Last Night In Baseball: Fernando Tatis Jr. Crushed And Robbed The Mets

Fernando Tatis Jr. put on a show. The Mariners suffered a historic defeat. Not one AL West team has a winning record. Tuesday’s MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: The Mets won the series opener against the Padres on Monday, but on Tuesday, Fernando Tatis Jr. made it clear out of the gate that he did not want a repeat. The first pitch of the game from Mets’ starter Zac Thornton was a 92 mph four-seamer up in the zone, and San Diego’s right fielder sent it into orbit. Tatis’ 14th homer of the year went 452 feet, with an exit velocity of 113.2 mph. He crushed that one. But his bat isn’t all there is to his game: the 6-foot-3 outfielder has ups, too, and showed them off while robbing New York shortstop Francisco Lindor of a grand slam in the bottom of the second. Tatis got up there for that one to keep it in the park, what a catch. Both of those clips cut this off right beforehand, but check out the little flip Tatis does to get the ball in his hand after the robbery. That kept the score at 1-0, which set Tatis up in the fifth inning to break this one open. With second baseman Jake Cronenworth on via single, Tatis came up against Thornton again, who threw a high four-seamer again, and got this one sent into the stands… again. Tatis 3, Mets 0. Fittingly enough, this would end up being the game-winning hit: the Padres scored another three runs, but the Mets managed to score just two with the would-be grand slam staying in the realm of the hypothetical courtesy Tatis. It took more than just one guy to defeat New York here, but it doesn’t feel like that’s true. With the Phillies winning again and the Diamondbacks once again losing to the Red Sox, San Diego improved its standing as the third wild-card by a game, but remains a game behind Philadelphia for the second one. Let’s rewind to the beginning to start, though, mostly because center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong hit another leadoff homer to kick this one off. PCA now has 31 homers to go with 31 steals, and leads the majors in wins above replacement with 7.8. It’s hard to believe this guy was ever struggling, but until late-April or so, he flat-out looked bad out there, and that was a continuation of last season’s second-half struggles. Those are so distant now as to be part of some forgotten dream. Anyway! The Cubs won on a walk-off on Monday, when PCA himself delivered the game-winner with his 30th homer of the year and first career walk-off homer. And on Tuesday, the White Sox suffered defeat by walk-off hit again, this time with third baseman Alex Bregman doing the honors in the ninth. It was a tie game, so the Cubs weren’t down to their last out of the game, just of the first nine innings, but Bregman’s single to score catcher Carson Kelly obviated the need for extras. The good news for the White Sox is that the AL Central — Chicago excluded — struggled so much over the weekend that these consecutive defeats still have the Pale Hose four games up on the Twins and 4.5 up on the Guardians, despite both being victorious on Tuesday. The Cubs, meanwhile, are less concerned about being caught and more on staying within striking distance of the Brewers in the NL Central — Chicago is just 4.5 behind MLB-best Milwaukee, which says a lot about how good the Cubs have been doing. Speaking of the Brewers. This was not just the first run of the game, but an omen. This was ruled a “missed catch error” by Cal Raleigh — catcher William Contreras did not intentionally knock the ball away so much as Raleigh never secured it in the first place, and it came loose when the two collided. The Brewers would not score again until the fifth inning, and that’s when things started to come undone for the Mariners. Left fielder Jackson Chourio doubled the lead, then a three-run Christian Yelich homer later in the inning made it 6-0. Third baseman David Hamilton would hit the second three-run homer of the game for the Brewers in the sixth to make it 9-0… …and then first baseman Jake Bauers would make it 11-0 with a two-run shot. In the seventh, Hamilton drove in another on a liner to center, then new first baseman Andrew Vaughn ended up reaching on a fielder’s choice to push another run across, making it 13-0. The Mariners decided that was enough from the bullpen and went to third baseman Leo Rivas for the eighth inning. That did not improve matters. Rookie right fielder Luis Lara hit his first homer of the year, the third three-run blast of the day for Milwaukee, and then another six runs scored before Rivas could get all three outs to end the torture. The Brewers would win, 22-0, with Kyle Harrison delivering five shutout innings and eight strikeouts before Milwaukee’s pen had basically the opposite performance of Seattle’s. The lopsided dub matched the modern record for most runs in a shutout victory, and while sure, nine of them are the responsibility of an infielder put in to pitch in a game where he was going to have to just wear whatever negatives came out of that to save the pen, Seattle still (1) made four errors, (2) had a starter fail to make it through five innings and (3) saw the pen even pre-position player allow another seven runs in 2 ⅓ innings of work. What a disaster. Milwaukee, by the way, took back control of the top run differential in MLB, and are four runs away from leading the league in scoring, too. The Dodgers have scored 18 runs in the past two days themselves — thanks, Rockies pitching and Coors Field. Shohei Ohtani is certainly enjoying this part of the road trip, as he launched a 448-foot two-run homer in the top of the third to give the Dodgers a 3-1 lead. That’s now six-straight seasons in which Ohtani has hit at least 30 homers: his lowest single-season total in that stretch is 34, and it certainly feels like that will still be the case when 2026 is finished. While Kyle Tucker, who was supposed to be a major free agent acquisition, has been a disappointment both at the plate and in the outfield, on Tuesday he managed to drive in a run with an RBI double that once again gave the Dodgers the lead. Another RBI double, this time by Teoscar Hernández, would make it a 5-3 game, and first baseman Freddie Freeman added on with a sac fly RBI. Freeman would then drive in the last run of the game for Los Angeles in the sixth with an RBI single, and that was that: the Rockies would score two runs off relievers not named Edwin Díaz, who did not pitch at altitude in a close game, but Colorado needed three to send this one to extras. It’s not a surprise that the Pirates have been a sub-.500 team since losing center fielder Oneil Cruz to the 60-day IL with multiple fractures in his left hand, but Pittsburgh was 34-32 after Cruz’s final game of the season on June 7, and just 61-66 when he finally returned to the lineup on Tuesday. He immediately served up a reminder of why having him back beat the alternative: in the fifth, he crushed a 422-foot homer that came off the bat at nearly 108 mph to give the Pirates a 2-1 lead. That proved to be the game-winning hit, and what a hit it was: Cruz’s 15th dinger of the year paid immediate dividends for Pittsburgh. He’s now batting .265/.350/.482, and the Pirates are just 6.5 back of a wild-card spot. There is a lot of work to be done, but at least Pittsburgh can try to get through it with their slugging outfielder around again. The Guardians added Jo Adell from the Angels at the trade deadline, and while that hasn’t quite worked out in Cleveland’s favor yet, Tuesday was different. Adell had hit just .148/.286/.382 in his first 10 games with the Guardians, but on Sunday he went 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles, and on Tuesday absolutely hammered a changeup that did not fool him even a little bit. That’s a 455-foot homer right there, and there was more to come later, too. Adell singled in another run to make it 5-1 Cleveland in the second. The Guardians would end up downing the Giants, 8-1, which allowed Cleveland to keep pace with the five teams vying for three wild-card spots in front of them — just one game back of the Rangers for the last of those. The Rangers hold that spot because the Orioles lost to the Yankees on Tuesday. Mostly, they lost to Trent Grisham. In the top of the third, the Yankees’ center fielder hit his 17th homer of the season to give New York a 1-0 lead… …then he broke a 1-1 tie in the seventh with a two-run single. The Yankees would end up winning, 3-1, which was significant with so many teams behind them in the wild-card standings picking up a W, and with the Rays losing — New York is just five games back of Tampa Bay in the AL East, and while there is a lot of season left, there is also a little bit less every day in a way that you can feel as September creeps closer and closer. Teams have to make up that ground while they can. The American League West is a mess. The Mariners lost 22-0, we’ve covered that much, but even with a win the Rangers are just 62-64… and yet, that puts Texas just a game back of the Astros, who lost on Tuesday to the Angels. In fact, the only reason that Seattle has a worse run differential than Houston and Texas is because of last night’s 22-0 beatdown: the Mariners are at -45, but the Rangers improved theirs to -42 and the Astros are .500 with a -32 run differential that says they should probably be 60-66 instead of 63-63. In 1994, the strike that led to then-acting commissioner Bud Selig canceling the World Series ended the chance at an AL West team winning the division with a losing record: the Rangers were in first place then, with a record of 52-62, and the last-place team in the division, the Angels, just 5.5 back. Things aren’t quite that dire in 2026, since Houston is in first with a .500 record and the first three teams in the West have a better winning percentage than the ‘94 Rangers, but the danger still exists that a team with a losing record will be in the postseason. To be fair, it would be pretty funny. So long as you’re the type to embrace chaos, anyway. Which there will be plenty of if the Rangers also manage to secure the last wild-card in the AL, which Texas currently holds despite a losing record.