Texas Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford picked an excellent moment for the best night of his fledgling career, hitting for the cycle in an 11–2 win over the Baltimore Orioles on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast.
Langford, 22, got the most difficult part of the cycle out of the way early, hitting a triple 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, he 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, to go with nine doubles, four triples, a .260 batting average and .712 OPS in 245 plate appearances. He’s played in 58 games for the Rangers, missing three weeks in May with a hamstring injury.
The last cycle hit in MLB was by the Houston Astros‘ José Altuve, who did so on Aug. 29, 2023, versus the Boston Red Sox.
Langford is the second rookie in Rangers’ franchise history to hit for the cycle, joining Oddibe McDowell, who accomplished the feat in 1985. The last Rangers batter to record a single, double, triple and home run in a game was Carlos Gomez in 2017.
The cycle was the 10th in team history, with two of them hit by Hall of Famer Adrián Béltre. Jim King was the first to achieve 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. Playing through four levels of Texas’ minor league system last year, he made the Opening Day roster out of spring training.
