Home runs from J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber backed six solid innings from Aaron Nola as the Philadelphia Phillies clinched their first National League East title since 2011 with Monday's 6-2 win over the Chicago Cubs.
The Phillies also received a run-scoring single from Nick Castellanos to enhance their chances of earning one of the NL's top two seeds and a first-round bye for the upcoming playoffs. Philadelphia (93-64) now trails the Los Angeles Dodgers by a half-game for the majors' best record with less than a week remaining in the regular season.
Nola (13-8) scattered seven hits and struck out seven while allowing just two runs. The steady veteran pitcher held the Cubs scoreless through the first six innings of play as the Phillies gradually built a 6-0 lead.
Realmuto opened the scoring with his 14th homer of the season, a two-run shot off Caleb Kilian in the second inning. Schwarber made it 3-0 an inning later with a lead-off homer that gave him 100 runs batted in for a second straight season.
The Phillies added another run off Kilian in the third when Trea Turner followed Schwarber's blast with a double and later scored on Castellanos' single.
Bryce Harper led off the bottom of the fifth with a double and eventually crossed the plate on an error by Chicago second baseman Nico Hoerner to increase the margin to 5-0. The Phillies scored again in the sixth when Brandon Marsh drew a walk, advanced to third on Johan Rojas' single and came home on a double-play grounder off the bat of Schwarber.
Nola was removed after surrendering back-to-back doubles by Isaac Paredes and Hoerner that got the Cubs on the board. Hoerner later scored on a groundout for the game's final run.
Kilian (0-1) allowed all six Philadelphia runs - five earned - and eight hits across 5 2/3 innings.
Mariners put Astros' AL West title plans on hold
The Seattle Mariners got seven scoreless innings from Bryce Miller and two runs batted in from Julio Rodriguez to prevent the Houston Astros from clinching the American League West with Monday's 6-1 win.
Rodriguez went 3 for 5 to lead a 13-hit attack that closed Seattle within 1 1/2 games of the co-holders of the AL's final two wild-card spots, the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers.
The Mariners still have a faint chance of winning the AL West, though Houston needs to win just one of this series' two remaining games to claim its fourth straight division title.
Miller (12-8) continued a strong finish to his season by yielding just two hits and a pair of walks. The right-hander is now 2-0 with a 0.72 ERA over his last four starts.
Hunter Brown (11-9) allowed just one run while striking out eight over six innings for Houston, but issued two walks in the third inning that led to Seattle taking a 1-0 lead on Cal Raleigh's single that plated Victor Robles.
The Mariners added on in the seventh after loading the bases on singles by Justin Turner and J.P. Crawford and a walk to Dylan Moore. Two batters later, Rodriguez singled to center to drive in Turner for a 2-0 advantage.
Seattle loaded the bases again in the eighth on three consecutive singles before Turner brought in Raleigh with a sacrifice fly. Jorge Polanco followed with a run-scoring double to stretch the margin to 4-0.
Jason Heyward finally got Houston on the board with a solo home run in the eighth, but the Mariners scored twice more in the ninth to put the game out of reach.
Back-to-back doubles by Robles and Rodriguez increased the lead to 5-1 before Rodriguez scored on Randy Arozarena's double.
Giants drop Diamondbacks back in NL wild card standings
The San Francisco Giants hit three home runs, including an inside-the-park shot from Matt Chapman, to come through with a 6-3 win over Arizona that knocked the Diamondbacks out of a tie for the NL's second wild card.
Casey Schmitt and Michael Conforto also homered to help the Giants to a fourth straight win. Chapman finished 2 for 3 and drove in three runs, while San Francisco starter Hayden Birdsong (5-5) struck out six while holding the Diamondbacks to two runs in five innings.
Arizona fell a half-game behind the New York Mets in the standings and now holds a 1 1/2-game lead on the Atlanta Braves for the final NL wild card. The Braves and Mets begin a pivotal three-game series in Atlanta on Tuesday.
The Diamondbacks had an early 1-0 lead after consecutive doubles by Geraldo Perdomo and Joc Pederson in the first inning, but the Giants went ahead with three runs in the third off Eduardo Rodriguez.
After Heliot Ramos singled and scored on Jerar Encarnacion's double, Chapman drove a pitch off the center field wall and sprinted around the bases for the first inside-the-park homer by a Giants' player since Denard Span in 2017.
Christian Walker drove in Corbin Carroll with a double in the bottom of the third to pull Arizona within 3-2, but Schmitt's solo homer in the fourth restored the Giants' two-run advantage.
Conforto went deep an inning later to increase the lead to 5-2, then doubled in the seventh before crossing the plate on a Chapman triple.
Arizona got a run back in its half of the seventh when Jose Herrera doubled and scored on Perdomo's single. The Diamondbacks failed to score thereafter, though, with Ryan Walker throwing a perfect ninth for San Francisco to record his 10th save.
Rodriguez (3-4) struck out eight in 4 2/3 innings but was tagged for five runs on seven hits.
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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