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:
Guardians win again, sweep 1st-place Tigers
“Are the Cleveland Guardians a good baseball team?” is a question you could ask, but it’s not the right question to be asking at this late stage of the season. The Guardians keep winning, whether anything about their roster or overall performance says that they should, and with just 10 games left on their schedule, that’s all that matters.
Sure, Cleveland has been outscored by 23 runs on the season and has an expected record of 73-79, but they just swept the first-place Tigers, are 81-71 and find themselves 1.5 games back of the last AL wild card spot. They don’t pick playoff teams based on how many wins they were supposed to have based on their performance, but on how many they actually put in the bank. And the Guardians have been making daily deposits this month.
José Ramírez was Thursday’s hero, as, with the game still tied 1-1 in the seventh after ace Tarik Skubal’s exit, he launched a 2-run home run that scored Angel Martinez, off of reliever Troy Melton.
It was Ramírez’s 29th dinger of the year, putting him one shy of his second 30 home run, 30 stolen base season in a row, and the third of his career. The Tigers can probably shrug off being swept by the Guardians in a lot of ways — they are still 3.5 games up in the AL Central — but things are close enough that this could be a problem, too. Detroit hasn’t been dominant since the spring, when they went 19-9 in May: they are just 47-47 since, perfectly mediocre. They get to face the Braves over the weekend, sure, but then it’s Cleveland again for three games, followed by the Red Sox to close out the season. It’s not difficult to see a situation in which the Tigers somehow lose the Central after racking up 179 days in first place this season.
That being said, just in terms of likelihood, the Guardians have playoff odds of 31% according to Baseball Reference — 19.5% of that is aimed at the wild card, with the rest pointed at the division. Those odds climb with every win, as the Guardians’ total playoff odds have jumped almost 24 percentage points in a week, but they still have a long way to go. Consider: despite going 13-4 in September, Cleveland is still 3.5 back in the Central and 1.5 back of Boston, which is just 7-8 this month. Everything has been going right for the Guardians in September, but it will have to keep going right for them to see this through.
Maximum Fried
The Yankees are 17-7 in their last 24 games, which is why they have a three-game lead for the AL’s top wild card and are even closer to the Blue Jays in the AL East than the Guardians are to the Tigers. Starter Max Fried helped them get there on Thursday with a dominant performance that saw him strike out 13 Orioles across seven shutout innings.
The Yankees wound up winning 7-0 — all of that offense without a single homer, either — and are looking as dangerous as they did over the summer because Aaron Judge’s bat slowed down and he had to take time off with an injury. He’s back and healthy and hitting and uh oh, New York is ready for October.
The Hunter has become the… Hunter
Reds’ ace Hunter Greene took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Cubs on Thursday. While he ended up allowing a double to Seiya Suzuki to break it up — a ball hit right down the line at third that defensive wizard Ke’Bryan Hayes could very well have gotten to if he hadn’t been on the bench — he did manage the next-best thing. Greene threw a complete-game shutout with 9 strikeouts, no other hits and a single walk allowed.
Check out this angle of one of his strikeouts that the Reds posted, as well, when he downed Matt Shaw:
Filthy is right. The Reds remain 2.5 back of the Mets in the NL wild card race, as New York took down the Padres to win that series. Cincinnati has three more against Chicago this weekend, while the Mets will take on the Nationals.
A dangerous day in Cincinnati
It wasn’t all fun and Hunter Greene in Cincinnati on Thursday, just so you know. There were also two frightening moments that, thankfully, didn’t result in serious injury. First was a broken bat that launched into the stands:
And later was Cubs’ DH Moises Ballesteros taking a line drive off of his helmet while trying to run the bases. You need the ump cam — provided in both of these videos — to see how things went down, and when you do it becomes even more incredible that no one was seriously hurt here.
Six whiffs in a row for Priester
Quinn Priester started things off just right for the Brewers by striking out the first six batters he faced in Thursday’s matchup with the Angels.
Priester ended up going 5.2 innings and finished with 10 strikeouts, while limiting Los Angeles to 2 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks. Yusei Kikuchi had a pretty solid start himself, holding the Brewers to a pair of runs over his own 5.2 innings, but Milwaukee added another 3 runs in the seventh off of the Angels’ bullpen, and that was the ballgame.
The Brewers are now up to 94 wins, the most in the majors this year, and with nine games left in the season still have a decent chance at 100 wins. They might be the only team that actually has a chance at it, too — the Phillies are at 91 wins, the next-most in the majors, and would have to win out to reach the century mark.
Alonso’s homer streak continues
To circle back around to the Mets 6-1 win over the Padres for a moment, here is Pete Alonso going yard.
A common occurrence, of course, but that’s the point: Alonso has now hit a dinger in each of his last four games. He now has 37 for the season, which, incredibly, is merely tied for the fourth-most he’s ever hit in a single year. If he can get three more long balls before the Mets run out of season, he’ll have the fourth campaign of at least 40 homers of his career, too.
The Dodgers walked 10 batters and won, anyway
The Dodgers have had dominant starting pitching for a bit now, and their bullpen has been atrocious over the same stretch. Which makes Thursday’s win a bit funny, in that Los Angeles starter Yoshinobu Yamamato walked 6 batters in 5.1 innings, but allowed a single hit in that stretch, allowing him to escape all of that without giving up a single run. The bullpen basically followed suit: another five pitchers followed Yamamoto in relief, and none of them allowed a hit They did, however, walk another four Giants, and gave up a single run.
Los Angeles scored a pair of runs between a Mookie Betts’ fielder’s choice and a Freddie Freeman single, though, so the Dodgers took the win despite being outpitched — at least aesthetically speaking — by Logan Webb. Baseball!
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