'It's time': Phils slug 5 homers in Wrigley rout

David Ross could not have been more upset that Bryce Harper walked to start the sixth inning on Monday night at Wrigley Field.

Harper took a 3-2 fastball, just a hair below the strike zone. Ross thought it was a strike, so he said something to home-plate umpire Nic Lentz that got him ejected. Two pitches later, Andrew McCutchen ripped a ball into the left-field corner. Harper raced around the bases and scored easily to hand the Phillies a one-run lead. Two batters later, McCutchen scored on a Rhys Hoskins base hit.

The score held until Harper walked and McCutchen singled to spark a six-run rally in the eighth in a 13-3 victory.

• Box score

“It’s time,” Rhys Hoskins said. “We’ve got to start winning series. We’ve got to start getting on a roll.”

The Phillies improved to 40-42 and moved into a temporary three-way tie with the Braves and Nationals for second place in the National League East. They are 4 1/2 games behind the first-place Mets.

The Phillies need to continue to hit to catch New York. They need their bullpen to pitch well, too.

They will need to do almost everything well on this seven-game road trip against the Cubs and Red Sox. A good week here could push the front office into pursuing an upgrade or two before the July 30 Trade Deadline.

“I think it starts with this week,” Hoskins said. “I think it really does start with this week. There’s kind of that natural line, obviously, with the [All-Star] break, but there’s this week and a couple weeks before the Deadline. We know where we stand. We know the Mets are 4 1/2 games up. We know there are a couple teams between us. But there have been crazier things that happened in baseball. That’s a good week. So, we know that. I think everybody in baseball knows that.

“We’ve got to put pressure on the front office. That’s our job as players: See if we can get on a little run here and make them make tough decisions. That’s all we can do.”

Nights like Monday help. The Phillies took a tight two-run lead and turned it into a laugher. It got so bad that the Cubs, who have lost 10 in a row, pitched infielder Eric Sogard for the third time in eight days, even though the Phils had only a seven-run lead at the time.

Andrew Knapp, Didi Gregorius and Odúbel Herrera each homered as the Phillies built a 10-2 lead. Hoskins and Alec Bohm each homered against Sogard in the ninth.

Before the rout, Phillies relievers picked up big outs. Manager Joe Girardi pulled left-hander Matt Moore after just 74 pitches and four innings in a 2-2 game. Bohm hit a leadoff double in the fourth and Knapp sacrificed him to third, so Girardi had Brad Miller pinch-hit for Moore. Miller walked to put runners at the corners, but the Phillies did not score.

Connor Brogdon retired six batters on 27 pitches over two perfect innings. Archie Bradley pitched a scoreless seventh. José Alvarado allowed a run in the eighth, but it did not matter by that point.

“Brogdon did an outstanding job, Archie did an outstanding job,” Girardi said.

Had the Phillies found themselves in a save situation, Girardi planned to use left-hander Ranger Suárez as his closer. Suárez earned his first big league save on Saturday as the Phillies tried and failed to close recently with Héctor Neris and Alvarado.

Suárez will get more opportunities. They might come on this road trip.

But there is nothing wrong with a blowout victory every once in a while, too. It takes pressure off everybody, especially a bullpen that has heard plenty lately about its struggles.

“We’ve kind of been waiting for everybody to get healthy,” Hoskins said about the lineup. “One guy would come back, another guy would go down. Let’s knock on wood and make sure everybody stays healthy, but I think you can just see the depth and length of the lineup. … We obviously know some of the struggles that we’ve had on the road. The length in the lineup gives us a little extra confidence that things are going to turn around for us. If we continue to hit and get the starting pitching that we have from the top guys, we’re going to have a chance to win a lot of ballgames.”