Career milestones on the mound. A wild ninth in Cincinnati. The AL West is still just Like That.
Thursday's MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: Jacob deGrom is a Hall of Fame talent who only managed to throw one season’s worth of innings between 2021-2024, thanks to myriad injuries. In those 197 frames, though, deGrom had a 2.01 ERA, which just about sums up his whole deal.
He’s been back and mostly healthy with the Rangers the past two seasons, posting a 2.97 ERA over 172 ⅔ innings a year ago, and is now at 126 ⅔ through 24 starts in 2026, with a 3.77 ERA that’s only disappointing compared to his past. Then you remember deGrom is 38 years old and 3.77 looks pretty great, actually, and even better when you see that, say, his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is 3.11. This is all coming up because the veteran right-hander started on Thursday against the Nationals, and he was vintage deGrom.
He also hit a significant milestone by notching his 2,000th career strikeout in the Rangers’ 2-0 win. deGrom punched out 10 Nats over six innings — at 2,008 for his career, he’s now 93rd all-time in strikeouts — and allowed just two baserunners, one on a walk and another a hit. He was nigh unhittable, but he did get a little bit of help from center fielder Evan Carter, too. Shortstop Corey Seager — who has looked a lot more like Corey Seager since his return from an IL stint for back inflammation — drove in the first run for Texas with his 13th homer of the year, and that ended up being all it needed.
Seager is batting .328/.388/.541 with three homers and four doubles in the 17 games since his return, and while you can cry "small sample size!" there, remember that his back made him look unable to do anything at the plate for weeks before he finally went on the IL. He’s looking good again, and the Rangers need him to, given that Texas is tied for the last wild-card in the AL and a game back in the extremely winnable AL West. One reason the AL West remains up for grabs is because whichever team ends up on top of it tends to fail to hold onto the position for very long.
The Astros built up a three-game lead while sitting a season-high three games over .500 one week ago, and are now back at .500 and barely clinging to the top after the Angels — the 51-77 Los Angeles Angels — beat Houston by a couple of touchdowns and then some on Thursday. Shortstop Zach Neto had a whole lot to do with that crooked number. He struck first with an RBI single in the top of the first… …and while Houston put up two runs in the bottom of the frame, that would be its only lead of the night.
By the time Neto happened again, Los Angeles was already up 5-2. He drove in another run with a single in the fourth to make it 6-2, then in the fifth — with the lead now 11-2 — he blasted his 21st homer of the year 428 feet to center, with an exit velocity of nearly 108 mph. Neto wasn’t done, and neither were the Angels.
In the seventh, his 25th double of the season drove in another two runs to make it 16-2, then in the ninth third baseman Denzer Guzman hit a two-run dinger to make it 18-2. Houston got one back in the ninth so we didn’t have to consider a safety in the final score, and also to, poetically, make it so the first three teams in the AL West all woke up this morning with a run differential of -46. Speaking of AL West teams getting outscored, the Mariners faced the Brewers to close out that series.
Which, despite losing the opener 22-0, Seattle had a chance to win with a W on Thursday. It was not to be: whether Mariners’ starter George Kirby was tipping pitches or just did not have It in the first inning, the result was the same. The Brewers scored seven runs on Thursday, and six of them were in the first off Kirby.
Second baseman Brice Turang led off with a single with an exit velocity of 101.8 mph. First baseman Jake Bauers drew a walk after a 376-foot fly out by left fielder Jackson Chourio. Then catcher Gary Sánchez doubled in a pair to open the scoring.
DH Christian Yelich singled on a 211-foot line drive, then shortstop Joey Ortiz smoked another single nearly 105 mph off the bat to make it 3-0. Center fielder Garrett Mitchell then hit a double even harder, with an exit velocity of 108.3 mph, to make it 5-0, and that was followed by another double, this off the bat of third baseman David Hamilton. Even the outs were loud: rookie outfielder Luis Lara made the second one on a 99.9 mph line out to center, and Turang came back up again and struck a ball 105.5 mph but for the third out.
Kirby settled down, sort of, but the damage was done: he lasted 3 ⅓ innings allowing those six runs, nine hits, two walks and all against three strikeouts. The Mariners’ bullpen held Milwaukee scoreless until Mitchell struck again… …and the offense couldn’t fully catch up. The Brewers would win their MLB-leading 79th game, while Seattle fell to 60-68, three games back in the AL wild-card race and looking up at another eight teams, but also just four games back in the West.
The Reds can’t afford to lose winnable games — that’s just the nature of the task ahead of Cincinnati in the race for the final wild-card spot in the NL. The Cardinals aren’t much better off, so something had to give here in a game the Reds were winning 5-4 in the ninth with the Cards threatening to score… and it was Cincinnati. You can’t get closer to winning a ballgame and then not winning it than this.
Center fielder Dane Myers didn’t make the catch, as the ball bounced right out of his glove while he was battling the sun, and that let rookie infielder JJ Wetherholt drive in the game-tying and go-ahead runs. And then St. Louis kept scoring.
First baseman Alec Burleson made it 7-5 with a single to score Wetherholt… …left fielder Joshua Báez walked with the bases loaded to make it 8-5, and then left fielder José Fermín, who had entered as a pinch-hitter earlier, drove in two more to make it a six-run ninth. That might have seemed like overkill, but then the Reds dropped four runs in the ninth on George Soriano: St. Louis won this by a single run, 10-9.
What a wild game, and now the Cardinals sit 2.5 back of that last wild-card, while the Reds are seven behind. While we’re on the subject of teams trying to hang on, the Guardians downed the Giants on Thursday. Starting pitcher Gavin Williams got five runs of support, but he also didn’t need quite that many: in 5 ⅔ innings, the 6-foot-6 right-hander struck out 11 batters and allowed two runs on four hits.
The penultimate K was his 200th of the season — Williams leads the AL with 201 punchouts — and this marked his ninth double-digit strikeout game of the season in 26 starts. Cleveland sits one game back in a very crowded AL wild-card race for the last spot: while the Yankees and Red Sox have 9.5 and 5.5-game leads over the rabble, respectively, five teams are within three games of the tied Twins and Rangers for the third wild-card, and the Guardians are just one behind. The Blue Jays are one of those teams right there in the wild-card race, sitting half-a-game back of Minnesota and Texas.
Toronto managed to win against the AL East-leading Rays on Thursday, 5-1, behind one of the strongest starts of the season for former Cy Young winner, Shane Bieber: he went seven innings with one run allowed while striking out seven against four baserunners, all via hit. Still, the most captivating highlight from the game from an objective point of view was this throw by Rays’ catcher Nick Fortes. Check this thing out.
The speed! The accuracy! Not much else went right for Tampa Bay on Thursday, though, but Toronto needed that dub more than the Rays did, anyway.
Bobby Witt Jr.’s arm is just too strong, and now we have proof. The Royals swept the Athletics in a four-game series in a battle of who wants to avoid having the American League’s worst record. Another four-game sweep wrapped up on Thursday, and that was the Yankees over the Orioles.
This one has much broader implications: the Orioles began the week holding the last AL wild-card spot, but after New York beat them down Baltimore sits two games back. Take a moment to appreciate that Gerrit Cole, despite joining the Yankees in 2021 and missing half of 2024 and all of 2025, logged his 1,015th strikeout in pinstripes on Thursday, passing Roger Clemens for 12th-most in Yankees’ history. Cole will be in 11th before much longer, as he’s 13 shy of Al Downing, and should enter the top-10 next season — he’s 148 behind the current No.
10, Bob Shawkey. Cole is already the Yankees’ all-time leader in strikeouts per nine with 10.7, and he’s not turning 36 until next month: he can make it quite a ways up that list before he hangs ‘em up. New York didn’t need Cole at his best here, as it scored six runs against Baltimore, but the veteran righty held the O’s to a single run on top of the notable achievement.
Trade deadline acquisition Luis García Jr. went 3-for-4 with an RBI, two runs and a dinger, his second with New York. The Yankees haven’t knocked the Orioles out of contention by any means, but the winds do feel like they’re blowing a little differently on Friday morning than they were on Monday, is all.
