Shohei Ohtani hit a two-out, walk-off grand slam to become the fastest player in major league history to join the 40-40 club as the streaking Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays, 7-3 on Friday night.
Ohtani is the first Dodger to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a single season and the sixth ever. He broke the record held by Alfonso Soriano, who reached the mark in Game 148 for the Washington Nationals in 2006.
Ohtani, who stole his 40th base in the fourth inning, did it in the Dodgers' 129th game.
The other 40-40 members are Jose Canseco (1988), Barry Bonds (1996), Alex Rodriguez (1998) and Ronald Acuna Jr. (2023).
Will Smith was hit by Manuel Rodriguez leading off the ninth and Tommy Edman followed with a single. Smith and Edman moved up on Miguel Rojas’ sacrifice. Colin Poche came in and walked Max Muncy to set up Ohtani’s 389-foot slam to center.
Kike Hernandez accounted for all the Dodgers’ offence before Ohtani’s blast with a tying three-run homer in the fifth off starter Tyler Alexander.
Los Angeles has won five straight and 11 of 14 to remain four games ahead of Arizona in the NL West.
Junior Caminero and Christopher Morel went deep for the Rays, who dropped their second in a row.
Mariners rally to win Wilson’s debut
Leo Rivas singled home Dylan More in the 10th inning and the Seattle Mariners erased a four-run deficit for a 6-5 victory over the San Francisco Giants in Dan Wilson’s managerial debut.
Seattle scored four times in the eighth inning to pull even at 5-5, then saw Rivas come through in the 10th.
Pinch-runner Moore stole third base with one out and Rivas lined a 2-2 pitch from Erik Miller into center field to set off a celebration as Seattle won for just the second time in the 10 games.
Wilson was named manager of the Mariners on Thursday after Scott Servais was fired.
Luke Raley homered for Seattle, but it was a big eighth-inning rally that gave the Mariners a chance. They sent nine batters to the plate and scored four times with six consecutive singles off reliever Tyler Rogers. Justin Turner, Josh Rojas, Rivas and Raley all had RBI singles that helped make it 5-5.
LaMonte Wade Jr., Heliot Ramos and Michael Conforto homered for the Giants, who lost their second straight after winning three in a row.
Judge homers again as Yankees win
Aaron Judge homered for the fourth straight game with his major league-leading 49th and Carlos Rodon pitched six innings in the New York Yankees’ 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies.
Judge homered for the fourth straight game, sending a 388-foot shot to left-center off Kyle Freeland in the sixth inning.
Judge has eight homers in his last 11 games and 17 homers in his last 34. He is one home run shy of becoming just the fifth player in history to record three 50-homer seasons. Judge is on pace to match the 62 homers he hit in 2022, when he broke the American League record set in 1961 by late Yankees slugger Roger Maris.
Judge is hitting .381 with 43 homers and 101 RBIs in 94 games since his average dipped to .197 on May 2.
Rodon (14-8) moved into a tie for the major league lead in wins, allowing four hits with one walk and five strikeouts.
Rodón, Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes have combined to toss 19 straight scoreless innings in the Yankees’ last three games.
New York won its third straight to remain 1 ½ games ahead of Baltimore in the AL East.
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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