CLEARWATER, Fla. — Bryce Harper didn’t play in the Phillies’ regular-season finale last year. With little to do before the game in Washington, he made small talk with a reporter about his strict adherence to an all-natural diet.

“I’m super overboard,” he said.

Harper revealed that he avoids seed oils, orders grass-fed beef from a Utah-based company called “Just Ingredients” and olive oil from Italy, and drinks single-origin coffee. Oh, and this: “On Sunday nights after day games, I’ll come home and bake bread for the week. One of my big things that nobody knows about me is I love to bake bread.”

It’s no longer a secret. Because on Jan. 11, Harper posted a two-minute, 30-second TikTok video of himself baking banana bread with kamut flour, a favorite ingredient. It got 2.5 million views (and counting), only slightly fewer than the previous day’s video when he made a latte.

“I thought, ‘Let’s see, let’s do the first one,’ and it got about 3 million views on it, so I kept going,” Harper said Saturday upon arriving in Phillies camp. “TikTok called me and said, ‘You want to keep this going?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’”

Hold on, TikTok called?

“Yeah,” Harper said. “We talked.”

OK, so maybe Harper has a side gig as an influencer. But he isn’t quitting his day job, which, coincidentally, might as well be sponsored by TikTok. Or at least “tick, tock,” as in the background noise for the 2025 Phillies.

For a fourth year in a row, the Phillies are returning the core of a team that went to the World Series in 2022, Game 7 of the NL Championship Series in 2023, and got ousted in the divisional round last October. And while the roster stacks up against any team, even the superpower Dodgers and Juan Soto Mets, J.T. Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber, and others are self-aware enough to know they aren’t getting younger.

“The older you get, the less time you have in the game, right?” Schwarber said. “It’s not science. It’s just a fact that, I’m not 21 anymore, or 22. I’m 32 now? Or I’m going to be 32? Or 31? I don’t even know. Another trip around the sun.”

For the record, Schwarber will be 32 in a few weeks. Nick Castellanos will turn 33 next month and Realmuto 34. Zack Wheeler turns 35 in May. Aaron Nola and Trea Turner will be 32 in June. Harper will play this season at 32.

In pro sports in 2025, it’s rare for a team to stay together as long as the Phillies. Even so, with Realmuto, Schwarber, and Ranger Suárez eligible for free agency after the season, it could be the last hurrah for this core. (Schwarber, like Realmuto earlier this week, said there’s “interest on our side” in a contract extension.)

The transition will take place around Harper, signed through 2031. But the urgency of finishing the job after back-to-back-to-back postseason misses isn’t lost on him. He believes it’s important, then, for the Phillies to channel their disappointment from last year’s ousting by the Mets.

“I think everybody should be hungry in this room,” Harper said. “Everybody should be ready to go. [A playoff loss] is not the greatest thing to just flush. You’ve got to understand what that feels like. Remember that feeling a little bit to get you to that next level.”

For the first time since 2019, the Phillies didn’t sign a free agent to a nine-figure contract. Instead, they “rounded off the edges” with “upside guys,” as Harper put it, by trading for lefty Jesús Luzardo and adding relievers Jordan Romano and Joe Ross and left fielder Max Kepler on one-year deals.

Regardless, Harper’s words from last summer after the trade deadline — “The superstars got to show up” — will hold true again. The Phillies will be led by their big names — and none is bigger than Harper.

Harper finished sixth in the NL MVP voting last year, batting .285 with 42 doubles, 30 homers, 87 RBIs, and an .898 OPS. It was typical production for No. 3, for whom the most important statistics were 145 games and 631 plate appearances. Save for a 10-day absence with a hamstring strain, he stayed healthier than any season since 2019.

“Offensively,” manager Rob Thomson said, “I’m not sure how much he can improve.”

Harper has a few ideas.

“I’d like to get on base at a higher clip,” he said. “I’d like my OPS to be higher. Speaking just of last year, [more] walks. If my OPS and my on-base percentage is high, then I think the Phillies are going to be in a good spot. If I can keep those elevated, then we’ll be good.”

Harper isn’t interested in batting leadoff (he feels most comfortable in the No. 3 spot) or accepting Thomson’s offers to rest his body by occasionally being the designated hitter. Harper was a Gold Glove finalist last year in his first full season as a first baseman and expects to play exclusively first base again.

He expects to keep the TikTok cooking videos coming, too.

“I probably will,” he said. “It just depends on how many I can do each week and the editing and all that kind of stuff. The fans like it from a different perspective. And it’s not really too many baseball fans. There’s a lot of different fans, as well. So, that’s been good, catching the eyes of not just baseball fans but other people, too.”

But imagine the audience if the Phillies win the World Series in what might be the last dance for this particular core.

“Obviously we’ve gotten to the postseason and done those things, but we haven’t finished the job,” Harper said. “The last couple of years should make you hungry to finish that job no matter who’s in this clubhouse or what’s going on. That should be everybody’s goal starting today.”

Tick, tock.

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