Kerry Carpenter hit two home runs, including the tie-breaking blast in the sixth inning, and the surging Detroit Tigers moved into possession of an American League wild card spot with Sunday's 4-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles.
The Tigers' sixth win in seven games moved them one game ahead of reeling Minnesota and into a tie with also-slumping Kansas City for the AL's second wild card. The Twins lost both games of a doubleheader with the Boston Red Sox, who got a three-homer game from Triston Casas to win the opener 8-1. The Royals have now lost seven straight following Sunday's 2-0 defeat to the San Francisco Giants.
Spencer Torkelson also homered while Trey Sweeney delivered a run-scoring double for Detroit, which last reached the post-season in 2014.
Cedric Mullins had a two-run homer for Baltimore, which is four games up on the Tigers and Royals for the first wild card.
Carpenter drilled a pitch from Albert Suarez into the right field seats in the sixth inning for a 4-3 lead that Detroit's bullpen made stand by holding the Orioles scoreless over the final four innings. Jason Foley finished it out with a perfect ninth for his 26th save.
The Tigers had taken a 2-0 advantage on Torkelson's second-inning homer and back-to-back doubles by Jace Jung and Sweeney later in the frame. Carpenter's first homer of the afternoon increased the margin in the third.
Baltimore drew even with a three-run fifth inning, with Mullins cutting the deficit to 3-2 with his 18th homer of the season. Gunnar Henderson followed with a single before scoring the tying run on Jordan Westburg's double.
Mets edge Phillies to keep rival from clinching NL East
Brandon Nimmo's tie-breaking solo home run in the sixth inning provided the difference as the New York Mets prevented the Philadelphia Phillies from clinching the National League East with a 2-1 victory.
The result kept Philadelphia's magic number to win the division at one but, more importantly, dropped the Phillies one game back of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the race for the NL's best record. The Dodgers rallied for a 6-5 win over the Colorado Rockies on back-to-back home runs from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts in the ninth inning.
New York took three of four matchups from their division rivals in the weekend series and are now tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks for the NL's final two wild-card spots, with the Atlanta Braves two games behind both teams.
Nimmo's drive off Philadelphia ace Zack Wheeler just eluded the glove of a leaping Phillies right fielder Nick Castellanos and cleared the wall to snap a 1-1 tie. Relievers Jose Butto and Edwin Diaz successfully protected the one-run lead over the final three innings, with Diaz working the last two to earn his 20th save.
Wheeler (16-7) struck out eight over seven innings while permitting just two runs in a hard-luck loss.
The Phillies got their lone run in the opening inning when Trea Turner singled, moved to second on a wild pitch from New York starter Tylor Megill and scored on Alec Bohm's single.
New York pulled even an inning later when Tyrone Taylor followed Mark Vientos' double off Wheeler with a run-scoring single.
Taylor and Jose Iglesias each had two hits for the Mets, while Castellanos and Turner each went 2 for 4 for Philadelphia.
White Sox tie modern era record with 120th loss
The San Diego Padres rallied for three eighth-inning runs to hand the Chicago White Sox their 120th loss of the season, a 4-2 setback that tied an MLB record for most defeats in a season in the post-1900 era.
Chicago (36-120) matched the 1962 expansion New York Mets, who finished 40-120, for the most losses in a season in baseball's modern era and have six more chances to eclipse the dubious record. The White Sox will open a three-game series at home with the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday.
The White Sox took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth that quickly evaporated as San Diego's Donovan Solano and Luis Arraez led off with consecutive doubles, with Arraez's hit off Fraser Ellard scoring pinch-runner Tyler Wade.
Ellard then threw a wild pitch that advanced pinch-runner Brandon Lockridge to third. Jurickson Profar followed with a sacrifice fly that put the Padres ahead in front of Fernando Tatis' solo homer that increased the lead to 4-2.
The comeback win kept the Padres three games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for first place in the NL West. San Diego has won four straight and holds a three-game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Mets for the league's top wild card.
Profar finished 2 for 3 and drove in another run with a solo homer in the bottom of the third that tied the game at 1-1. The White Sox had briefly gone ahead on Korey Lee's solo homer in the top of the inning.
Chicago went back in front on Miguel Vargas' solo homer in the sixth, his second hit in four at-bats for the game.
Both starting pitchers performed well while not factoring in the final outcome. San Diego's Yu Darvish struck out nine while allowing two runs in 6 1/3 innings, while Chicago's Sean Burke fanned eight while yielding one run on two hits in six innings.
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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