The Seattle Mariners received a big night from Cal Raleigh and another outstanding pitching performance to complete a three-game sweep of the floundering New York Mets with Sunday's 12-1 win.
Raleigh drove in a season-high five runs with a pair of homers, while Luis Castillo fanned nine over six strong innings as the Mariners won their fourth consecutive game. Sunday's rout kept Seattle in a virtual tie with the Houston Astros for first place in the American League West.
The Mets, meanwhile, were swept in a three-game series for the first time since May 28-29. New York, which was shut out in each of this series' first two matchups, remained a half-game behind the Atlanta Braves for the National League's third and final wild card.
Castillo (10-11) continued Seattle's stellar run of pitching by limiting the Mets to one run and four hits. The right-hander also received plenty of support from Raleigh, who went 3 for 4, and from a three-hit night from Jorge Polanco which included a solo homer.
Victor Robles and Randy Arozarena drove in two runs each in the Mariners' highest scoring game of the season.
Mets starter Luis Severino kept Seattle's bats mostly quiet early on, with Polanco's solo homer in the second the game's lone run through four innings of play.
The Mariners broke through in the fifth, however. Dominic Canzone led off with a double and Arozarena later singled before Raleigh sent Severino's pitch over the right field wall for a 4-0 advantage.
Severino (7-6) finished with eight strikeouts while permitting four runs in five innings.
Jeff McNeil finally ended New York's scoring drought with a solo homer in the top of the sixth, but the Mariners countered with six runs against the Mets' bullpen in their half of the inning.
Polanco began the outburst with a double before New York's Ryne Stanek walked two batters to load the bases. Leo Rivas and Robles then each delivered RBI singles, with a throwing error by McNeil on Robles' hit allowing an additional run to score for a 7-1 lead.
Two batters later, Raleigh launched a three-run homer to further increase the margin.
The Mariners got two more runs in the seventh despite managing just one hit in the inning. Robles drew a bases-loaded walk before Mets reliever Phil Maton hit Arozarena with a pitch to force in the final run.
Astros complete sweep of Red Sox to extend winning streak
The Astros kept pace with Seattle in the AL West by cruising to their fifth consecutive victory, a 10-2 rout of the scuffling Boston Red Sox highlighted by back-to-back homers by Alex Bregman and Yordan Alvarez during a five-run fifth inning.
Bregman's three-run blast off Brennan Bernardino staked Houston to a 4-0 lead, and Alvarez followed with his third homer in two games to help send the Astros to a three-game series sweep.
Jeremy Pena also homered for the Astros and finished 3 for 5. Jose Altuve also collected three hits and Yainer Diaz contributed a two-run double to support a solid start from Hunter Brown (10-7), who struck out nine while allowing two runs over 5 1/3 innings.
Boston has now lost four straight and may be down a starting pitcher for a while after James Paxton exited Sunday's contest in the first inning with a strained right calf.
Lucas Sims replaced Paxton and allowed a lead-off walk to Mauricio Dubon and a one-out single to Altuve before being removed in the third inning. Bernardino came on in relief and hit Alvarez with a pitch to load the bases, then uncorked a wild pitch that enabled Dubon to score the game's first run.
Pedro Leon and Altuve singled in front of Bregman's game-breaking homer that was followed by Alvarez's 25th home run of the season. The Astros tacked on another run in the fifth when Pena singled, stole second, and scored on Jake Meyers' base hit.
Houston put up four more runs in the sixth - all with two out - to put the game out of reach.
Bregman doubled and Alvarez was walked intentionally to set up Diaz's double that plated both runners for an 8-0 advantage. Pena then homered over the Green Monster in left field to further pad the margin.
Brown's only trouble occurred in the bottom of the sixth, when he gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases with none out. The right-hander walked Wilyer Abreu two batters later to force in the Red Sox's first run, and Masataka Yoshida greeted reliever Caleb Ferguson with an RBI single to bring Boston within 10-2.
Burger homers again as Marlins snap Padres' seven-game win streak
Jake Burger went 3 for 4 and homered for a third straight game, and the Miami Marlins held off a late comeback attempt to end the San Diego Padres' winning streak at seven games with Sunday's 7-6 victory.
Burger's two-run blast off Dylan Cease helped Miami build a 5-0 lead after two innings. The homer was the third baseman's 12th since the All-Star break, the most of any player in the majors over that time frame.
Jesus Sanchez also had a two-run homer as the Marlins ended a three-game skid. Max Meyer (3-2) pitched a career-high 6 1/3 innings while allowing four runs to earn the victory.
Cease (11-9) was dealt his first loss since July 7 and struggled early on, as the Marlins recorded four first-inning hits that led to a pair of runs. Xavier Edwards and Burger began the bottom of the first with consecutive singles, with Edwards later scoring on Jonah Bride's infield hit and Otto Lopez knocking in Burger with a single.
The Marlins then took advantage of a pair of San Diego errors that put two on in the second for Burger, who crushed Cease's pitch over the center field wall for a 5-0 lead.
Cease lasted five innings while being charged with all five runs, only two of which were earned due to the errors.
Meyer kept the Padres scoreless until the fifth, when Xander Bogaerts doubled and later scored on a David Peralta groundout.
San Diego further closed the gap in the sixth inning, which Luis Campusano began with a single and Luis Arraez followed with a double off Meyer. Both players scored on ground-outs by Jurickson Profar and Jake Cronenworth, respectively, to pull the Padres within 5-3.
Peralta doubled in a run in the seventh to cut Miami's lead to one, but Sanchez gave the Marlins some breathing room in the bottom of the inning by following Burger's single with his 14th homer of the season.
Donovan Solano's pinch-hit, two-run homer in the eighth brought the Padres within 7-6, and San Diego got the tying run to second in the ninth when Ha-Seong Kim doubled with two out. Kim's hit was initially ruled a home run before being overturned after a video review.
The Marlins then called on reliever George Soriano, who fanned Campusano for the final out to register his second career save.
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.
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
