Last Night in Baseball: Devers says goodbye with a homer, Red Sox sweep Yankees

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.

That’s why we’re here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days’ games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball:

Devers dingers in surprise final Red Sox game

You might have heard the news already, but just in case: the Red Sox traded their star DH, Rafael Devers, to the Giants. They did this after they played their game on Sunday, a game that secured the sweep for them against their eternal rival, the Yankees, and also a game in which Devers went deep, with a home run over the Green Monster in left.

It is… a weird time, and a weird trade. But for our purposes in this space, the weirdness is mostly contained to the idea that Devers did what he always does — rakes — and the Red Sox did what they don’t do enough of — win — and then shipped their DH out west immediately after. 

Devers wraps his Red Sox career up having hit .279/.349/.510 with 215 home runs and an OPS+ of 129. Numbers that maybe don’t seem that eye-popping until you recall that he was in the majors at age 20, was the starting third baseman on one of the great teams of all-time, the 108-win World Series champion 2018 Red Sox, and then came into his own: from 22 onward, Devers hit .284/.356/.522, and is at .272/.401/.504 in 2025 despite a historically poor start over his first five games that saw him fail to record a hit until the calendar turned over to April — he’s hit .292/.418/.542 in the 68 games since. The league-average batter is at .245/.316/.396 this year, by the way.

Weird times, indeed, but the Giants got themselves a slugger.

Ohtani hits his 249th and 250th homers

Yes, yes, Shohei Ohtani is set to pitch in a game for the first time since 2023 on Monday night against the Padres, and that’s very exciting for him and the Dodgers and for you (Padres fans excluded). Let’s not let that excitement distract us from Ohtani continuing to do his usual thing against other pitchers, however: the big guy went deep twice on Saturday against those same Giants that just picked up Rafael Devers.

That’s career home runs number 249 and 250 for Ohtani’s career, the second of which, his 25th of the season, extended his 2025 National League-lead in the category. Pretty good for a guy who played in just 254 games over his first three seasons in the majors, owing to an elbow injury and subsequent surgery in combination with 2020’s pandemic-shortened campaign. 

Just for fun, let’s remember that Ohtani went yard 48 times in his Nippon Professional Baseball career before making the move to MLB, as well: he’s two homers shy of 300 across major leagues. 

Padres avoid sweep, powered by Tatis Jr., Pivetta

The Padres took on the Diamondbacks over the weekend, and things did not go well for San Diego. They lost the first game of the series 5-1, and then blew a 7-3 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning on Saturday, 8-7, on a lost tag challenge that allowed Geraldo Perdomo to score the winning run.

Sunday went differently for the Padres, with Fernando Tatis Jr. going 4-for-5 and Nick Pivetta striking out nine D-backs over seven innings. Oh, and the bullpen didn’t cough up a big lead, either, leading to an 8-2 victory and San Diego avoiding the sweep. Tatis collected two doubles among his four hits, driving in one run and scoring three, while Pivetta held Arizona to just the two runs and three baserunners total, lowering his ERA for the season to 3.40.

Okay, well, Sunday went differently for the Padres other than the Giants acquiring Devers and the Dodgers bringing Ohtani back to pitch, anyway. Take what wins you can get when they’re there for the taking.

De La Cruz homers again (again again)

Elly De La Cruz has been on a tear of late. On May 23, his OPS for the season had fallen to .713. In the 20 games since, he’s hit .361/.452/.778 with eight home runs, six doubles, four steals, 26 hits, and 12 walks. His season line is now up to .273/.352/.498 after Sunday’s performance, in which he hit a home run for the fourth game in a row.

De La Cruz had a promising but not all that productive rookie season in 2023, as a 21-year-old rookie, and then had a significant leap in 2024, when he jumped from an OPS+ of 87 to 118, and led the league with 67 steals. He’s already halfway to last year’s 5.2 wins above replacement despite his bat not quite heating up until about a month ago, and his OPS+ is 128 after Sunday’s performance. Not everything is going right for the Reds this season, but De La Cruz is morphing into the kind of player it was envisioned he’d be, and he’s still just 23.

More like grandfather’s day

Because of the grand slams hit on Father’s Day weekend, you see. On Friday, Giants’ infielder Casey Schmitt hit his first career grand slam against the Dodgers that ended up being the difference in a 6-2 win. On Saturday, he hit another grand slam against Los Angeles, but that just cut a much larger deficit down in a game San Francisco would lose 11-5. 

Also on Saturday, Tyler Stephenson hit a grand slam to give the Reds a 6-1 lead over the Tigers, and they’d go on to win 11-1. Then, on Sunday, there was J.P. Crawford giving the Mariners a 5-0 lead over the Guardians — they’d win 6-0 — and Gary Sanchez extending the Orioles’ lead over the Angels to 9-2, with Baltimore winning 11-2.

Then there was Nick Castellanos with the exclamation point on the Phillies’ drubbing of the Blue Jays. 

Already up 6-2 in the bottom of the sixth, Philadelphia loaded the bases, and Castellanos made it 10-2 with one swing of the bat. The Phillies would add another in the seventh and win 11-4, compiling 18 hits and five walks along the way. 

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