There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.
That’s why we’re here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days’ games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball:
Tigers vs. Rockies distilled
The Tigers have the best record in the American League. The Rockies are on pace to obliterate the modern loss record. The two faced off this week, and because of a rainout, had to play a doubleheader on Thursday. We’re going to break the entire doubleheader down into two separate but related pieces so you can easily understand MLB’s equivalent of the hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby meme given life.
This is the kind of thing that’s going right for the Tigers right now, and, on the flip side, going wrong for the Rockies. Tigers’ backstop Dillon Dingler struggles receiving an 0-2 pitch, so when the ball flies away from Dingler, Kyle Farmer sees an opportunity to take second base and starts running. Dingler manages to catch the little accidental popup he created by missing the pitch, and then fires a laser beam directly to second, ahead of Farmer. The Rockies somehow turned what looked to be a passed ball into an out.
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Now here are the Rockies attempting to make a very routine play happen, one that involves their own catcher. It’s the Rockies, though, so routine doesn’t really play into it. A single to right, a throw that should have been quickly forgotten about, but because Jacob Stallings couldn’t reel in the slow, dribbling, tail-end of the throw, instead the Rockies (and Javier Báez by extension) got… this.
The third Rockies’ error of the game, on a day in which they made five of them while allowing 21 runs and scoring 3. Or, to put it like MLB analyst Sarah Langs did:
Not all history is good history, you know.
Gabriel Moreno grand slam
Diamondbacks’ catcher Gabriel Moreno isn’t much of a power guy. He came to the majors in 2022, and had played in 263 games there since, with just 13 homers to his name. He hit a pretty huge one on Thursday, though, as his first long ball of the 2025 season was a grand slam against Dodgers’ starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The D-backs would go on to take the first game of this four-game set, 5-3, thanks to Moreno’s slam. These are key games for Arizona to win, considering how packed the NL West is with contenders: they’re already five games back of the Dodgers, and in fourth place, and 2.5 games behind a wild card spot, too, in no small part because the other two NL West teams ahead of them in the standings, the Padres and Giants, hold two of the three spots. It’s a little early to worry about that, sure, but it’s never too early to try to rack up dubs against divisional opponents.
Phillies sweep amid Schwarber’s on-base streak
Thanks to a ninth-inning single, Kyle Schwarber’s on-base streak was extended to 43 games, which is notable for two reasons. First, it gave the Phillies a baserunner in a game against the Rays in which they were down 5-4. Schwarber was lifted for pinch-runner Johan Rojas, who would come around to score on a groundout, tying the game, and the Phillies would then win it in 10 courtesy a double by Brandon Marsh and a single by Trea Turner that would score him, putting the Phillies up 7-5. They’d hold on to win, 7-6, their third win in a row, and one that helped them keep pace with the Mets in the NL East.
Second is that 43 games puts Schwarber more than halfway to Ted Williams’ record on-base streak of 84 games. Forty three games sounds like a ton — and it is — but Williams is far and away the leader here. The longest streak of the modern era is Orlando Cabrera back in 2006, so Schwarber still has a long way to go to reach even that level. Still! Impressive work so far, and he has the patience and pop to keep it going for some time. The rest, as with so many things in baseball, is luck.
Bobby Witt Jr. has 4 hits, 2 steals
Bobby Witt Jr. had himself a game against the White Sox. He had a fly out in his first at-bat, and then it was success from there on out. A pair of doubles and two singles, and both times he singled, he also stole second. Witt is now batting .325/.392/.530 while leading the majors in doubles, all good for a 159 OPS+. And he hasn’t even started hitting for his usual home run power yet.
He ended up being lifted for a pinch-runner before he could cause any more damage, but it’s not like the Royals needed his bat in the lineup by this point, anyway. Kansas City took down Chicago 10-0, and while a lot of that damage was later in the game, that they scored in the first inning at all was enough to call it a day.
Not all the news is bad, though, White Sox fans. And that’s because…
The new pope is a White Sox fan
A new pope, Leo XIV, was chosen by the conclave on Thursday. He’s an American — the first — which leads us to why it’s being mentioned here in this space. The new head of the Roman Catholic Church is a baseball fan, and specifically of the Chicago White Sox thanks to being a south sider himself in his days before life at the Vatican.
If the White Sox haven’t considered prayer for guidance yet, well, they’ve got a direct line now, maybe it’s time to give that a shot.
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