DJ LeMahieu drove in a career-high six runs with a grand slam and two-run double and the New York Yankees completed a three-game sweep of the slumping Philadelphia Phillies with a 6-5 victory on Wednesday.
In a season-long slump, LeMahieu entered with a .173 batting average and 13 RBIs, but the two-time batting champion hit his third career slam and had his first game with two extra-base hits since Aug. 25.
He joined Joe DiMaggio at Cleveland on May 23, 1948, and Yogi Berra at the White Sox on Aug. 2, 1958, as the only Yankees players with six RBIs who drove in all of New York’s runs.
Nestor Cortes earned his first road win of the season, allowing three runs and three hits in 5 1/3 innings with six strikeouts. He had been 0-5 with a 6.18 ERA in 11 road starts this season.
Clay Holmes worked around a leadoff single in the ninth for his 22nd save in 30 chances.
The Yankees have rebounded from a 10-23 slide with five straight wins and remained a half-game behind AL East-leading Baltimore.
Weston Wilson homered and Nick Castellanos had three RBIs for the Phillies, who have lost four in a row and 11 of 15, trimming their NL East lead over Atlanta to 6 ½ games. Two-time NL MVP Bryce Harper went 0 for 5 with two strikeouts, hit into a game-ending double play and is in a 1-for-30 slump.
Cease leads surging Padres past Dodgers
Dylan Cease won his fourth straight start and Luis Campusano homered as the red-hot San Diego Padres rolled past the Los Angeles Dodgers 8-1 for a two-game sweep.
Jurickson Profar and Campusano each drove in two runs as the Padres won their ninth in 10 games to pull within 4 ½ games of the NL West-leading Dodgers.
Pitching in his first start after throwing a no-hitter, Cease limited the Dodgers to one run and three hits over 5 2/3 innings while striking out six and walking three. He improved to 4-0 with a 0.33 ERA in his last four starts.
Clayton Kershaw was roughed up for seven runs – three earned – and six hits in 3 2/3 innings in his second start of the season.
He failed to record a strikeout for the first time in 424 major league starts, a streak that had been the longest since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893.
The Dodgers have dropped 10 of their last 12 road games.
Holliday hits grand slam for first career home run
Jackson Holliday celebrated his return to the major leagues with a grand slam for his first career home run in the Baltimore Orioles’ 10-4 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.
Holliday, the No. 1 pick in the 2002 draft and baseball’s top prospect, was back in the majors after he went 2 for 34 with 18 strikeouts in April. In his first game back, he grounded out twice before connecting for a 439-foot blast with the bases loaded in the fifth to give the Orioles an 8-3 lead.
Grayson Rodriguez (13-4) tied for the major league lead in wins after giving up three earned runs and six hits in six innings with three walks and eight strikeouts.
Colton Cowser also went deep for the first-place Orioles, who have won four of five after losing five of six.
Baltimore lost All-Star third baseman Jordan Westburg to a broken hand after he was hit by a pitch immediately before Holliday’s slam.
Sale, Skubal win MLB's Cy Young Awards
Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal and Atlanta Braves lefty Chris Sale were each named the winner of their respective league’s Cy Young Award on Wednesday.
The announcement was hardly a surprise after each ace won their league's pitching triple crown during the 2024 regular season.
This is the first Cy Young for both pitchers.
Skubal, who turned 28 on Wednesday, enjoyed a break-out year in his fourth full MLB season, and was a unanimous winner, receiving all 30 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The Kansas City Royals' Seth Lugo finished second and Cleveland Guardians relief pitcher Emmanuel Clase finished third in the balloting, which was completed before the play-offs.
Sale received 26 of 30 first-place votes, while Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler finished second, ahead of Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, who was selected as the National League Rookie of the Year on Monday.
The 35-year-old Sale has come close to winning the award before, finishing as runner-up to Cleveland's Corey Kluber in 2017, with five other top-five finishes in voting since his first full season in the majors in 2011.
Since the inception of the Cy Young Award in 1956, there have been 16 pitchers to win his league's pitching crown. And now, every one of them has also won that year's Cy Young.
Skubal and Sale each won an MLB-best 18 games, while Skubal led all pitchers with 228 strikeouts – three more than Sale. Sale's ERA of 2.38 was just a tick better than Skubal's 2.39.
Both were dominant down the stretch in leading their teams to the play-offs, with Sale permitting two earned runs or fewer in each of his final 18 regular-season starts, though he was unable to pitch in the season final or the Braves' NL Wild-Card series loss to the San Diego Padres because of a back injury.
Skubal posted a 1.94 ERA in his final nine outings, and then threw 13 shutout innings in his first two play-off starts in helping the Tigers surprisingly reach the American League Division Series. He ended up going 1-1 with a 2.37 ERA in three post-season starts.
Skubal became the fifth Tiger to win the Cy Young trophy – and first since Max Scherzer in 2017 – and Sale is the fifth Brave to earn the award – and first since Hall of Famer Tom Glavine in 1998.
Despite several close calls in Cy Young voting for Sale, he has dealt with injuries for the past five seasons, and was limited to a total of 151 innings over the past three years for the Boston Red Sox.
In his first season with the Braves, however, he threw 177 2/3 innings and was awarded the NL Comeback Player of the Year Award last Thursday.
Dodgers erase 5-run deficit, beat Yankees to win World Series
The Los Angeles Dodgers won their second World Series championship in five seasons, overcoming a five-run deficit with the help of three Yankees defensive miscues and rallying on sacrifice flies from Gavin Lux and Mookie Betts in the eighth inning to beat New York 7-6 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning, Alex Verdugo’s RBI single chased Jack Flaherty in the second and Giancarlo Stanton’s third-inning homer against Ryan Brasier built a 5-0 Yankees lead.
But errors by Judge in center and Anthony Volpe at shortstop, combined with pitcher Gerrit Cole failing to cover first on Betts' grounder, helped Los Angeles score five unearned runs in the fifth.
After Stanton’s sixth-inning sacrifice fly put the Yankees back ahead 6-5, the Dodgers loaded the bases against loser Tommy Kahnle in the eighth before the sacrifice flies off Luke Weaver.
Winner Blake Treinen escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the bottom half by retiring Stanton on a flyout and striking out Anthony Rizzo.
Walker Buehler, making his first relief appearance since his rookie season in 2018, pitched a perfect ninth for the save.
Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ record-setting $700 million signing and baseball’s first 50-homer, 50-steal player, went 2 for 19 with no RBIs and had one single after separating his shoulder during a stolen base attempt in Game 2.
Freddie Freeman hit a two-run single to tie the Series record of 12 RBIs, set by Bobby Richardson over seven games in 1960. With the Dodgers one out from losing Friday’s opener, Freeman hit a game-ending grand slam reminiscent of Kirk Gibson’s homer off Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley in 1988’s Game 1 that sparked Los Angeles to the title.
The Dodgers earned their eighth championship and seventh since leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles - their first in a non-shortened season since 1988. They won a neutral-site World Series against Tampa Bay in 2020 after a 60-game regular season and couldn’t have a parade because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Volpe hits grand slam as Yankees avoid World Series sweep
Anthony Volpe hit a grand slam and New York’s bullpen tossed five scoreless innings as the Yankees avoided a World Series sweep with an 11-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday night.
Freddie Freeman homered for his sixth straight Series game, hitting a two-run drive in the first inning for the second straight night and again stunning the Yankee Stadium crowd.
Game 5 is Wednesday night, with the Yankees ace Gerrit Cole and the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty meeting in a rematch of Game 1.
Twenty-one of the previous 24 teams to take 3-0 Series leads went on to sweeps, all but the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics against the Chicago Cubs, the 1937 Yankees against the New York Giants and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles against the Cincinnati Reds. All three of those Series ended in five games.
Seeking to become the first team to overcome a 3-0 Series deficit, New York surged ahead 5-2 on Alex Verdugo’s RBI grounder in the second and Volpe’s drive against Daniel Hudson in the third. Volpe turned on a first-pitch slider at the knees and drove it into the left-field seats.
Volpe came across with New York's first run when he walked after falling behind 0-2 in the count in the second inning. He also doubled and stole two bases.
Austin Wells and Gleyber Torres added homers for the Yankees, who broke open the game with a five-run eighth. New York had scored just seven runs in the first three games.
Los Angeles closed within 6-4 in a two-run fifth that included Will Smith's homer off starter Luis Gil and an RBI grounder by Freeman. Despite a sprained right ankle, Freeman beat a relay to avoid an inning-ending double play on what originally was ruled an out but was reversed in a video review.
Wells hit a second-deck homer in the sixth against Landon Knack, and Verdugo added another run-scoring grounder in the eighth ahead of Torres' three-run homer off Brent Honeywell.
Tim Hill, winning pitcher Clay Holmes, Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Tim Mayza strung together five innings of one-hit relief with seven strikeouts, and the Yankees avoided what would have been their first losing Series sweep since 1976.
New York's Aaron Judge drove in his first run of the Series with an RBI single in the eighth and is 2 for 15 in the four games. Dodgers sensation Shohei Ohtani also is 2 for 15 after going 1 for 4 with a single, his first hit since partially separating his left shoulder in Game 2.
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