Last Night In Baseball: Braves Sweep Pirates And Extend MLB Wins Lead

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 last night in Major League Baseball: “The Braves swept the Pirates” is the kind of thing that, a year ago, wouldn’t have made many waves. After all, Atlanta was scuffling and struggling to stay relevant amid significant injuries to key players, while the Pirates were, scientifically speaking, “not good.” What a difference a year makes, though: the Braves entered this series leading Major League Baseball in wins, and the Pirates were 34-29, 7-3 in their last 10 and in second place in the NL Central, just 4.5 back of the Brewers, with Milwaukee holding the third-best record in the National League. Not dominant yet, no, but the 2025 team finished 71-91, so, it’s still a massive improvement in play and reasons to be optimistic. Which all makes Atlanta sweeping Pittsburgh meaningful: this was a challenge for a nascent, promising Pirates team, and one that they failed to meet head on. And for the Braves, it helped show that this really is a dominant squad. It should be noted, though, that Atlanta won by a combined seven runs in these games, and by just one on Sunday to secure the sweep. Pittsburgh was actually up 2-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning, as Bubba Chandler — who came on to pitch at length following the use of an opener in the first — had made it through five innings unscathed, allowing one hit and no walks. His final inning began with a throwing error by third baseman Tyler Callihan, however, and then he walked Mike Yastrzemski and Jorge Mateo to load the bases with one out. Chandler was lifted for lefty Evan Sisk after Michael Harris II entered the game as a pinch-hitter, to give the Pirates the platoon advantage, but it didn’t work out. Harris drilled a bases-loaded triple, and it was 3-2, Braves just like that. The Pirates haven’t had the best starting pitching going, but the performance of the bullpen has made it even more of a problem — its collective ERA is 4.14, in large part because it’s allowing far more walks (4.3 walks per nine compared to 3.0) without doing anything else better to make up for it. This is something the team is going to have to address to hang with clubs like the Braves in 2026, but the good news is that the Pirates are, for a change, talented enough for “just fix the bullpen” to be a genuine path. The Brewers took out the Rockies, 12-4, and swept Colorado on the road in the process. What stands out the most, however, is that Milwaukee had 17 hits on Sunday, and 10 of those were for extra bases. Ten! That’s a season-high for the Brewers, and pretty difficult for anyone to come back from. Third baseman Luis Rengifo hit a double. Left fielder Jackson Chourio hit two of ‘em. Center fielder Garrett Mitchell had a pair, as well, and a triple on top of that. Backstop Gary Sánchez had a double and the lone homer of the day from the Brewers, while shortstop Joey Ortiz had just the one hit, but made sure it was for extra bases by smacking a two-bagger. Amazingly enough, there wasn’t just the one triple, but two: first baseman Andrew Vaughn hit the other. The Rockies walked just three batters, and good thing, too, because Milwaukee would have had even more runners on base for all of these big hits. As it was, scoring a dozen on a Sunday gave the Brewers not just the sweep, but also made them the third team in the majors to reach 40 wins this season — all three are in the NL, with the Braves (45) and Dodgers (42) the other two. The Tigers are… let’s say, a ways away from 40 wins. But on Sunday they still managed to have an exciting W all the same. Detroit’s rookie shortstop and third baseman — he played both yesterday, even — Kevin McGonigle is the one who made it happen, too. In the fourth, down 1-0, McGonigle tied things up with a 420-foot blast to right field off of Mariners’ starter Luis Castillo. He would end up coming to the plate five times, and go 2-for-4 with a walk, homer, a run and three RBIs — the last of those came in the bottom of the ninth, with two runners in scoring position. McGonigle singled on a ball that deflected off of the glove of a leaping Cole Young at second and went into right field, allowing both Zach McKinstry and Wenceel Pérez to score and giving the Tigers the dub. They call it a game of inches for a reason, folks. McGonigle, by the way, is hitting .291/.394/.426 and has produced 3.5 wins above replacement at this point, thanks to that line and his glove. He’s having a hell of a rookie campaign, even if the Tigers’ struggles are obscuring that somewhat. Twenty-five years ago, the eventual 2001 World Series champion Diamondbacks featured ace starting pitcher Randy Johnson, as well as veteran starter/reliever Bobby Witt in the final season of his MLB career. Yes, that Bobby Witt, the father of Royals’ star Bobby Witt Jr., who just happens to be 25 years old and change right now. Yes, time is incessant and ever-marching forward, that’s how it works, but hey. Here’s a photo of Randy Johnson holding Witt Jr. in his arms, side-by-side with one taken on Sunday when he was chatting up the now 25-year-old Witt outside the Royals’ dugout. The meeting of a legend and a future legend right there. The Giants are hitting lately, which feels very weird for anyone who has paid any attention to the Giants for an uncomfortably long time, but on Sunday they also managed to win against the Cubs without pulling out the big bats. Right fielder Jung Hoo Lee extended his hitting streak to 15 games with a single in the first, scoring first baseman Rafael Devers… …but San Francisco wouldn’t score again in regulation. The Cubs managed to tie things up with a single from DH Moisés Ballesteros in the third, but neither team managed anything else until extras. The pitching was the strength for both squads here, as Giants’ starter Trevor McDonald allowed the one run, while five relievers followed and all pitched a scoreless inning each. The Cubs weren’t much worse, getting mostly similar production from their pitchers, except a second run was allowed in the 10th — that’s when third baseman Matt Chapman singled in the go-ahead run, one the Cubs wouldn’t answer. Chicago is now 7.5 back in the NL Central and half-a-game out of a wild-card spot after dropping this series to San Francisco; the Giants are doing much worse, and are a team the Cubs need to be beating to keep pace in a highly contested NL Central and wild-card picture, but that’s not how things went down this weekend. On May 4, Phillies’ left fielder Brandon Marsh was hitting .309/.339/.487. That’s pretty great and all, but he was just getting started. Marsh had consecutive three-hit games in his next two to kick off a seven-game hitting streak that also included a four-hit performance, and has gone without a hit in just six of the 29 games he’s played since. During each game of the Phillies’ weekend series against the White Sox, Marsh went deep. During this stretch that goes back over a month now and covers 110 plate appearances, Marsh is batting .369/.400/.563 with nine extra-base hits and 38 hits overall. He’s been on fire, even if the power wasn’t there for part of it, but that seems to be coming back around now. Philadelphia won on Sunday, 9-5, thanks in part to Marsh going 2-for-4 with a walk, two runs, two RBIs and a homer, and he’s currently leading qualified players in batting average across the majors thanks to hitting .338. His current 142 OPS+ would be a career-high over a full season: Marsh has been a good hitter for a few years now, but he’s already produced more WAR in 2026 than he did in 2025 as a whole. The Dodgers might have won the weekend series against the Angels, but Sunday’s game was all Los Angeles. No, no, the other one. The Angels hit hard and early, and responded to a typical big inning from the Dodgers late by having an even bigger one themselves. The star of all of this was catcher and No. 9 hitter Sebastián Rivero, who went 5-for-6 with a double, four singles, a run and six RBIs. The Dodgers scored five runs in the loss — Rivero outpaced them by himself. He singled in the first to put the Angels up, 2-0, then drove in two more runs with another single in the fourth to get the score to 4-1. A third single resulted in a fifth RBI and a 9-5 Angels’ lead, and then he scored that same inning on a home run by shortstop Zach Neto. Rivero would then get his fifth hit of the day, a double, to give the Angels their final run in a 13-5 W. After this five-hit game, Rivero is batting just .220/.264/.260 on the season — it truly came out of nowhere for the defense-first backup catcher. Not to be forgotten, though, is that right fielder Jo Adell had a four-hit game himself. Adell had four runs and two RBIs, as well as his 10th homer of the year and 10 total bases on the day. A big game like this isn’t exactly normal for Adell, either, but it’s less of a surprise, at least! Rivero wasn’t the only one with a five-hit day on Sunday, as Mets’ rookie right fielder and leadoff hitter Carson Benge also managed the feat. Benge went 5-for-5 against the Padres, tallying three runs, two RBIs and 10 total bases thanks to a triple and a homer being part of the fun. New York picked up a 7-3 win against San Diego, winning the series in the process and rebounding from a 3-2 defeat on Saturday. The Mets remain in the NL East basement, but it’s still too early to ignore that they aren’t perfectly healthy yet and are just five games back of a wild-card spot despite myriad issues. As for the Padres? They need to start hitting again eventually. That is the truth of things on multiple levels. The Diamondbacks defeated the Nationals, 5-1, and the highlight has to be this catch from right fielder Corbin Carroll. For one, it’s just a great catch in general, but there’s just enough style to how Carroll snatches it out of the air with his glove nearly touching the outfield grass that elevates it to baseball art. Look at that slide! That grab! See? Art. Carroll also went 1-for-3 with a walk, two runs and an RBI, and that one hit was a dinger, so he had himself a game even if it doesn’t pop out of the boxscore like the pair of five-hit performances. Who knows exactly when Aaron Judge will be back patrolling the Yankees’ outfield and terrorizing opposing pitchers, thanks to a stress fracture in his rib cage that has him on the IL. He tried to play for as long as he could, putting off an extended break, but bones are supposed to be whole and not broken, so once his performance couldn’t be sustained, it was time. Judge is gone, but his bats? His bats are still there. And the Yankees should think about using them in his absence. Second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. did so in the bottom of the eighth against the Red Sox on Sunday, after going 0-for-3 with three strikeouts in his previous trips to the plate. Here, though? Dinger. If the Yankees can’t have Aaron Judge in the lineup for maybe as long as two months, depending on his recovery, then at least get him to make the bats homer-ready for his teammates. Share the wealth, big guy, New York’s lineup is going to need it.