Texas Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford picked a prime time for the best night of his young career by hitting a cycle in an 11-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”
Langford, 22, had the toughest part of the cycle under his belt early, triple-hitting to lead off the fourth inning. He followed that up with a double in the fifth, a single in the sixth and, in the eighth, completed the cycle with a home run off the Orioles’ Matt Krook. Sunday’s performance was the first four-hit game of his major league career.
The home run was Langford’s fourth of the season, along with nine doubles, four triples, a .260 batting average and .712 OPS in 245 plate appearances. He played in 58 games for the Rangers, but missed three weeks in May with a hamstring injury.
The last cycle hit in MLB was by José Altuve of the Houston Astros, on August 29, 2023 against the Boston Red Sox.
Langford is the second rookie in Rangers franchise history to hit a cycle, following Oddibe McDowell, who accomplished the feat in 1985. The last Rangers batter to hit a single, double, triple and home run in a single game was Carlos Gomez in 2017.
The cycle was the 10th in team history, with two of them being hit by Hall of Famer Adrián Béltre. Jim King was the first to accomplish the feat for the franchise in 1964, when the team was the Washington Senators.
Langford was the Rangers’ first-round pick in last year’s MLB Draft, selected No. 4 overall out of Florida. He played through four levels of Texas’ minor league system last year, making the Opening Day roster after spring training.
