Hitless streak? Bryce Harper puts an end to that with three homers: ‘That’s what the great players do’

J.T. Realmuto was behind the plate for the Marlins on May 6, 2015, when Bryce Harper hit three homers in a game in Washington.

Nine years later, he still remembers the pitches he called.

“It was a fastball for the first homer,” Realmuto said Tuesday night. “Next one, we tried to go fastball up and in and missed middle-middle. That was the second home run. I want to say the last one might have been a changeup for the third home run.”

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What, then, will Realmuto recall years from now about Harper’s second three-homer game, a 9-4 Phillies victory over the Reds on Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park?

Start here: “It’s much better on this side of the coin,” the Phillies catcher said.

That, and the weather. Yes, they’ll definitely remember the weather.

Playing through steady drizzle, wearing a red ski mask as insulation from a whipping wind and stinging 46-degree chill — and, oh yeah, 0-for-11 with five strikeouts to begin the season — Harper hit solo homers in his first two at-bats against Reds starter Graham Ashcraft, then banged a grand slam against tough lefty Brent Suter in the eighth inning.

“It felt great,” Harper said after finishing with a career-high six RBIs and drawing chants of “MVP!” from 28,119 drenched paying customers. “On a personal note, it felt good. Going up there and hitting three homers was really cool.”

Historic, too. Harper became the 20th Phillies player to go deep three times in a game and the fifth in the last 25 years, joining Brad Miller (July 8, 2021), Jayson Werth (May 16, 2008), Ryan Howard (Sept. 3, 2006), and Mike Lieberthal (Aug. 10, 2002).

Predicting this was trickier than forecasting the early-season weather. Harper missed time late in spring training with a stiff lower back, left Florida unhappy with his swing, and struggled to find his rhythm at the plate in the season’s first few games.

But he’s also Bryce Harper. Hitless streaks don’t tend to linger for him.

» READ MORE: Top 10 Bryce Harper moments as a Phillie: From Mr. 300 to ‘attaboy’ to Bedlam at the Bank

“That’s what the great players do,” manager Rob Thomson said. “They have big nights like that. It’s always just a matter of time for him. He’s a great hitter. I don’t really get concerned with Bryce.”

If not for Harper, it would’ve gone down as the Ricardo Pinto Game.

With the bullpen shorthanded due to recent usage, the Phillies got nine solid innings from two unlikely sources: fill-in starter Spencer Turnbull and Pinto, who got called up earlier in the day, took a car service from Rochester, N.Y., hit traffic along the 350-mile route, didn’t arrive until about 7:15 p.m., and picked up a four-inning save in his first major league appearance since 2019.

“Him coming in and doing that for us, I thought he threw the ball really well, kept it down,” Harper said. “Split-finger looked good. Just really good all around by him.”

Said Thomson: “That’s a baseball player. It’s like American Legion.”

With rain falling throughout the day and expected all night, officials from both teams met on the field at about 4:30 p.m. to make a determination. They agreed there would be a window to play the game.

And with more rain expected early Wednesday, the Phillies moved the start time of their series finale against the Reds to 4:05 p.m. It was initially scheduled for 1:05 p.m.

Given the uncertainty of squeezing nine innings between the downpours, it was imperative to grab an early lead. Harper didn’t waste time. In the first inning, he crushed a cutter from Ashcraft to straightaway center field, wiping the beads of rain from his helmet as he circled the bases.

Hittin’ season? Not quite.

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“Any time you’re going out there playing in that cold weather, it’s not very fun,” Harper said. “The way I could put it with you is, golfing in that weather, probably not very fun, right? Same thing for us going out there. It’s not the greatest. But getting those runs on the board were really big for us.”

The Reds took advantage of Trea Turner’s throwing error to tie the game in the third inning. But Harper ambushed Ashcraft’s first pitch of the fourth, jumping on a slider and hitting it on a line into the right-field bleachers.

When Harper came to the plate in the seventh, the Phillies held a 4-1 lead. Facing lefty Brent Suter, against whom he was 0-for-4 in his career, he got a full-count sinker almost on his shoetop and hit it out to right-center field.

“I wasn’t really thinking homer against Suter just because he has had my number,” Harper said. “Just trying to get a hit right there and understand the situation. Obviously really cool to go deep right there.”

Maybe that will be Harper’s lasting takeaway. Everyone will remember something about this night. Three-homer games have a way of sticking with people.

Tom Koehler, the former Marlins pitcher who gave up all three Harper homers in the 2015 game, reacted to the grand slam by tweeting, “Its about time he had a 3 homer game.” Harper can still replay the three homers off Koehler in his mind. One of them, he said, “went into the bullpen over Ichiro’s head.”

“Definitely happy the way the night went, but just want to keep going, turn the page,” Harper said. “Hopefully this was the start of us winning [a World Series], you know? That’d be cool.”

Will Harper retire the bat?

“No, I’ll use it,” he said.

» READ MORE: How do the Phillies chase a World Series title, and long-term winning? Follow the money.

Surely, he’ll have to keep wearing the ski mask, right?

“I think we all will, yeah,” he said, laughing.

“Any time you see a teammate do something like that, it’s pretty special,” Realmuto said. “Just put the team on his back like that when we haven’t been scoring a lot of runs the first few games. To have that outburst was much needed.”

Oh, there’s one other thing that Realmuto remembers about Harper’s other three-homer game.

“He went on to win the MVP that year,” he said, “so it’s a good sign for Bryce this year.”