The Phillies tied a homer record that hasn't been seen in 15 years

After years of bad baseball and general futility, the Philadelphia Phillies are on the rise. They have the youngest team in the majors, excellent starting pitching, and a lineup full of power threats. On Thursday night in Cincinnati, the Phillies delivered on those power threats with a historic outburst of home runs that gave the Phillies the win, and their biggest National League East lead of the season.

The hot and humid Cincinnati weather was perfect for hitting home runs. Rhys Hoskins got it started in the first with a two-out solo shot, and was followed by Carlos Santana hitting the only multi-run homer of the night, a two-run jack to right field. Nick Williams hit his first homer of the night in the third inning, and Maikel Franco hit his first in the fifth inning. Then everyone but Santana did it all again. Hoskins hit his second dinger of the night in the sixth inning, Franco got his second in the seventh inning, and Williams put a button on it with his homer in the ninth.

It’s a rare thing for three players to hit two homers each in the same game. So rare that it hasn’t been done in 15 years, since the Boston Red Sox did it in 2003.

If you’re looking for eerie coincidences, this one’s a doozy. The starting right fielder on that day in 2003 was someone the 2018 Phillies know and love.

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler started that multiple home run game for the Red Sox in 2003. Baseball can be such a small world.

The Phillies also tied some franchise records on Thursday night. The Phillies have hit seven home runs in only one other game in franchise history, a game against the New York Mets that happened nearly 20 years ago.

And that game is also the only other time three Phillies hitters have hit two home runs each.

The Phillies absolutely unleashed on the Reds, but the seven homers they hit didn’t come in one burst. Instead, they spread it out over the entire game, tallying 18 total hits and scoring in all but two innings. They scored three runs in the first, and then single runs in the third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. They were relentless.

The Phillies are starting to really heat up. This is how they’ve looked over their last six games.

But it stretches farther back than that. On June 19, they were 4.5 games back in the National League East, with both the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals in front of them. Five weeks later, they’re 2.5 games up on the Braves and seven games ahead of the Nationals. That’s a big leap

There is still a lot of baseball left to be played, and the NL East race is far from decided. But it’s definitely time to start taking the Phillies seriously. Rhys Hoskins definitely thinks so.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter at @lizroscher.

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