focus, the Phillies do possess a confidence that seems to permeate the clubhouse. They come to the ballpark expecting to win, and no deficit, least of all a two-run hurdle in the second inning against the sloppy Rangers, feels insurmountable.

“The way we’re playing right now,” Walker said, “we feel like we’re going to score six-plus runs every single time out.”

They haven’t scored fewer than four since May 8, a span of 12 games. So, they didn’t need the assist from Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe (dropped throw) or starter Dane Dunning (errant pickoff throw) to tie the game in the second inning.

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Realmuto banged a solo homer in the third inning, extending his hitting streak to 12 games, longest by a Phillies catcher since Mike Lieberthal’s 16-game roll in 2004.

And Sosa’s fourth-inning shot, after struggling Nick Castellanos worked a walk and Brandon Marsh knocked a single, broke it open for Walker. It marked the 28th time in his 36 starts for the Phillies dating to last season that he received at least four runs of support.

Why stop there? The Phillies scored four runs in the sixth with a two-out rally that began after Rangers shortstop Corey Seager flipped the ball over ducking second baseman Marcus Semien’s head on a play that would’ve ended the inning.

Everything, it seems, is coming up Phillies.

“As a team, you find value in winning, and you find value in each guy doing their job,” Harper said. “We just want to go out there and do our job. No matter the outcome, it’s on to the next one. And it’s got to be that kind of mentality. Because, like Thomper says, it’s a long season.”

Walker started, as expected, six nights after taking a line drive off the left foot and bruising a toe. And he needed to throw 25 pitches in a first inning that opened with a pop-up dropping between Bryson Stott and Harper on the right side of the infield.

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Like just about anything else that didn’t go exactly their way through 50 games, it didn’t matter.

“I think they’re very confident,” Thomson said. “And I think right now it really doesn’t matter what type of game we’re in. They feel like somebody’s going to do something to get it done, and that’s a good feeling to have.”

They just won’t let it overtake them.

“It’s cool,” Strahm said of being 36-14, “but we all know what we want to accomplish. Other Phillies clubs have won World Series, and that’s the most impressive thing. That’s what we want to do.”