Last Night in Baseball: Bryce Harper Hit 2 Homers Really, Really Far

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Major League Baseball Last Night in Baseball: Bryce Harper Hit 2 Homers Really, Really Far
Published
Aug. 19, 2025 10:59 a.m. ET
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There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves.
Don't worry, we're here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn't have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball :
Harper hits two special homers
Bryce Harper hit two home runs on Monday night. Players hit two home runs all the time, though. What makes these two worth leading your daily recap of the previous evening? Just how far Harper hit them, that's what. No player with a multi-homer game in 2025 has managed to hit both of them at least 440 feet, but Harper absolutely crushed each of Monday's dingers against the Mariners.
Now that's a homer truly worthy of the "long ball" moniker, but guess what? The second one went even further:
The first shot went 440 feet with an exit velocity of 112.9 mph, and the second traveled 448 feet while coming off the bat at 112.3 mph. While it wasn't hit quite as hard — a barely perceptible difference, sure, but it's there — it also didn't travel on such a majestic arc, instead coming in a bit lower and going further because of it.
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Harper is now up to 21 homers on the season despite missing almost all of June with a wrist injury that put him on the IL. He's batting .262/.357/.508, too, with the only real difference between this season and his last one about 20 points of batting average. Kyle Schwarber gets a lot of the attention these days for good reason, but Harper still has tons of power, and can obliterate a baseball — or two — just as well as his teammate.
All the Phillies dominated, though
Harper wasn't the only one putting in the work for the Phillies on Monday. Their 12-7 win against the Mariners was very much a team effort (well, okay, besides the bullpen, which did normal Phillies' bullpen things and allowed five runs in 2.1 innings). Every Phillies player in the starting lineup had recorded a hit before the second inning ended — Edmundo Sosa and Weston Wilson didn't end up with any hits, but they also never came to bat, as they were late-game defensive replacements to give Trea Turner and Bryce Harper a breather. Turner, by the way, went 4-for-6 with 5 RBIs and a homer, and that dinger was his 1,500th career hit.
Don't let the bullpen's performance fool you there, either. Starting pitcher Ranger Suarez was electric, striking out 10 Mariners in 6.2 innings while limiting them to just two runs. Those 10 strikeouts tied his career-high, and were exactly the kind of performance Philly needed coming off the news that ace Zack Wheeler is out indefinitely after surgery to remove a blood clot in his right arm.
The Phillies are 5.5 up on the Mets in the NL East and have the second-most wins in the National League, behind the Brewers. Their win on Monday also messed things up for the Mariners pretty well, since they now sit in a three-way tie with the Red Sox and Yankees for the AL's wild card spots: the trio, as a unit, are three games up on the Guardians and 3.5 up on the Royals, but the separation that existed between them is no more thanks to New York recovering a bit while Boston and Seattle scuffle.
Rockies walk-off Dodgers
The Dodgers seemed to have recovered from their own recent struggles, as they swept the Padres over the weekend and found themselves back to a two-game lead in the NL West because of it. They then ran into the buzzsaw that is the Rockies over the last week, though, so of course the thing that everyone predicted would happen did, and Los Angeles lost to Colorado.
That was Warming Bernabel hitting it where they ain't with a runner on second, and it proved to be just what the Rockies needed: Ezequiel Tovar came around to score, as Bernabel's hit didn't have enough juice on it to get it to Andy Pages in center in a hurry, and Colorado won their fourth in a row.
The Dodgers wasted a good start from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, too, as he pitched seven innings of 3-run ball, with 6 strikeouts and just 6 baserunners. Reliever Justin Wrobleski could only get the one out in the ninth before surrendering the winning run; the fact that he was in at all at that point should tell you something about the current state of the Dodgers' bullpen, as nothing in his performance across his two seasons in the majors screams, "will preserve a late-game tie," but what can you do? Someone has to pitch.
It's still good it's still good
There are some sports where, if a body part that isn't supposed to touch a ball does, the play is dead, and there might even be a turnover. Not baseball, though. That ball is just live and kicking, and you have to react and adjust to whatever it hits and bounces off of. Like, say, Brady Singer's foot.
Every time you see Ke'Bryan Hayes play defense at third, it's easier and easier to understand why he gets to play every day despite a slash line that makes you double-take. He's up to an 85 OPS+ in his 17 games with the Reds since the trade deadline, though! An entire season of that kind of hitting, with his glove, is actually a real good ballplayer. Even if he can't keep going like that offensively, however, check that glove. It's a special one.
The Reds won 4-1, by the way, defeating the Angels and picking up half-a-game on the idle Mets for the third NL wild card in the process.
Tigers beat Astros
The Tigers have been overshadowed a bit by the close postseason races and the ascent of the Brewers, but they are still out there being dangerous for their opponents. The Astros have been reminded of this, as they lost to Detroit 10-0 on Monday. The Tigers scored in four consecutive innings — one run, four runs, one run, four runs, just like that — and the Astros just did not have a response to that.
Tiger's starter Jack Flaherty was on point, with 9 strikeouts against a single walk and 3 hits scattered over seven frames. No single Tiger had a huge game on their own — though, shortstop Trey Sweeney did have 3 RBIs — but this was instead more of a collective beatdown. And an efficient one, too: Detroit had 13 hits and 10 runs, with the supplement there being seven walks allowed by Astros pitching.
Wenceel Perez certainly had the most amusing hit of the evening for the Tigers. Looks just like a standard home run out of its original context, yeah?
This is how that at-bat actually went down: Perez nearly hit a homer twice before actually doing it. He just had to straighten out his swing, is all!
What range!
Seriously. The range here! Cardinals' center fielder Nathan Church was motoring, and he still barely made it to this ball.
Excellent dismount there at the end to avoid careening right into the wall, too.
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Philadelphia Phillies
Bryce Harper
Major League Baseball
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