Bryce Harper homers in his return to lead Phillies to a win: ‘Everything changes when he’s back’
Harper's first-inning home run followed a two-run shot by Trea Turner, who finished with two homers in the game. The Phillies' win snapped a four-game losing streak.
TORONTO — Bryce Harper had been looking for a certain type of arm sleeve for the last year and a half.
The company had stopped producing the type of sleeve he wore to protect his arm after he returned from Tommy John surgery in 2023, and he couldn’t find a suitable alternative. That is, until someone from his agency randomly procured one for him — just in time for his return to the lineup on Tuesday, after missing the last five games with a bruised elbow.
The Phillies certainly felt the absence of the two-time MVP in their lineup, going 1-4 with him unavailable after getting hit by a Spencer Strider fastball. But as soon as he stepped into the on-deck circle for the first time at the Rogers Centre, wearing the black sleeve and a red arm guard, the Phillies’ fortune started to turn.
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“Everything changes when he’s back,” said Phillies starter Cristopher Sánchez through a team interpreter. “You saw the mood today, it’s different. It’s a different vibe here.”
With Harper waiting for his first at-bat since the injury, Trea Turner sent a two-run homer hurtling into the visitors’ bullpen to bring him to the plate.
Harper hadn’t faced live pitching in a week. He swung through a fastball from Toronto starter Bowden Francis, fouled off another, then crushed a splitter for a homer of his own, which also landed in the visitors’ bullpen.
“Obviously I’ve got to be able to swing at a high level and hard,” Harper said. “I’ve done that my whole career, so if I didn’t feel comfortable doing that today, I wasn’t going to be in the box. So I felt comfortable doing that, and felt good out there today.”
The homers by Turner and Harper sparked a six-run first inning for the Phillies in their 8-3 win over Toronto. They sent 11 men to the plate and racked up six hits in the first. They weren’t just lucky, either. Every hit in the inning clocked an exit velocity harder than 99 mph, and Harper’s homer was hardest of all, a blistering 104.9 mph off the bat.
Harper walked to lead off the second inning, and came home to score the Phillies’ seventh run of the night on a fielding error, after advancing on a single from Alec Bohm.
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Turner hit his second homer of the game, this one to left field, in the eighth inning off Toronto reliever Erik Swanson. He finished 3-for-5 and played solid defense, two days after booting a routine grounder that cost the Phillies in Sunday’s loss to the Brewers.
“That was Sunday. So today’s a new day. Tomorrow’s a new day. It’s baseball. It’s going to happen,” Turner said.
Bohm hit four singles, and also made a highlight-reel defensive play in the third inning. He dove to snag a sharply-hit ground ball from George Springer, and then made the throw to first in time from his knees.
Meanwhile, Sánchez held Toronto to just four hits over six innings. South Jersey native and Eastern Regional High School alum Davis Schneider spoiled the Phillies’ shutout in the fifth inning with a solo home run to right center field.
Sánchez issued a season-high four walks — including walking the bases loaded in the fifth — but was able to escape trouble each time by inducing soft contact on the ground.
“I would have liked to see a few more strikes from him,” said manager Rob Thomson. “I thought he got behind the count a little bit, and then it was really good to see him go out in the sixth inning and attack, got ahead, use the stuff, just really went after hitters. And that’s what he needs to do. When he’s good, that’s what he does.”
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After a scoreless seventh from Joe Ross, Max Lazar surrendered a two-run home run to Addison Barger in the eighth. Carlos Hernández pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to end the game.
The Phillies ended their losing streak at four, but more important was what they got back with Harper in the lineup. He said he still has some swelling and soreness in his elbow, but thought Tuesday was the right time to return.
His team thought so, too.
“We know that he’s there, and they know that he’s there and you have to be aware of that,” Thomson said. “He makes our lineup so much better.”