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:
Mets win, retake wild card
The Mets aren’t out of the woods yet, as it were, but they at least didn’t follow up losing possession of the third wild card by dropping another game. Instead, they took the first game of their three-game set against the Cubs, and did so in dramatic fashion. While Francisco Lindor got the scoring going with a leadoff homer, Chicago answered with two runs of their own in the bottom of the first, then added three more in the second and one more in the fourth to go up 6-1.
Then, the Mets woke back up. Lindor drove in his second run of the game on a ground out in the fifth, then Pete Alonso singled in Francisco Alvarez. Brandon Nimmo brought the big swing, tying the game 6-6 with a 3-run home run in the same inning.
Lindor would then drive in his third run of the game in the sixth with a single, but Seiya Suzuki tied things up, again, in the bottom of the frame. The back-and-forth finally ended thanks to Alvarez, this time with a 2-run shot to give the Mets a 9-7 lead, and this game its final score.
New York’s come-from-behind win, paired with the Reds’ 4-2 loss to the Pirates, gave the Mets the third wild card slot back. They have to be ahead of Cincinnati in order to win this thing in the end, not tied, as the Reds hold the tiebreaker between the two clubs. The Reds don’t have to pull ahead, they just need to finish even with the Mets, putting additional pressure on New York until they can create more separation between the two.
And it’s not just Cincinnati that they have to worry about, either.
D-backs aren’t done yet
You know who else is one game back of the Mets, and also holds a tiebreaker over them for the third wild card? It’s the Diamondbacks, who won their third game in a row to keep pace up with New York and catch up with Cincinnati.
Arizona was facing the Dodgers, who got a hell of a start out of Shohei Ohtani — Ohtani went six innings, the first time he’s done so since Aug. 9, 2023 , striking out 8 while scattering 5 hits to keep the D-backs scoreless. A huge, huge accomplishment for the Dodgers right before the postseason begins — Ohtani looking like Ohtani makes their rotation that much better.
And the rotation has to be better, because the Dodgers’ bullpen still exists. Ohtani gave them a six-inning, scoreless head start, and they responded by giving up five unanswered runs to Arizona. Alex Vesia was the only one of Los Angeles’ four relievers to manage a scoreless outing, and, not coincidentally, was also the only one of the bunch to make it through an entire inning of work. Tanner Scott attempted to close things out with the Dodgers up 4-3, but instead, he hit the first batter, Ildemo Vargas, with a pitch and walked the second one, Tim Tawa. James McCann moved the runners over with a sac bunt, then Jorge Barrosa tied things up with a sac fly. Geraldo Perdomo handled things from there:
The D-backs won, 5-4. The Dodgers now sit 1.5 up on the Padres in the NL West — both clubs are guaranteed a postseason spot, so they are just jockeying for position at this point, but the chance of becoming the NL’s second seeded division winner took a real hit with this defeat since the Dodgers are four wins behind the Phillies with just five games to go.
Yankees clinch
The Yankees clinched a postseason spot with a walk-off win on Tuesday, courtesy Jose Caballero.
That’s great for them and all, but they have their eyes on a bigger prize. Not only did New York win on Tuesday, but the Red Sox defeated the Blue Jays in the first game of their series: that leaves the Yankees just one game back of the AL East lead, with five to go. Boston is four out, so they aren’t exactly aiming for that in the same way — it could happen, but it’s unlikely at this point given how little the Yankees and Jays have to do well to stop it — but New York is a different story. They have two more against the lowly White Sox — their next loss will be their 100th of the year — before facing the Orioles. The Blue Jays are stuck facing the Red Sox, who are working on clinching their own postseason spot, and then the Rays.
Boston needs to thrive against Toronto here, since they face the Tigers in the last series of the season: the Sox are just one game up on them and the Guardians in the wild card race at the moment, and two up on the Astros. Things could get messy for the Sox in a hurry if they stumble, even if they look to be in a position of power right now.
Your 1st-place Guardians
How did the Red Sox and Tigers end up tied? You can thank the Guardians for that. It’s Cleveland that is facing Detroit in their penultimate 2025 series, and Cleveland that took the first game of that set. Starting pitcher Gavin Williams was the star of the game for the Guardians, with 12 strikeouts across six innings of 2-run ball, while the offense found ways to take advantage of what was given to them.
Cleveland would end up winning 5-2, catching the Tigers in the AL Central despite some serious odds:
They made up nearly 10 games in the standings in under two weeks, which wins in 11 of their last 12 games helped with, but just as important was that the Tigers fell on their faces during this stretch, too: the Tigers have lost 10 of their last 11, and now they find themselves tied, but not really, since the Guardians have the tiebreaker. Now they are in possession of the third wild card, but only up by a game and with two more against Cleveland before three against Boston. Their destiny is still very much in their hands, but those hands have been overflowing with Ls lately.
Schwarber goes yard
In non-clinching/postseason race news, Kyle Schwarber hit a baseball very far.
That was Schwarber’s 54th shot of the year, giving the Phillies’ slugger sole possession of the National League lead. He’s four dingers behind Cal Raleigh for the MLB lead, meaning Big Dumper is probably safe there with how little season there is left, but there is still the race with Ohtani to consider to be the NL’s dinger champ.
How?!
No, really. How?! The contortions that Twins second baseman Ryan Fitzgerald’s body made to avoid this tag need to be seen to be believed. At full speed, it just looks like a weird little flip move, but when you slow it down, well… take a look.
Baseball!
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