Trea Turner homers twice, while Bryce Harper closes in on 300 in 6-4 Phillies win

Trea Turner doesn’t often emote on the field, especially when he’s circling the bases. But as he crossed home plate after putting the Phillies ahead with his second home run of the game Monday night, he patted Bryce Harper on the chest and cracked a smile.

Hittin’ season?

More like homer season.

It has become a familiar scene. Having already set the franchise record for homers in a month, the Phillies bashed three more en route to a 6-4 victory over Shohei’s Angels before 38,142 paying customers at Citizens Bank Park.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper’s ‘excited’ about Angels’ Shohei Ohtani, who’ll become a unique free agent soon

“Early in the year, we were hitting all right, but we just didn’t hit the homer,” Turner said. “We knew it was in there.”

Turner’s solo homer in the first inning and two-runner in the fifth against Angels starter Lucas Giolito bookended Harper’s game-tying two-run shot in the fourth — No. 298 of his career — after Turner worked a leadoff walk.

Make it 28 homers in the last 11 games and 52 overall in August for the Phillies, bashing on Broad Street as they were built. Kyle Schwarber leads the team with nine homers this month. Harper and Nick Castellanos have eight; Turner seven.

When the month began, the Phillies ranked 21st in the majors in homers. They have moved up to 13th after hitting the fourth-most homers in a month by any team this season.

And it’s no wonder they have won four games in a row and six out of seven to stretch their lead to four games for the top wild spot and a home series in the best-of-three wild-card round.

The timing is the best part of the Phillies’ power flex. The Yankees smashed 53 homers in May but were unable to sustain that surge. The Phillies are peaking as the stretch run arrives. If they can keep riding the momentum, they’ll be dangerous in October.

“If you had to pick a World Series every year, I always pick a wild-card team just because you’ve got to play really well for the last month, two weeks and continue that into the postseason,” Turner said. “Year after year, there’s a wild-card team that goes really far in the postseason and is really dangerous. Wild-card teams are scary.”

» READ MORE: Phillies down the stretch: Game 3 starter, first base plan — and will the power play in the playoffs?

The Phillies could be downright frightening as long as their best players are playing like, well, their best players. It wasn’t the case for much of the season, when youngsters Bryson Stott, Alec Bohm, and Brandon Marsh were the team’s most consistent hitters.

And now? Harper, who endured a career-long homer drought earlier in the season, is batting .360 and slugging .742 in August despite playing through a stiff back; Turner, who began the month in the worst funk of his career, is batting .313, slugging .606, and back in the No. 2 spot where manager Rob Thomson has wanted him all along.

“He’s just being Trea,” Thomson said. “He’s a combination of on-base and slug. If he slugs, we’re putting up points, and if he gets on base, then you’ve got slug right behind him, too. It makes the lineup very dangerous when he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s been swinging the bat great. He’s playing great defense, too.”

Indeed, Turner’s biggest play in the game might have come with his glove. With the bases loaded in the first inning against starter Taijuan Walker, he saved at least one run by snaring Logan O’Hoppe’s hard grounder to the hole at shortstop.

“That could’ve been a big momentum changer,” Turner said. “It could’ve scored a couple of runs there, and it’s a different ballgame. To get out of there with just one run was big momentum for us.”

Said Walker: “Trea, he turned it around, and he’s playing like the player that we all know he is.”

At just the right time.

» READ MORE: Phillies down the stretch: Game 3 starter, first base plan — and will the power play in the playoffs?

Leading by one run in the eighth inning, the Phillies allowed lefty reliever Gregory Soto to pitch to Shohei Ohtani.

“I liked the matchup,” Thomson said.

Soto rewarded Thomson’s faith. He got Ohtani to hit a grounder to first base and beat the fleet-footed slugger to the bag to take the flip from Harper.

Ohtani finished 1-for-4 with one intentional walk and remained stuck on 44 homers.

Walker overcame a 24-pitch first inning and recorded two outs in the sixth inning. He allowed three runs on eight hits and two walks in a limit-the-damage outing.

It marked Walker’s second start since his 10-day breather to deal with arm fatigue. He was sharper last week against the Giants. But he also wiggled out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning and stranded two runners in both the third and fourth innings.

» READ MORE: Before Shohei Ohtani, Michael Lorenzen wanted to be a two-way player. But he’s found his calling as a starter.

Playing against the Phillies for the first time since they traded him 13 months ago, Mickey Moniak went 3-for-4 with a bunt single, a triple, and an RBI. He also made a leaping catch against the wall in left-center field.

Moniak, swapped for rent-a-starter Noah Syndergaard, said he has “no bad feelings” for the Phillies. He batted .129/.214/.172 with 41 strikeouts in 105 plate appearances and dealt with injuries after being drafted first overall in 2016.

“I’m a believer in, if you want to have success and you want to stick, that you’re going to have to earn it,” said Moniak, who lugged an 8-for-51 slump with 23 strikeouts into the game. “I didn’t earn it, and that was that.”