Last Night in Baseball: Francisco Lindor has done it again

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 last night in Major League Baseball:

Sure, baseball isn’t a sport where one player can will the team to victory or win it all by themselves. That didn’t stop Francisco Lindor from trying that against the Phillies, however. The Mets’ shortstop kicked things off with a leadoff homer:

That was Lindor’s 23rd career leadoff blast, and his third of the young season, too. Things didn’t stop there for him, either, as he would hit a three-run dinger in the bottom of the seventh inning, with the Mets up 2-0 on their division rivals:

It proved to be much more than just some insurance via long ball, too: the Phillies would score four runs in the top of the eighth inning, with Max Kranick responsible for three of those, and Edwin Díaz the other (though, it was Díaz giving up a three-run shot to Bryson Stott that scored two of Kranick’s bequeathed runners). Thanks to Lindor, however, the Mets remained on top, 5-4, and took the game.

Additionally, that second home run moved Lindor into sole possession of third all-time for multi-homer games by a shortstop, breaking a tie with Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story, who has been much less of a threat to accomplish this feat since signing with Boston four years ago. 

Lindor is still young enough that neither of Ernie Banks nor Alex Rodriguez are out of reach. Lindor will just have to avoid moving off of the position like A-Rod did. And, you know. Keeping hitting for power. That hasn’t been a problem so far.

Meyer strikes out 14 (!) batters

Marlins’ righty Max Meyer pitched just six innings in Monday night’s victory over the Reds, but you wouldn’t know that he didn’t go deeper than that if you looked at what he accomplished. In those six frames, Meyer struck out 14 Cincinnati batters — a career-high for the 26-year-old that managed to simultaneously take over as the MLB lead for the 2025 season, and tie him on the Marlins’ own franchise list with José Fernández, who is the only other pitcher in franchise history to manage 14 at least strikeouts in a scoreless outing. The only pitcher with more strikeouts than that in Marlins’ history is Ricky Nolasco, who whiffed 16 back in 2009 for the then-Florida Marlins, though, he gave up a pair of runs in that outing. 

Meyer held the Reds not just scoreless, but also didn’t walk a single batter while scattering five hits. He’s now down to a 2.63 ERA across his four starts, and has looked like a completely different pitcher than he did during his 11-start, 57-inning 2024 campaign, in which he posted a 5.68 ERA with 2.2 homers per nine and nearly three strikeouts per nine less than he’s managed to this point.

Brown extends scoreless streak

The Astros have been getting some serious work out of Hunter Brown to this point in the early season. The last run that the right-hander gave up came on April 3, against the Twins: he’s thrown 24 consecutive scoreless innings since then, including seven blanks against the Blue Jays — along with nine strikeouts — on Monday night.

Now, Brown has a long way to go before he’s in any kind of notable record territory. The MLB record was set by Orel Hershiser in 1988, when he threw 59 consecutive scoreless innings for the Dodgers. The American League record is still a lofty one, and much older: Walter Johnson, pitching for the Washington Senators, threw 55.2 scoreless innings between April 10 and May 14 in 1913. Chances of matching or exceeding a record aside, the Astros just have to be happy they’ve found another arm to step up in a competitive AL West.

Speaking of old records

José Ramírez had a big night for the Guardians in the present—his 2-for-5 night with four RBIs courtesy a three-run shot helped his team to a 6-4 win over the Yankees—but it also had some implications for Cleveland’s past. That homer broke a tie with Tris Speaker — who played for Cleveland from 1916 through 1926 — for the second-most extra-base hits in franchise history, giving Ramírez sole possession with 669 of them in a Guardians’ uniform.

Given he’s 32 years old and under contract with the Guardians for at least another three years, he’ll get the chance to keep moving on up — Earl Averill, who played for Cleveland from 1929 through part of the 1939 season before he was traded to the Tigers, sits alone in first with 724 extra-base hits. Given Ramírez had 80 of them just last year (39 doubles, a pair of triples, and 39 homers), it’s not going to take very long for him to take sole possession, in the grand scheme of things.

A pair of firsts

Agustín Ramírez, making his big-league debut with the Marlins, picked up his first major-league hit. In the same sequence, Ronny Simon, another rookie making his debut, then drove Ramírez in with his first hit in the majors. 

Baseball? It’s good.

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