Long ball (including Bohm’s first), fastball lift Phillies over Rays
The Phillies played their first ever regular-season game at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Tuesday. The Rays will spend the 2025 season there, and ideally no more. It is a minor-league ballpark. Capacity is barely over 11,000, and it was not filled to the brim behind the 16-18 Rays on Tuesday.
All to say: The Phillies needed to create the energy, and the thump, themselves in the series opener.
Mission accomplished.
Philadelphia took Game 1 on the road against Tampa Bay (familiar?) on the strength of power. It hit three homers, including the first of the season by Alec Bohm. Zack Wheeler carved up the Rays’ lineup, punching out nine — eight of which came on his four-seam fastball, the pitch that composed half of his 84 offerings and generated nine whiffs.
He got a lead early on a pair of homers, opposite-field shots that occupied opposing ends of the frequency spectrum, if you will. Kyle Schwarber blasted his 12th of the year in the second inning, tying him for the MLB lead.
A few batters later, Alec Bohm, in his 136th plate appearance of the season, finally contributed to the leaguewide home run tally. His maiden home run this year traveled 342 feet and would’ve been a homer in seven parks — five full-time major-league ones.
Ask him if he cares:
The Rays cut it to 3-2 in the fourth with a unicorn (not a homer in 29 parks) homer by Yandy Díaz, and the lead held there until the eighth. But the 2008 World Series Game 1 parallel (it was a reach anyway) would not come full-circle, as the Phillies tacked on four in that inning to give themselves a comfortable five-run cushion.
The dagger, fittingly, was of the long variety.
It was the Phillies’ fifth three-homer game of the season. Two of them came in the season’s first four games. Two of them have come in the last two. It’s the third straight game in which they scored at least seven runs.
Speaking of seven — they’ve won seven of nine.