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 the weekend in Major League Baseball:
Mookie Betts is back
It’s been a tough season for Mookie Betts, who began 2025 with a mystery illness and then, for whatever reason, struggled at the plate in a way he never has before, basically until about a month ago. On Aug. 4, Betts’ OPS for the season was all of .657, as he was batting .231/.302/.355 with just 27 extra-base hits. He wasn’t driving the ball with authority, and if not for his excellent defense at shortstop, he would have been a complete drag on the Dodgers.
Since Aug. 5, however, Betts has looked a lot more like, well, Mookie Betts. He’s hitting .352/.408/.578 over his last 32 games and 142 plate appearances, with 14 extra-base hits — including seven home runs — in that stretch. The latest of those blasts came on Wednesday against the Rockies, when Betts hit a grand slam to put the Dodgers up 8-0 in the eighth inning.
He’s now up to .260/.328/.409 on the season, which isn’t Bettsian, sure, but it’s good for an above-average 106 OPS+, and he’s hitting better than the average shortstop, as well. Oh, and there is that aforementioned defense: despite Betts’ struggles for most of the season, he’s been worth 4.5 wins above replacement because of his glove and now-improved bat. That’s terrible news for opponents of the Dodgers — Betts no longer being an easier out, and going back to being the kind of player who has won an MVP and a bunch of Silver Sluggers and led the majors in WAR on three occasions, will make life difficult for other teams in October.
Skenes gets 200
For as great as Paul Skenes’ rookie season was, he didn’t reach the 200-strikeout threshold. There just weren’t enough innings in his season for that to happen, even at the rate that he strikes batters out. His sophomore campaign is a different story, however: Skenes, after Wednesday’s outing against the Orioles, is at 178 innings on the season. And he’s also at 203 strikeouts, which leads the National League, after picking up 8 of them in five innings of work.
The Pirates are still very mindful of his workload, however, which means Skenes exited the game after throwing just 64 pitches. That… is probably a bit extreme. It’s difficult to imagine that one more inning would have harmed Skenes in some way, given he wasn’t anything close to fatigued, but pulling their ace early did harm Pittsburgh. In the eighth, the third inning of relief, Isaac Matson allowed a game-tying single to Jackson Holliday, and then Kyle Nicolas — a reliever who entered the game with a 4.65 ERA in 31 innings this year — pitched the 10th. He didn’t record an out, allowing a walk and consecutive singles, giving the O’s the victory.
One more inning from Skenes could have changed everything. The two innings of relief from Carmen Mlodzinski are then a bridge to the ninth, where Dennis Santana and his 2.29 ERA could have appeared in an attempt to hold a lead or, if the Pirates still ended up giving up a run, attempt to keep the game tied. Instead, Pittsburgh gets to a point where they trot out a guy with a 4.65 ERA in a situation where the Orioles, with a runner already in scoring position, can win the game the second they score. Pirates baseball, baby.
Correa gets a different 200
Carlos Correa seems to be enjoying his reunion with the Astros. He’s batting .297/.354/.455 since joining them at the trade deadline, and on Wednesday he hit home run No. 200 for his career:
The dinger put the Astros up 2-0 over the Blue Jays, which ended up mattering quite a bit, as Houston would win 3-2. Good thing for them, as the Mariners won their fifth game in a row, and would have tied the Astros for first place in the AL West otherwise.
Rangers sweep Brewers
The Brewers have had a chance to be the first to clinch a postseason spot basically all week long, albeit through a convoluted path where a bunch of other specific teams won and lost. None of it mattered for a few days, though, because the Brewers couldn’t handle their own part of the bargain, and were instead swept by the Rangers.
The Brewers aren’t in any danger of missing the postseason — again, they are in line to be the first to clinch, able to win their 90th game before some division leaders and wild card hopefuls can reach 80 — but the Rangers need these wins. All of them, really, even if that’s not mathematically true. Texas is 2.5 out of the AL West with 15 games to go, and as mentioned both the Astros and Mariners won on Wednesday, as well. That they can take care of the Brewers like this is a great sign for their potential, but they have to get to the postseason to do something with it, and that remains the hurdle at the moment.
Bash Brothers 2.0
The Athletics might have some holes in their roster in need of filling — especially on the pitching side — but it’s hard to argue with the promise of their young lineup. On Wednesday, the A’s showed off their offense against a Red Sox staff that had shut them out in the two previous games of the series, and did so in a notable way.
Shea Langeliers hit his 30th home run of the season in the first inning to put the A’s up 1-0, making him the first Athletics primary catcher since Terry Steinbach — who had 35 dingers in 1996 — with at least 30 blasts in a season. He’s also the only other backstop in MLB this year with at least 30 blasts, joining Cal Raleigh. (Raleigh has slightly more homers than Langeliers, with an MLB-leading 53.)
Later, Nick Kurtz’s long ball was also his 30th of the season, and it made him the first A’s rookie since Mark McGwire in 1987 to hit at least 30 homers. Kurtz is also just the third A’s rookie to ever achieve this feat: the other was Jose Canseco, in 1986.
Fitting, as Kurtz and Langeliers have certainly been a modern-day Bash Bros. for the A’s, but wait, there’s more: Brent Rooker has 27 dingers and hit 39 in 2024, in his first full season in the bigs, has 24. There’s a whole lot of power in the A’s lineup these days.
That’s some defense
As previously noted, the Mariners won on Wednesday, defeating the Cardinals 4-2 for their fifth-consecutive victory. This play went a long way toward making that W happen.
Top of the ninth, game tied 1-1, no outs. Jose Castillo induces a grounder by Jose Fermin, but it’s nearly up the middle to give the Cardinals a leadoff baserunner. Instead, J.P. Crawford dives and snags it with the end of his glove — to the point that you can see the ball nearly popping out of the top of it — then whips a sidearm throw to first to try to beat Fermin there. The throw is a little off-target, but Josh Naylor is there to reel it in without taking his foot off of the bag. Beautiful.
Seattle would end up scoring a pair of runs in the 13th inning to finally take this one, and maintain their one-game deficit with the Astros in the AL West.
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