Last Night In Baseball: Braves Walk Off Dodgers And Secure Key Tiebreaker

A walk-off in Atlanta. Huge innings and bigger losses. A squirrel. Wednesday’s MLB action provided all that and much more.

Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball:

If the Braves are to have a realistic chance of catching the Dodgers for the second first-round bye in the NL this postseason, then Atlanta needs to beat L.A. So far, so good on that note: the Braves won the first game of the series with a late run, and then walked off the Dodgers in the second.

Once again, it was Tanner Scott on the mound for the Dodgers, and once again, he would take the L. Starting pitcher Roki Sasaki lasted just 3 ⅓ innings while allowing four runs, and Scott was the fifth reliever of the evening: it’s not like manager Dave Roberts was swimming in alternatives by this point in the game, with Sasaki failing to pitch into even the middle of the game. Scott came on in a tie game, and got the first two outs no problem on a combined seven pitches. Then, disaster struck: left fielder Lane Thomas, who had entered earlier as a pinch-hitter, hit a double, then Scott intentionally walked third baseman Austin Riley. Ha-Seong Kim would enter as a pinch-hitter for pitcher Victor Mederos — Atlanta had lost the DH earlier — and would work an eight-pitch at-bat. Scott threw a 97.2 mph four-seamer low in the zone, but Kim got to it, anyway, and hit a 254-foot liner to left, scoring Thomas.

That was the ballgame: the Braves have won three in a row and are now 78-55, just two games behind the Dodgers for that second bye. The head-to-head tiebreaker for that bye is also officially Atlanta’s now, as well: the Braves are 4-1 against the Dodgers this season, so while they still need to actually get into a tie with L.A. for it to matter, all the Dodgers can do is try to play better ball the rest of the way to keep this from coming into play.

You don’t see that very often.

Yes, Mookie Betts got credit for starting the double play in the official scoring. Hey, he helped, just not conventionally.

We already said yesterday that Tristan Peters has been on one. Guess what? He’s still on one. On Wednesday against the Rangers, the White Sox left fielder went 3-for-4 with two runs and two RBIs each, and a home run in his fifth-straight game.

This two-run shot came in the bottom of the fifth, and put Chicago up 6-2 over Texas. It ended up being the game-winning hit, but it would take a few more innings to know that: the White Sox scored another four runs of insurance, and all the Rangers could muster was another pair.

The W makes the White Sox the first non-AL East team to reach 70 wins this season, which is a very strange sentence to write for multiple reasons. But it’s true! The Rangers failed to keep pace with the Guardians in the AL wild-card race, and are now two back of Cleveland and just half-a-game up on the Orioles.

Just half-a-game, because try as Baltimore might it couldn’t completely blow the game against the Cardinals. But trust that the O’s did try. Baltimore went up 7-0 before the second inning ended, with DH Pete Alonso continuing his torrid run with a two-run homer. His OPS fell to .794 on Aug. 8, and he’s now raised it nearly 100 points over his last 16 games by batting .484/.543/.952 with nine of his 32 homers.

Then the Cardinals happened. In the bottom of the fifth, St. Louis singled, walked, walked and singled to make it 7-3, then right fielder Jordan Walker doubled to drive in another. Center fielder Nathan Church would follow with his own two-bagger that drove in two more runs, and a pitching change from Kyle Bradish to Alex Hoppe didn’t stop the bleeding. Second baseman José Fermín grounded out but tied the game for the sixth run of the inning, and then Hoppe finally got the third out.

Remarkably, neither team would score again for the next few innings. But in the top of the ninth, Baltimore’s bats, quiet since Alonso’s dinger, came to life once more. First baseman Samuel Basallo singled and was replaced with pinch-runner Luis Vázquez, who went to second on a wild pitch. Then, infielder Christian Encarnacion-Strand hit a liner to center, scoring the runner and giving the game its final score of 8-7.

The Orioles are just 65-68, but also just 2.5 out of the last AL wild-card spot. The Cardinals have made life a lot more difficult this week, as St. Louis now sits six back of the Padres in the NL wild-card race, with the Diamondbacks and Marlins ahead of it as well. The Cards have one more against the O’s to try to avoid a sweep and falling any further.

The Mariners took the first two games of this series thanks in large part to a flurry of dingers from Cal Raleigh, but this time it was Phillies’ slugger Kyle Schwarber getting the long ball-related headlines. With Philadelphia already up 3-0, Schwarber crushed a nearly 99 mph offering from Bryan Woo and deposited it 425 feet away in right-center.

That was Schwarber’s 40th homer of the season, which marks both the fourth 40-homer campaign of his career as a whole and with the Phillies. And that tied the franchise record, held by 13-year Phillies’ veteran Ryan Howard. Howard had four 40-homer campaigns in a row, bashing 58, 47, 48 and 45 from 2006 through 2009; Schwarber has 46, 47, a just-missed 38, 56 and 40 in his five seasons with the Phillies.

By the way, despite being in just his fifth — and not yet finished — campaign with Philadelphia, Schwarber’s 227 dingers with the Phillies ranks seventh all-time among franchise leaders. Another six, and he’ll tie Chase Utley. Unless he absolutely blows things open in September, he might have to wait until 2027 for Chuck Klein and the top five, though, since he’s at 243.

The Phils would win, 6-0, leaving the Mariners four games back of the last AL wild-card and the Phillies two games up on the Padres for the second NL wild-card.

Yankees’ first baseman Luis García Jr. has faced the Astros in five games this season — first with the Nationals, and now with New York. To wit, he’s hit .591/.609/1.091 with 13 hits, eight runs, nine RBIs, two doubles and three homers against Houston. The second of those dingers came on Tuesday, and No. 3 on Wednesday, against reliever Enyel De Los Santos.

Now, the game was already out of hand at this point, but García bashing another long ball against Houston and driving in even more runs is a real salt in the wound situation. Isn’t it bad enough that the Astros have now dropped under .500, to 66-67, where they… are still in first place in the AL West. Well, alright, it’s been that kind of season.

The Yankees, meanwhile, kept pace with the Rays in the AL East, as New York sits 3.5 back and 10 up on the first team out of the wild-card picture. A postseason spot seems assured for the Yankees, but which one is an open question.

The Kansas City Royals came into Wednesday’s game winners of nine-straight contests, but the Blue Jays put a stop to that. It wasn’t a must-win game for Toronto, but close enough: even with the dub, the Jays are three back in the AL wild-card race and just 65-69. Unlike the loser of the Astros, Rangers and Mariners disaster, Toronto can’t rely on sneaking in via the division — the Blue Jays are 14.5 games behind the AL-leading Rays, with the second- and third-best records in the league ahead of them in the Yankees and Red Sox.

One game at a time, though, and on Wednesday, the game was a W. Right fielder Nathan Lukes had one hit all game, and it was a big one — the only scoring of the night for either team, a three-run jack.

Pretty great for a bullpen game, too, as Toronto got two innings out of Spencer Miles and then used another six arms out of the pen — the third pitcher got the W, three others got a hold and Louis Varland picked up his 30th save of the season, too.

Squirrels get to watch MLB games for free if they can find somewhere to sit. Most people don’t know that, but you can be sure that squirrels do.

This one was all Brewers nearly from the jump. Milwaukee scored four runs in the second thanks to six hits in a row, all singles.

That would be more than the Brewers needed to down the Mets, but they scored four more, anyway, with most of it coming on a Brice Turang homer in the fourth. Milwaukee’s second baseman launched this one 408 feet at nearly 105 mph, and plated a pair of runners in addition to himself.

Shout out to Milwaukee’s pitching, too — Dustin May was knocked out of the game after taking a liner off his back in the bottom of the bottom of the first, against the first batter he faced in center fielder A.J. Ewing. While he got the out, he had to exit in favor of Robert Gasser — the lefty wasn’t planning to pitch, but threw 5 ⅓ with just one run allowed, anyway. The actual bullpen took care of business the rest of the way, and Milwaukee would win, 8-1.