Last Night in Baseball: Hall of Famer Joe Mauer gets a statue

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 this weekend in Major League Baseball:

Joe Mauer gets a statue

Minnesota Twins’ great Joe Mauer was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame last summer, following one heck of a career — hey, given Mauer’s polite, kind, everyone-loves-him image, saying one “hell” of a career just feels wrong here. He won three batting titles as a catcher when no other had ever won more than two, and put up Cooperstown-caliber numbers even with a career that was both shortened and derailed by injuries. And now, he has his own statue in Minnesota at Target Field:

Not that many players end up immortalized in bronze in upstate New York, and even fewer of them end up with full statues of themselves. Joe Mauer pulled off both, though.

Let’s set the Saturday scene: runners at first and second, two outs, in San Diego. The Padres were up by two runs against the Colorado Rockies with Robert Suárez on the mound trying to close things out. Kris Bryant was at the plate, and he hit a shot, deep to the warning track in right field, which Fernando Tatis Jr. just got his glove out far enough to reel in.

Ballgame, Padres. The little twist and spin after were more to make sure that he stayed in control of his body and the ball after the catch than part of the snag itself, but Tatis very easily could have missed that sinking ball, and it would have been an entirely different game. Instead, the Padres would win, and follow that up with another shutout of the Rockies on Sunday, which was actually their third in a row since they held Colorado scoreless on Friday, too. 

D-backs come-from-behind, walk it off

The Milwaukee Brewers had a rough, rough loss on Saturday against the Arizona Diamondbacks. They were up 4-0 in the ninth inning, which wasn’t the largest lead in the world by any means, but it does feel like a safe one with just three outs to go. It was not safe.

Amazingly enough, the inning started with an out, as Eugenio Suárez grounded out to kick things off. At this point, Arizona’s win probability, as measured by MLB, was just 0.6%. Gabriel Moreno would give the D-backs a baserunner with a walk, however, then Alex Thomas tripled to start the scoring. Garrett Hampson would then draw a walk, and Corbin Carroll would follow with a double, scoring both Thomas and Hampson. 

Gerald Perdomo would then walk, putting the winning run at the plate. Jake McCarthy would deliver with a single, scoring Carroll, and putting Perdomo at third. With the game now tied and just the one out, the Brewers loaded the bases to create a force at every base, but Lourdes Gurriel Jr. went over the infield’s heads with a flyball.

When you only need the one run, playing for the one run will do the trick. What a turnaround for Arizona.

Avoiding a tag while remaining in the baseline is difficult. The runner is going full bore, the defender with the ball knows they can play the role of obstacle, and it’s easy enough, most times, to reach out and slap the runner with their glove, putting an end to things. Sometimes, though, the runner has got moves, and those moves pay off. Look at Seattle Mariners’ DH Jorge Polanco somehow narrowly avoid the tag here while running up the first base line:

Poor Jake Burger. The Texas Rangers’ first baseman did everything he was supposed to do, but Polanco moved just an extra few inches further away than expected, and by the time Burger noticed, it was too late.

Chicago Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong isn’t really known for his bat, and has had a bit of a rough start to the 2025 season. On Sunday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, though, his bat was a vital part of Chicago’s win. He went 3-for-4 with a pair of solo homers in a game that the Cubs won 4-2.

It was the kind of help that Chicago needed, on a day when the bats were otherwise a bit quiet — following a 16-0 drubbing of the Dodgers on Saturday — and it took seven pitchers to hold the Dodgers to just two runs. Crow-Armstrong’s dingers helped the Cubs wrap up a series win despite the concerns elsewhere, though.

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