The Philadelphia Phillies may have dropped Game 1 of their series against the New York Mets, but the following two contests turned into must-watch entertainment.
Kyle Schwarber went off with four home runs across two games, while Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, and Jhoan Durán all looked dominant on the mound. Still, it was Bryce Harper who stole the spotlight with a historic stretch: a cycle on Saturday, followed by coming just one hit shy of another cycle on Sunday, creating a rare MLB storyline.
As Opta STATS noted on Twitter/X, Harper’s Saturday cycle and his near-repeat the very next day placed him alongside Trea Turner in unique baseball history as the only teammates to come that close to back-to-back cycles.
Bryce Harper joins Trea Turner in rare cycle history
“Bryce Harper finished tonight’s game a triple short of the cycle after hitting for the cycle in his last game,” Opta STATS shared. “The last player to finish one element short of a cycle in the game after hitting for a cycle was teammate Trea Turner, when they were Nationals teammates in April 2017.”
While there have been other instances of players narrowly missing a second straight cycle after completing one, this remains a rare statistical coincidence shared by the two stars.
Since Turner’s cycle on April 25, 2017, followed by his near-miss the next day, Harper stands as the only player to both hit for the cycle and then come within one hit of repeating it in consecutive games.
Notably, both players fell just a triple short each time, the hardest hit in baseball to collect in a cycle. That includes Harper’s aggressive hustle triple that sparked debate over whether it should have been scored as a double.
Even so, the hit stands, the cycle stands, and so does the near-miss that followed.
Overall, the Phillies have been one of the most entertaining teams recently, and Harper’s historic cycle run has been a major reason why.