Is there no one else?: Phillies 10, Blue Jays 1

The best team in professional baseball (26-11) continued their onslaught with a 10-1 drubbing of the Toronto Blue Jays (16-19) on Tuesday night.

You would be forgiven for expecting the Philadelphia Phillies to have a let down game in a series opener against a pedigreed AL East threat boasting their best starter following a four-game sweep of the San Francisco Baseball Giants over the weekend.

Jose Berrios had been phenomenal in his first seven starts of the season, only allowing seven runs totals and not more than two in any given start. But as John Kruk astutely pointed out, none of those came against this Phillies’ lineup.

Bryce Harper worked a great AB in the bottom of the first, getting behind 0-2 in the count and then fouled off three more pitches and evened the count at 2-2 before smacking a single to left. Nick Castellanos followed with his second double in as many games and just his fourth extra-base hit of the season to score Harper and give the Phillies an early 1-0 lead.

With Trea Turner out due to injury and Alec Bohm and JT Realmuto sitting on the bench for a breather due to the rollover four-game weekend series against the Giants, Kody Clemens made his first start since being retrieved from Lehigh Valley following the Turner injury. In his second stint with the big league club, #2 in your playbooks hit his second home run of the season (a two-run shot) in his second AB of the game. On BOGO night, no less.

Clemens would follow that up with an RBI triple with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning to extend the lead to 4-0. With Clemens at third and a walk to spot-starting Garrett Stubbs and a HBP to Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper came to the plate with two outs and the bases juiced. You know (8-0).

The Jays would get one run off of Cristopher Sanchez in the seventh inning after a couple hits and a ground out RBI, but for the most part he played the recent nightly role of the dominant starter.

The Phillies tacked on two more runs of their own following a couple of hits by Bryson Stott (single) and Edmundo Sosa (triple) and a ground-out RBI by Clemens in the bottom of the eighth.

Spencer Turnbull came on in his first relief appearance of the season after starting six games as a rotation fill-in for the recently restored Taijuan Walker and pitched a scoreless eighth and ninth inning to seal the criminally easy victory.

The Phillies and Blue Jays will be back at it tomorrow afternoon in a rare Wednesday businessperson’s special to wrap up the two-game series as Aaron Nola will face off against Chris Bassitt.