Last Night in Baseball: Resurgent Braves Get to 20 Wins First

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: Braves first to 20 wins The NL East might be a mess in plenty of ways, but not for the Braves. Atlanta, which struggled with injuries and effectiveness from the start last summer, won the weekend series against the Phillies, with the last of those victories making the Braves the first team in MLB this season to reach 20 wins. Philadelphia, meanwhile, moved up into a tie for last place in the NL East despite dropping two of three to Atlanta, because the Mets were even worse this weekend. More on that in a bit, though. Atlanta came out swinging on Sunday, with right fielder Ronald Acuna Jr. leading off the bottom of the first with a single, followed by catcher Drake Baldwin getting his own on a liner to right. That brought up first baseman Matt Olson, who made it clear with one swing that the Braves were aiming to make up for their extra-inning collapse the day before. That was Olson’s eighth long ball of the season, and you’ll note that it wasn’t like it was on a mistake pitch or anything of the sort: he hit a 93.5 mph four-seam fastball that was located well inside the zone 399 feet to right field to put the Braves up 3-0. Atlanta would score another three runs in the second inning to go up 6-0 — left fielder Mauricio Dubon opened that frame with a triple and the Braves were off from there — and Philadelphia could only scrape together a pair of runs against Atlanta’s bullpen, both in the eighth. Before then, Chris Sale dominated. Sale picked up career win 150 by allowing just one hit and no runs over six innings, while striking out nine and walking a pair. The lefty also had this look-what-I-found falling grab on the mound to help his own cause. Sale now has a 2.45 ERA across two-plus seasons and 56 games with the Braves. Pretty good for a guy who started that stretch when he was already 35. Torkelson homers in fifth-straight game Spencer Torkelson has hit 31 homers two of the last three seasons, so his starting 2026 out by just not going yard for the first 23 games was a bit concerning. Well, as concerning as anything can be over the first 23 games, anyway. It’s a long season, and the Tigers’ first baseman is doing his best to make up for lost time and get everything looking all normal again in the span of the last week. Torkelson hit another home run on Sunday when Detroit took on the Reds, the fifth game in a row that he’s gone deep, and tied the Tigers’ franchise record in the process. He crushed that one, too, as it went 421 feet with an exit velocity of 107.3 mph; that’ll happen sometimes when a pitch is left up in the zone, whether it’s going 95 mph or not. Torkelson has now gone from not having any homers at all in 2026 to being on pace for 39, or, more than he has ever hit before in a single season. Patience really is a virtue when it comes to April stats. If Torkelson can hit a dinger again in the Tigers’ next game to bring this to six games — Detroit faces the Braves on Tuesday in Atlanta — then he’ll move into much rarer air (but not the rarest) for MLB’s historic home run streaks. Mets swept by the Rockies The Rockies aren’t as bad as they were a year ago, so this statement doesn’t necessarily have the dramatic power it would in 2025. However, the Mets also aren’t as good as they were a year ago, and New York wasn’t exactly a powerhouse in a year where they limped to the finish line and finished 13 games out of first in the NL East. New York is now 9-19, tied for last place in the NL East with the similarly floundering Phillies, while the Rockies are 13-16. Hey, it took Colorado until June 12 to win their 13th game last season; this spring’s last-place record is one that the Rockies will take at this point. But yeah, it also makes this whole thing tougher to swallow for Mets’ fans. Also making it worse? Two of the losses in this sweep came on the same day, as Saturday’s game had been rained out and rescheduled for a Sunday doubleheader. New York’s pitching was looking good, as it gave up just six combined runs across the doubleheader, but the offense was… not. The Mets were shut out in the first contest, and managed a single run in the second. It takes seven seconds in the below video to show you more Rockies runs than New York managed all day. Friday wasn’t much better, either, with Colorado winning 4-3. A 10-run weekend from the Rockies is the kind of thing you would expect to mean that they were the ones getting swept, but no. Colorado pitching limited the Mets to four runs across three games. Now that’s a sentence to say a few times to see if it makes any more intuitive sense the more you repeat it. The Rockies are doing pretty alright, though; their run differential is just -11, which is huge when you remember that it was just last season that Colorado posted the worst run differential of the last 125 years, at -424, 79 runs worse than the next-worst team. It will take time for the Rockies to fully heal from the damage the previous regime(s) inflicted upon them, but early returns are looking promising in terms of this actually looking like a professional baseball team. Dodgers end Cubs streak The Dodgers were scuffling a little — for the Dodgers, anyway — while the Cubs were thriving, so this clash was one to look forward to when the weekend kicked off. And Chicago made good on the initial promise on Friday, too, winning that opening contest 6-4 to extend their winning streak to 10 games. The next day, the Dodgers happened. The Cubs struck first, going up 2-0 in the first three innings, but Los Angeles tied it up in the bottom of the third before losing the lead in the top of the fourth, but responded by dropping six runs on Chicago an inning later. Second baseman Alex Freeland tied things up again with a double to score shortstop Hyeseong Kim, then first baseman Freddie Freeman singled Freeland home. Left fielder Teoscar Hernandez would open things up some more with a two-run single later in the inning… …then catcher Dalton Rushing and center fielder Andy Pages would both single home another run each to make it 8-3, Dodgers. The Cubs would not go down quietly — catcher Miguel Amaya hit a solo homer to cut the lead to four in the very next half-inning, and then Chicago loaded the bases in the sixth. However, that larger threat was squashed when reliever Will Klein managed to get out of the situation unscathed, with the Cubs unable to score there or again in the game. The Dodgers would then go on the attack again in the bottom of that inning, driving in another four runs to make it 12-4, which would end up being the final score. Streak snapped, but still, that was a real run by the Cubs there. Los Angeles would best Chicago on Sunday, too, and since Shohei Ohtani had been in a bit of a funk for a while — even, at times, during his on-base streak — here he is hitting a home run on a day in which he went 3-for-3 with a walk and two runs. The Dodgers are half-a-game up on the Padres in the NL West at present — San Diego played just two games over the weekend thanks to traveling to Mexico City for their series against Arizona — while the Cubs sit a game behind the Reds, despite Cincinnati losing on Sunday as well. PCA’s bat is a mess right now, but that glove… The less said about Pete Crow-Armstrong’s bat at the moment, the better. His glove, though? That does not go through slumps that date back to last year’s All-Star break. Look at the way he contorts his body here to stay with the changing trajectory of the ball. Not your average robbery at the wall, that’s for sure. And to put a finer point on it: despite PCA posting a .613 OPS with one homer this season, he’s been worth a win above replacement already thanks to that absurd defensive ability. Sal Stewart is on fire The Reds ranked just 21st in homers in 2025, easily one of the areas that kept them from being more of a danger both in the regular season and in the postseason. Today’s MLB is one of big innings, and those are harder to come by if you can’t get a big swing to make them happen. An injury to star shortstop Elly De La Cruz that sapped his power didn’t help, but the lack of sluggers elsewhere in the lineup was a problem. That was part of the appeal of bringing Eugenio Suarez back to DH: even if he couldn’t produce the third 49-homer campaign of his career, this is a player with six seasons of at least 30 homers on his resume; the Reds had zero players with 30 bombs in 2025. Suarez has hit just three to start and is currently on the IL, but luckily, other Reds have stepped up. Rookie first baseman Sal Stewart is the most significant of those, as his five-RBI day on Saturday against the Tigers reminded. Stewart went 3-for-5 with a walk, a run, a first-inning homer — his ninth long ball of the year — and two singles to go with the five RBIs. He’s now batting .291/.385/.602 on the season while leading the majors with 29 RBIs; the additional homer and now six additional RBIs make an already impressive graphic from the weekend that much more so. De La Cruz is looking great, too, and hit his own ninth homer of the year on Saturday to help the Reds to a W. He’s now at .274/.349/.558; if Cincinnati can get top-tier production from both De La Cruz and Stewart, and Suarez comes back to fulfill the purpose the organization had in mind for them when he was signed, this team’s lineup looks a whole lot different than last year’s just based on that. Royals come from behind to walk off Angels The Angels were up 6-0 on the Royals after the second inning, but that’s not a safe lead in this league, not by a long shot. Kansas City scored once in the fifth and twice each in the sixth and seventh, with Los Angeles picking up just one run after its early outbursts, considerably narrowing the gap. In the ninth, the Angels scored one more to make it 8-5, but all that ended up doing was ensuring that the Royals couldn’t win outright in regulation. What’s amazing about Kansas City managing to pop off for three runs in the bottom of the ninth and force extras is that it all happened with two outs. Center fielder Lane Thomas and shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. both started the inning by making an out. First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino would follow with a triple, though, then DH Salvador Perez would single him home to make it 8-6. The Angels would put in a new pitcher, Drew Pomeranz, but things didn’t go well for him, either. Down to their last out, down by two with a runner on, right fielder Jac Caglianone — who had entered earlier as a pinch-hitter and stuck in right afterward — hit a two-run homer that was upheld after a challenge. The Angels would get a run back in the top of the 10th thanks to a passed ball by Royals’ catcher Carter Jensen, but Kansas City was still ready to hit when their turn came up. Joey Lucchesi came on in relief of Pomeranz, and, like in the previous inning, the Angels got the first two outs. Third baseman Maikel Garcia drew a walk, though, putting the winning run on base, and then Lane Thomas called game. The Royals came from behind to sweep the Angels, which is huge for Kansas City considering that even after the three-straight wins, they’re in last place in the AL Central. They are also just 3.5 games back, though, so this was a case of filling in a hole instead of digging it deeper. The Angels are just 3.5 out of first, too, but despite the numbers being the same that feels a little worse after this weekend. Emotionally, anyway — it’s still April, you’ll recall. Now there’s a pickoff The Padres blew a 7-2 lead against the Diamondbacks in the second of the two-game Mexico Series, ending it with a split. What you need your attention drawn to, though, is this pickoff by reliever Ryan Thompson. He never actually goes toward the plate, and manages to turn while looking as if he’s mid-motion, allowing for him to then throw to second and catch Fernando Tatis Jr. in a rundown. That serves as a pretty good metaphor for how the Padres did from that point forward in the game, though. They had a huge lead, and then they just gave it away.