Last Night In Baseball: Red Sox Sweep The Season Series Against The White Sox

Endless scoring in extras. Series sweeps, and Pete Crow-Armstrong showing off his speed. Ronald Acuña Jr. with the home run you might remember most. Thursday’s MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: The Red Sox had quite the opportunity on Thursday. A chance for an eighth win in a row, a sweep of the White Sox in this series and, more incredibly, a season sweep of first-place Chicago, too, all wrapped up into one game. There was just one little problem — the White Sox. Second baseman Chase Meidroth opened up the scoring with a two-run homer in the third, his 10th of the season, to put the White Sox up 2-0. Second baseman Colson Montgomery then added another pair with a two-run single to center. A homer from catcher Connor Wong cut the lead in half, but the White Sox would get a run back with an RBI double in the fourth. Boston would tie it in the bottom of the fourth, then right fielder Braden Montgomery would put Chicago ahead once more with a two-run single in the fifth — the game just kept going back and forth like this, until the bottom of the ninth. The Red Sox, down to their final strike with the tying run on third, got an RBI single from right fielder Wilyer Abreu to send it to extras. Meidroth hit his second homer of the game in the 10th inning off closer Aroldis Chapman, who had just entered to begin the frame. Trevor Richards came on to pitch for Chicago in the bottom of the 10th, and had similar luck. A walk to DH Masataka Yoshida put two on, allowing shortstop Andrew Monasterio to double in one run, then a sac fly evened things up once more. Garrett Whitlock relieved Chapman in the 11th, but a wild pitch moved Miguel Vargas to third, and then Colson Montgomery’s sac fly put Chicago ahead, again. Abreu would answer in the bottom of the inning with a sac fly, forcing a 12th… where the White Sox would score on a Sam Antonacci single to go ahead for the final time. In the bottom of the 12th, reliever Chris Murphy threw a wild pitch, allowing bonus runner Jarren Duran to take third base. Catcher Jake Rogers, who entered earlier as a defensive replacement, hit a sac fly to tie things up yet again. That would be all Boston could score, though, giving the White Sox an opportunity in the 13th… which was squandered — Brayan Bello threw a clean frame, stranding Vargas at second, and the Red Sox had a chance to win in the bottom of the inning. Which they took. Caleb Durbin’s RBI single gave Boston a walk-off win, its eighth victory in a row, and a season sweep of the White Sox on top of the series sweep. Almost inexplicably, the Red Sox are half-a-game behind the Yankees for the top wild-card in the AL, and just five games behind the Rays for the AL East lead. The Sox were 11 games under .500 after their first game of July, but have won 26 of their last 29 games — a stretch so rare that just four teams have pulled that or better off in the last 70 years. And now they are not only in position for a postseason spot, but moving up in those standings and bettering their chances. The White Sox should send a gift basket to the Mets, by the way. Despite being swept by the Red Sox, Chicago’s AL Central standing actually didn’t change one bit: New York swept the Guardians at the same time the Sox were swept, so the only thing that happened is the Twins also moved to being three games behind Chicago. Ronald Acuña Jr.’s second homer against the Marlins on Thursday was pretty standard, as far as home runs go. Just 337 feet but hit to just the right place where that was far enough. His first one, though? Well that required an assist. It wasn’t an inside-the-park dinger, and it actually traveled significantly further than the second one, but it still didn’t get over the wall all on its own. Left fielder Heriberto Hernández and center fielder Esteury Ruiz had a bit of miscommunication trying to catch a deep fly to the warning track, and pop. Out of a near-catch and over the wall. Home run. Supremely goofy? Yes. The moment that all of baseball to this point has built to? Also yes. The Braves ended up winning, 11-3 — how could Atlanta not win, when the stars aligned for it to allow that dinger? — and has now won a season-best eight in a row while joining the 70-win crew. It’s just the Brewers and Braves hanging there now, at least until the Dodgers snap their losing streak. Or until the Cubs win a few more, whichever comes first. The serious home run power and the best-in-class defense sometimes make it easy to forget that center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is also a talented baserunner. But here he is, using that speed to (1) force a throw to third base from backstop Alejandro Kirk in a tie game in extras with the Blue Jays, and (2) make it home when that throw does not end up where it was meant to. He’s just really flaunting that whole total package thing right now — that’s your MLB leader in wins above replacement, folks, and that’s despite a horrific slow start to the year that had people, rightfully, thinking, “well, at least he’s a great defender.” The new-player smell hasn’t worn off of Luis Arraez for the Phillies just yet, and this play was just weird enough to keep that scent in the air a little longer. Sure, it was an out, but it was also really funny. Look at Arraez go clear over the plate while avoiding the tag, then realize, oh, there’s no way I can actually touch it to score now. Rather than force an altercation with an armored foe, Arraez decided, nah, you win. Arraez might have “lost” there, but the Phillies ended up with the dub in the end, defeating the Nationals 7-3 to take the series three games to one. Arraez, by the way, was 2-for-4 with an RBI even if he didn’t get that run, and is hitting .385 with three extra base hits and four RBIs with the Phillies so far. This is not really what you want when you’re the Mariners: before the trade deadline, the Tigers sold off the winner of the last two AL Cy Young awards in Tarik Skubal, as well as Casey Mize, while Seattle attempted to better position itself for a postseason run. And yet it was Detroit winning two of three against the M’s, and in dominant fashion on Thursday, too. The Tigers would get yet another homer from catcher Dillon Dingler, his third in three games and 26th of the season, to go up 2-0 in the first. And that would end up being the game-winning hit, even if no one knew it at the time. Detroit shut out Seattle, but kept pouring on the runs — the Tigers would win, 11-0, with rookie third baseman Kevin McGonigle also going deep for his 12th homer of the season. The Tigers got seven scoreless out of starter Framber Valdez, the big free agent acquisition who has looked a lot more like the Valdez of old the last couple of starts, and now sit one game back of a wild-card spot in the AL after going 19-10 since the start of July. Hey, why did this team deal Skubal and Mize again, anyway? Speaking of the trade deadline, starting pitcher Dustin May made his debut for the Brewers on Thursday, against the still-in-this-thing Pirates. Milwaukee got a first inning dinger out of left fielder Jackson Chourio to make it a 1-0 game, and Pittsburgh never ended up having a lead at any point. The Pirates did tie it up, 2-2, but that’s all they could muster against May: the tall righty went six innings with just six baserunners allowed, and the bullpen took care of the rest. A dinger by catcher Gary Sánchez gave Milwaukee back the lead, and and the Brewers added another couple runs after that to win the final three games of the series and send Pittsburgh to the basement of the NL Central with the Reds simultaneously sweeping the Athletics to climb out of it. The Diamondbacks had won two of the first three games in the series against the Padres, in this race for a postseason spot, but San Diego managed to recover and split the series and move within a game of Arizona for the last wild-card spot in the NL in the process. Third baseman Manny Machado plated a run while hitting into a double play in the first inning, and then got another run in on another ground out in the third. First baseman Ty France would hit a sac fly later to make it 3-0, and while Arizona eventually got on the board, too, San Diego finally got an actual hit to send a run home to cancel that one back out, when catcher Freddy Fermin singled in center fielder Jackson Merrill. Merrill would also single in a run later, but the most encouraging part of this whole ordeal was getting Walker Buehler to throw four solid innings with one run allowed, before the bullpen took over and held Arizona scoreless the rest of the way. The Padres added two new starters at the trade deadline because they just didn’t have enough doing well enough beforehand; if Buehler can have some decent outings, in addition to adding Mize and Robbie Ray, then the next two months might be less tenuous than the first few. As said, the Guardians lost to the Mets to complete the sweep, but it was also a bad loss — Cleveland fell, 13-6, with New York putting another seven runs on the board across the seventh and eighth innings. The actual pitchers couldn’t get the job done for the Guardians, but don’t worry, catcher Austin Hedges was there to hold things down. Hedges struck out Luis Robert Jr. on a 75 mph fastball, then retired the side in order in the ninth. Four up, four down — he now has 11 ⅓ innings on his résumé, with three strikeouts against two walks and, somehow, a league-average ERA.