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 last night in Major League Baseball: It took nearly the entire game to get to this point, but the Rockies toppled the Dodgers in the second game of their three-game set.
Los Angeles was up 2-0 heading into the sixth, until the Rockies finally scored on a ground out by left fielder Jake McCarthy — one which the Dodgers responded to with another run in the bottom of the inning to make it 3-1. However, Colorado had a huge eighth inning to not just tie things up, but inevitably go ahead. Will Klein came on in relief of starter Justin Wroblieski, who had another stellar performance: seven innings, one run allowed, nine strikeouts against two walks and six hits mostly scattered.
Klein did not have a similar performance. Instead, he walked the leadoff batter, third baseman Kyle Karros, then gave up a single to rookie center fielder Cole Carrigg. Right fielder Tyle Freeman would reach on a fielder’s choice, and a run scored on an error by shortstop Miguel Rojas, as the ball just got by him but not without his glove getting a tiny piece of it first.
Jack Dreyer then relieved Klein, but his luck wasn’t much better. While a sac bunt by McCarthy resulted in an out at second, second baseman Alex Freeland had a throwing error that allowed both Freeman and Carrigg to score — 4-3, Rockies. Colorado had far more success with its bullpen, as Juan Mejia threw his second scoreless inning of relief in the eighth before handing things off to Jordan Romano, who picked up his sixth save of the year despite allowing a pair of baserunners in the ninth.
The loss, coupled with a pair of Brewers’ wins — more on that in a bit — means Los Angeles’ lead as MLB’s wins leader shrank. But it’s still also the only team at 60, so, there’s that. There was another positive for Dodgers’ fans on Tuesday, despite the L.
And that was two-way star Shohei Ohtani hitting his 300th home run in MLB. Ohtani is not only the only Japan-born player in MLB to hit 300 career homers there, but also he is the only one to get to 200! Hideki Matsui, for all his power, hit 175 in the majors over 10 seasons; the bulk of his 507 career dingers came in NPB, in his 20s, whereas in MLB Matsui was already into the second half of his career.
Before Ohtani, Matsui was first in this category in MLB. Ohtani didn’t just hit 300 homers to become the first Japan-born player to pull it off in MLB, however. That would be too normal of an accomplishment.
No, Ohtani had to get to 300 homers in his 1,101 game with at least one plate appearance logged, the fifth-fewest games in MLB history in which to reach the 300-homer mark. Oh, and also per Sarah Langs, Ohtani is just the second player ever to hit his 300th home run as a leadoff shot, with the other coming off the bat of Steve Finley in 2006. There, now this feels more like a real Ohtani accomplishment.
The Marlins scored four unanswered runs to start against the Mariners, picking up two in the second and one each in the third and fourth innings, but Seattle eventually responded in kind: right fielder Luke Raley kicked things off for the M’s with a sac fly in the fifth, then second baseman Cole Young hit a solo shot to cut the lead in half. In the eighth, catcher Cal Raleigh would double in another run, followed by first baseman Josh Naylor tying things up with a single in the next at-bat. Naylor would then come around to score on a wild pitch by Calvin Faucher, giving the Mariners their first lead of the game.
It wasn’t meant to be, however: in the bottom of the eighth, Heriberto Hernández came in as a pinch-hitter for Griffin Conine, and when Gabe Speier left a mid-90s four-seamer up in the zone, it was crushed 422 feet to left, with an exit velocity of 110.4 mph. That’s a no doubter, even with Hernández pulling a pitch that was away from him. Watch Raleigh behind the plate — he knew without even looking that it was now a tie game.
That pushed this game into extras, where the Marlins would make quick work of new pitcher Michael Rucker. With Xavier Edwards beginning the inning on second, Hernández made the first out but then right fielder Esteury Ruiz walked, bringing up center fielder Jakob Marsee. Ballgame.
Marsee just missed a three-run dinger, but a ball bouncing off the wall in right was all that was needed, anyway. He never bothered running any further than he had to, and the Marlins celebrated in the middle of the field instead of at home plate following Edwards scoring, so the final was actually 6-5 instead of 8-5, as briefly flashed on the scorebug by a broadcast crew that thought it had gone out. Miami now has 50 wins, have won four in a row and are in possession of one of the NL’s three wild-card spots.
The Marlins are also 24-8 since June 1, and have outscored opponents by 54 runs in that stretch — things are looking up for Miami in 2026. This is how things began for the Royals and Mets in New York on Tuesday. Where to even begin with that play?
Just miscue after miscue until not one, not two but all three runners crossed the plate because of them all. That was a single by right fielder Carson Benge at one point, and then it became the most Little League homer of Little League homers to give the Mets a 3-0 lead in the first inning. Temporarily, though.
Right fielder and nine hitter Tyler Tolbert, fresh off of a five-hit effort on Monday, hit a two-run shot in his first at-bat of the day on Tuesday off Kodai Senga. The Mets then got those runs back in the bottom of the second, when center fielder A.J. Ewing hit his own two-run dinger.
The Royals got it back to a one-run deficit, but then Ewing singled in a run in the fourth before left fielder Juan Soto hit his 20th homer of the year, a three-run, 415-foot blast, to make it 9-3. It was starting to feel like maybe the Royals wouldn’t be able to catch up after all, but in the very next inning, Kansas City tied it up at nine each. Austin Warren relieved Senga at the start of the inning, but that might have just made things worse.
Warren gave up a leadoff double to first baseman Jac Caglianone, then hit third baseman Nick Loftin with a pitch. Left fielder Isaac Collins doubled in a run, then second baseman Michael Massey drove in a pair with his own two-bagger. Tolbert singled and stole second, catcher Carter Jensen walked and the Mets relieved Warren with Huascar Brazobán.
He got shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to ground into a force out at second, but not without allowing a run to score. Witt was caught stealing after, making him responsible for the first two outs of the inning, but then Lane Thomas walked and Salvador Perez tied things up with a single. Exhale.
The Royals had gone from five down to batting around, and there was still a lot of game left. Kansas City used it to score even more runs: in the seventh, the Royals scored seven unanswered to go up 16-9! New York would get three of those runs back, but that’s it, and Kansas City — after allowing one of the ugliest/most beautiful Little League homers you’ll ever see to go down 3-0 in the first, ended up winning by four runs despite allowing another nine.
The Royals have scored 31 runs in the last two days. Thirty-one! Pretty good.
A not-insignificant part of this surge is Tyler Tolbert, who as mentioned went 5-for-5 on Monday against the Phillies. He had also picked up hits in his final two at-bats on Sunday, making that seven-straight at-bats with a hit entering play on Tuesday. He went 5-for-6, getting hits in his first five at-bats, pushing that to 12 in a row.
The 10th set a Royals’ franchise record, and the back-to-back five-hit games made Tolbert not just the first player to manage that feat since Roberto Clemente pulled it off in 1970, but also just the third player in history to accomplish it. If he hadn’t flied out to right in the ninth, the streak would be ongoing, but still. Going 12 for your last 13 is a helluva stretch, and it’s all the more incredible when you remember he bats ninth for the Royals.
He’s now hitting .396/.434/.532 in 54 plate appearances across 30 games — Kansas City had been using him as an in-game replacement for almost the entirety of the season until the end of June, and now his name is in the record books alongside Roberto Clemente’s. Baseball is pretty special. The Brewers and Cardinals played a doubleheader on Tuesday, with the first game being a makeup of one originally scheduled for May 5.
Jacob Misiorowski was his usual self in that one, going seven innings with 11 strikeouts and no walks, while allowing three runs — hey, Miz is great at what he does, but so is Cardinals’ right fielder Jordan Walker, and he hit a two-run shot in the first. That didn’t end up mattering in the end, since Milwaukee limited St. Louis to just one other run while scoring four, with the game-winner Christian Yelich’s second double of the day off a middle-middle sweeper he ripped to left to score rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt.
The second game of the day featured the big-league debut of Luis Lara, a prospect the Brewers signed to a long-term extension before he ever made the majors. In the top of the fifth, the outfielder picked up both his first hit and first RBIs, plating two with a single to make it 3-0, Milwaukee. The Cardinals would get those runs back in the bottom of the inning, when Nelson Velázquez, who played both DH and in left in the second game, hit a two-run homer off of starter Robert Gasser.
That would be all the damage the lefty allowed in 7 ⅔ innings, however, and then the Brewers decided to pile on. Milwaukee scored another seven runs in the seventh to make it 10-2, and that was also the finale score. The Brewers are now 58-33, second in the majors in wins and just two behind the Dodgers’ MLB-leading total.
The Cardinals now sit two games back of the last NL wild-card spot owing to three losses in two days and four in a row, paired with the Marlins’ four-game winning streak. The Phillies’ ace — well, one of them — isn’t thrilled about being left off of the NL All-Star roster, and showed it with his performance on Tuesday. He also said so, openly, after a dominating 14-strikeout game against the Reds.
Zack Wheeler not only struck out 14 in seven innings, matching his career-best, but also walked no one and allowed just four hits and one run. The game-winning hit came early, and it was a big one. Designated hitter Kyle Schwarber blasted his MLB-leading 31st homer of the year 408 feet to right-center, a two-run shot that scorched off the bat at 112.2 mph.
Schwarber is now batting .255/.370/.570 to go with those 31 dingers. The dude can just crush it, and now the Phillies are just two back of the Braves in the NL East after sitting 10.5 back on May 22. What happened to the Braves on Tuesday?
Well. Ryan O’Hearn, mostly. The Pirates’ first baseman had the game of his life against Atlanta, going 4-for-5 with 10 RBIs.
The first four RBIs came on one swing, as O’Hearn hit a grand slam in the bottom of the first off Hurston Waldrep, putting Pittsburgh up 4-1, thanks to a curveball that saw far too much of the middle of the plate and didn’t fool O’Hearn even a little bit. He would come to the plate in the bottom of the third with Waldrep still in the game, and the only difference this time was that there were just two runners on for him instead of three. Oh, and also the pitch he crushed was a slider instead of a curveball, and this one went 415 feet.
O’Hearn had seven RBIs at this point, and the Pirates had scored seven runs. The streak would continue, as in the bottom of the sixth O’Hearn came up with two runners on again, and got another pitch that saw way too much middle. He drilled this one over the fence, too.
Three homers, 10 RBIs. He also picked up a single later, but rather than force him to run the bases for the first time all game the Pirates lifted him for a pinch-runner. Hey, he deserved a break at that point.
Pittsburgh would win, 12-4, and the Braves are now 3-7 in their last 10 and have dropped three in a row. The Phillies are shockingly close, especially considering that Atlanta had 48 wins when the 60-win Dodgers reached 50, but it’s been that kind of stretch for the Braves of late. The Yankees took the first game of a four-game set against the Rays on Monday, but Tampa Bay erased that with a W in the second.
Things didn’t appear as if they were trending that way at first, not after Yankees’ DH Ben Rice launched a three-run homer, his 26th of the year, to go up 3-2. The Rays responded with a four-run fourth, though, with catcher Hunter Feduccia and DH Yandy Díaz both going yard in the inning to give Tampa Bay a 6-3 lead. The Yankees would score one more, but other than the Rice homer it was a tough showing for New York against lefty Ian Seymour and the Rays’ bullpen.
Seymour struck out 12 batters with no walks in 5 ⅓ innings, then the pen combined to allow just one run the rest of the way. The Rays are now back up to a four-game lead in the AL East, ensuring that, regardless of what happens the rest of this series, Tampa Bay will still be atop the division when it ends. Two more to go, though, and New York can still make progress even if it can’t end things back in first.
