Last Night In Baseball: Surging Phillies Win 9th Straight With 6-Run 9th

The Phillies make an improbable comeback. An exceptionally rare stolen base. Nando’s power is back back. The Red Sox have been MLB’s best. Sunday’s MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: The Phillies had won eight games in a row, and had already won the series against the Cardinals. If Philadelphia lost 4-0 on Sunday in the concluding game, then hey, that was still one hell of a stretch, can’t win ‘em all. But what if you could win ‘em all? What if the Cardinals brought in closer Riley O’Brien to pitch the ninth, and he just didn’t have it? This very specific hypothetical didn’t even seem like the case at first on Sunday, as O’Brien gave up a leadoff double to DH Bryce Harper but then retired the next two batters, leaving the Phillies with a seemingly harmless runner in scoring position and just one remaining out. A funny thing happened then, though. Not funny for the Cardinals, though. Catcher JT Realmuto singled and advanced to second on defensive indifference. Center fielder Justin Crawford walked, and suddenly the tying run was at the plate. Third baseman Edmundo Sosa hit a bases-clearing double to cut the lead to one, and then right fielder Bryan De La Cruz tied it up with a single to left in the next at-bat. Now it was a brand new ballgame, and O’Brien was still on the mound. And he still didn’t have it, just in time to face leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber. The Phillies’ first baseman saw six pitches, and with the count 2-2, took a 98 mph sinker left up in the zone and deposited it 459 feet away from the plate to center. Ballgame, Phillies. From down 4-0 and making excuses for a defeat to a titanic walk-off blast — Schwarber’s MLB-leading 39th dinger of the year — and an extension of the winning streak to nine games. It was a terrible end for the Cardinals, as St. Louis fell to 5.5 games back of the last wild-card spot in the NL: the Padres hold that spot right now, and San Diego swept its opposition this weekend, too, making like more difficult for the Diamondbacks, Marlins and especially the Cardinals. The Phillies, though, are still two games up on the Padres for that second spot, and just two behind the Cubs for the top NL wild-card. Philadelphia has more wins (73) than all but two AL clubs, despite its wild-card placement. The NL postseason is going to rip. Salvador Perez wasn’t known for his speed even before he played over 1,400 games as a catcher across 15 years in the major leagues. Before Sunday, the longtime Royals’ slugger had six career steals despite getting on base over 2,200 times since 2011. Against the Tigers, Perez made it seven career steals. That was Perez’s first theft since 2021: he has never stolen more than one base in a season, so this might be the last one he hits in his career given that frequency. Since you’re wondering, Perez has only been caught stealing once in eight tries. This was just the embarrassing icing on the proverbial cake for the Tigers: Detroit entered this three-game series against Kansas City having lost two games in a row, and exited it losers of five straight. The Tigers are 3.5 out of a wild-card spot in the AL, looking up at eight other teams. The Royals have somehow inexplicably rattled off eight wins in a row and are now just four games behind the Tigers in the wild-card race and AL Central, while leaving the Athletics and Angels to fight over which is the worst team in the junior circuit. The Cubs were walked off by the Mariners on Saturday, a day after losing in the 10th inning to Seattle. Not a great weekend for Chicago when you consider all that, but the Cubs got their many frustrations out on Sunday against this same Seattle team. The Cubs would limit the Mariners to just two runs in the series finale, while scoring… more than that. A lot more. DH Michael Conforto hit a solo homer in the third to cut the Mariners’ lead in half, and then left fielder Ian Happ blasted his 22nd homer of the year, a grand slam, to put Chicago up 5-2. That would end up being enough for the win, but there was a lot of ballgame left for Seattle. Third baseman Alex Bregman would drive in another on a ground out in the fifth, then center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong would pick up his first RBI of the day on a single in the sixth. Catcher Carson Kelly singled in the eighth run in the eighth, then PCA went yard for his 33rd homer of the season — at nearly 111 mph off the bat — to make it a 10-2 ballgame. The runs did not stop there. Happ walked with the bases loaded in the same inning to make it 11-2. Gabriel Arias came on as a pinch-hitter and made it 12-2 with a single. The next batter was second baseman Pedro Ramírez, and he hit the Cubs’ second grand slam of the day to bring the score to 16-2. Chicago would score another three runs before this one ended, but things got much more embarrassing than that. In the bottom of the ninth, rather than use a reliever, the Cubs let Carson Kelly switch from catching to pitching in a game Chicago was winning. To make matters worse, Kelly retired three of the four batters he faced — the Mariners couldn’t even snap the streak of 19 unanswered runs with a position player on the mound. Somehow, the Mariners are still just three games back of a wild-card spot, despite a weekend in which they lost a game 22-0 and another 19-2. Seattle went 3-3 against the Brewers and Cubs — a great result in a vacuum — but were outscored by 38 runs in those six games. The White Sox took on the Mets this weekend, and bookended the series in walk-off fashion. On Friday, Chicago won with a walk-off homer when catcher Jake Rogers hit his fourth shot of the year to give it a 6-4 victory, and on Sunday, the White Sox turned to Tristan Peters to do the same. In a 1-1 game, tied thanks to the Mets scoring in the top of the ninth, the left fielder came to the plate and launched his ninth homer of the year 406 feet to center off closer Kodai Senga. Peters was using his Players’ Weekend banana bat for this dinger, too, as better captured by this side view of the walk-off blast. The White Sox are 3.5 up on the Guardians in the AL Central, despite Cleveland winning four in a row. Avoiding a sweep via walk offs, plural, played a significant role in that status. The Red Sox are 25-11 since the All-Star break, which is the best record in MLB in that stretch. Boston improved its second-half record over the weekend while hosting the Giants at Fenway, where San Francisco ended up swept. The Sox were actually down 3-0 in the second, but the Giants wouldn’t score again until the seventh, when San Francisco pushed one more run across. In between, Boston plated five. Second baseman Nick Sogard got the Sox on the board in the bottom of the second with his second dinger of the year, then center fielder Ceddanne Rafael added an RBI single in the third. A double by catcher Connor Wong tied the game in the fourth, then pinch-hitter Mickey Gaspard doubled to give the Sox a lead they would not relinquish. What ended up being the game-winning hit came a batter later, when Rafaela singled in Gasper to make it 5-3. Starting pitcher Jake Bennett went seven innings allowing three earned runs and another unearned, with six strikeouts against a walk, and the bullpen took care of things the rest of the way by allowing just one baserunner. The Red Sox, who were 14 games under .500 on June 24, are 71-59, +6.5 in the wild-card standings and at +99 are a single run behind the Yankees for the best run differential in the American League. The Brewers took the first two games of the weekend against the Braves, in a battle of two of the NL’s division leaders, but Atlanta managed to avoid being swept on Sunday, during the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Right fielder Ronald Acuña showed off his arm on Friday, and on Sunday got in a sliding catch. Center fielder Michael Harris II drove in the eventual winning run on a fielding error by Brewers’ first baseman Andrew Vaughn in the sixth to make it a 3-1 game, and Atlanta’s pen held Milwaukee to just one more run over its four innings of work in relief of starter Tyler Mahle, who looked great for five frames, but just five of them. The Brewers threatened in the ninth, but Raisel Iglesias induced a game-ending double play to close it out, and the Braves picked up a very necessary W. After all, the Phillies are now just three games back in the NL East, after once being 10.5 behind. There is still a lot of season left to make up that small of a gap and all. It took until May 30 for Fernando Tatis Jr. to hit his first home run of the season. It would be another couple of weeks before he hit his second. His fourth and fifth came on the same day, however, on June 30, and since then he’s looked a whole lot more like the Fernando Tatis Jr. he was supposed to. After belting another two long balls on Sunday, he’s batting .304/.389/.609 with 14 homers in his last 47 games and 211 plate appearances. Those two home runs on Sunday helped the Padres sweep the Twins, who had been surging in the AL wild-card picture until running into San Diego. The Padres’ right fielder broke the scoreless tie in the third with his 16th homer of the season, a 396 footer to left… …and then added a second in the eighth, at nearly 108 mph off the bat, to make it 8-1 Padres. In between Tatis also had an RBI single as part of a 4-for-5 day. While the Twins have been knocked out of wild-card standing and are two back, as well as five behind in the AL Central, San Diego finds itself two up on the Diamondbacks and still three ahead of the Marlins, despite Miami’s own sweep of the Nationals over the weekend. No one in the NL suffered more from the Padres’ sweep than the Pirates, however, as Pittsburgh took on the Dodgers and were also swept. The Bucs were already 5.5 behind in the NL wild-card race, which was maybe more than was comfortable to sit with given how many other teams are involved, and good ones, too. Now the Pirates are 8.5 back thanks to Los Angeles delivering three-straight defeats. The Dodgers added a run here and there on a double play, two singles and a ground out to go up 4-0, and the Pirates never responded. Pittsburgh flailed helplessly at Blake Snell for six innings, picking up two hits and three walks against six strikeouts without pushing a run across, and then managed to log just one baserunner against the Dodgers’ bullpen over three innings — a ninth-inning walk by Alex Vesia. The three-game sweep has the Dodgers still within striking distance for the top record in the NL, but all Los Angeles truly needs is to be second in order to secure a bye of the Wild Card Series. Through Sunday, the Dodgers are four games up on the Braves for that spot.