Last Night In Baseball: What’s Better Than A Cycle? A Rare Cycle!

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball:

Hitting for the cycle? Inherently cool. Hitting for the cycle in a historically relevant way? Even better. That’s what White Sox center fielder Tristan Peters did on Friday, in a game that got extremely out of hand late against the Athletics. Out of hand for the A’s, mind: it was just 4-1 Chicago heading into the bottom of the seventh, and when that inning was over, it was 12-1. The Sox ended up scoring a couple more in the eighth, too, and would win 14-1.

Peters had more than just a hand in all of that happening. In the bottom of the third, Peters hit his 20th double of the season on a liner to center, and while he didn’t come around to score, in the fifth, he singled and drove in DH Andrew Benintendi to put the Sox up 2-0, then came around to score later — 4-0, Chicago.

In the bottom of the seventh, Justin Sterner came on in relief, and the party started. Catcher Kyle Teel led off the inning with a walk, and then Peters demolished a 94 mph four-seam fastball that Sterner left middle-middle, 410 feet to right-center. 

Peters was now just a triple shy of the cycle, but it was already the seventh inning — what were the chances he would get to come up again and also hit a triple in what little time remained? Pretty good, apparently. Sterner walked the next batter, outfielder Sam Antonacci, then first baseman Munetaka Murakami — the slugging Japanese rookie is back from the IL — doubled to drive him in. Third baseman Miguel Vargas then hit a ground-rule double, and that was it for Sterner, who did not record an out. While Mason Barnett retired the first batter he faced, the righty then allowed a single to rookie outfielder Braden Montgomery and walked second baseman Chase Meidroth to load the bases. Benintendi would clear the bases with a three-run double to make it 11-1 White Sox — still with one out — and then Teel lined out. So there was Peters at the plate, again. And you’re never going to believe this, but he tripled on the very first pitch he saw from Barnett.

Peters ended up going 4-for-4 with two runs and four RBIs, which is pretty great for anyone, never mind the guy batting ninth. Oh, and he’s batting .303/.357/.484 on the season in 89 games and 270 plate appearances.

Per MLB’s Sarah Langs, Peters is the third player since at least the start of the Expansion Era in 1961 to get the two hits needed to complete a cycle in the same inning. “At least,” because the data is incomplete going back further — he could be the third going back further. The other two? Felix Pie in 2009, and Jim Ray Hart in 1970 — Hart also needed the triple and homer like Peters, and got them.

With the W, the White Sox remain tied atop the AL Central — the Guardians also picked up a win, defeating Sandy Alcantara and the Marlins. With the A’s scuffling, Murakami back and the Marlins’ playing MLB’s best ball the last month-and-a-half, this is a good opportunity to build a lead, however.

Yordan Alvarez is leading the American League in home runs, and is trailing only Kyle Schwarber. On Friday, the Astros’ DH hit both the 30th of the season — he’s just the second player to reach the 30-dinger threshold — as well as the 200th of his career. It was the same homer, to be clear, but it pulled double duty.

He absolutely wrecked that baseball, too. A 90 mph cutter came in low and inside, and Alvarez unloaded on it, driving it back 111 mph, 455 feet away to right-center. Four-hundred and fifty-five feet. A true donged dinger.

Alvarez is in his age-29 season, and got to 200 homers already despite playing in just one game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, as well as just 48 games in an injury-shortened 2025. He’s hit a homer every 14 at-bats, and by games played is the eighth-fastest player to reach 200 long balls.

The rest of the game wasn’t nearly as inspiring for Alvarez and the ‘Stros, however: the Rangers defeated Houston, 7-3, knocking the Astros three games back in the AL West.

However! We can all agree that getting this matchup made it worth it for everyone involved. 

Well, okay, Jake Burger did hit a three-run homer off of Bryan King to make it a 7-3 game, but hey. The Astros were already losing at that point and it was the bottom of the eighth, so no harm no foul, right? Enjoy the wordplay while you can.

You know who isn’t all that far behind Yordan Alvarez for the AL homer lead? Rays’ third baseman Junior Caminero. On Friday, he hit No. 28 of the season, and it was a doozy.

It’s not that this one traveled exceptionally far — StatCast had it down for 385 feet. What’s ridiculous about this one is the direction he hit it in. Caminero took a 98 mph sinker on the very outer part of the zone, and slammed it 102.3 mph the other way. Just going with the pitch like that, at the end of the bat and on a ball thrown that hard, gets some hitters a hit dumped off into the outfield in front of the right fielder. Caminero blasted it, though.

The Rays would win, beating the Mariners 7-2, which allowed Tampa Bay to keep its four-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East, while Seattle, like Houston, lost ground to Texas in the West and are 1.5 back courtesy four-straight defeats.

The Tigers might be good, after all. Not because Detroit defeated the Phillies, 10-2, but because the Tigers had an absolute disaster May and have otherwise been pretty good at this whole baseball thing. Detroit started the year 16-16 with a positive run differential before getting wrecked in May in basically every way. The Tigers went just 6-22 while being outscored by 48 runs. June began with a four-game winning streak, however, and since the calendar turned over the Tigers are 22-12 with a +70 run differential. One team in the entire American League has a better run differential than that for the season.

The problem is that even with this, Detroit is still just 44-50, but this W against Philly puts them just 2.5 back of a wild-card spot, and the AL Central lead is within reach, too, as the Tigers are just 4.5 back of that.

This one was tied through five, 2-2, thanks in part to rookie shortstop Kevin McGonigle hitting his eighth homer of the year. McGonigle has done basically everything well besides hit homers in bulk — but you don’t have to hit 30 homers if your on-base percentage is creeping up on .400. 

Another rookie ended up hitting the game-winner in the sixth. Eduardo Valencia, who on Thursday hit a homer in his first big-league at-bat — and as a pinch-hitter — was playing as the DH last night, and bopped an RBI single to left to put Detroit up 3-2.

The Tigers would score another four runs that inning, and then three more for good measure in the seventh. Both starters actually had a good day, not just Detroit’s Jack Flaherty — if you told Phillies fans that Aaron Nola would throw five innings with eight strikeouts and two runs allowed, the assumption would be a win was coming — but Philadelphia’s bullpen came apart once Nola exited.

They were saying all good things, Jac, all good things.

There’s a theme here: Ben Rice is also in the 2026 Home Run Derby, and he also went yard on Friday night. It was his 29th, putting him one shy of Alvarez’s AL lead, but it also wasn’t the biggest Yankees homer of the night. No, that belonged to second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr., who smacked No. 13 of the season at just the right time: when New York was down 3-2 to the Nationals in the eighth inning.

Catcher Austin Wells would add a solo shot later in the inning as an insurance run, and the Yankees would win, 5-3. Not great for the Nats, as Washington is now just one game over .500 — although still way ahead of schedule as far as the rebuild goes — while the Yankees were able to keep pace with Tampa Bay in the AL East race, and are 5.5 games up for the first of three wild-card spots, too.

Most of the time, when Shohei Ohtani hits a homer? The Dodgers are going to end up winning. That’s just science.

That’s also not what happened with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks on Friday, however. Ohtani might have led off the game with a dinger, but it wasn’t a harbinger of anything to come. In fact, it was Los Angeles already playing catch-up as the D-backs scored a pair in the top of the first.

With the game tied 2-2 in the fourth, first baseman and No. 9 hitter Tim Tawa hit his second homer of the year, a two-run shot, to give the Diamondbacks back the lead.

Tawa would then come up later with two runners on, and drove in third baseman Nolan Arenado with a single to make it 7-2, Arizona.

All told, Tawa went 3-for-4 with four RBIs and a run, which is a pretty great day from the bottom of the order, and also enough offense to have beaten the Dodgers alone. Tawa had plenty of help, though, not just from the rest of the lineup but also lefty starter Eduardo Rodriguez — five strikeouts against one walk, two runs allowed in six innings — as well as the Arizona bullpen. The D-backs would win, 9-3, which put them a game ahead of the Padres and 4.5 back of a very crowded wild-card race.

With Munetaka Murakami back for the White Sox and already at 20 homers, we’re going to see this one change hands a few times the rest of the way. But! Blue Jays’ rookie Kazuma Okamoto hit homer 22 of the season on Friday, tying him with Shohei Ohtani for the most by a Japan-born rookie in MLB.

Okamoto hasn’t had much in the batting average department in his first year in the league, but the power has been there: he has not just the 22 homers, but also 11 doubles. Again, it’ll be fun to see this one play out, with Murakami going yard 20 times in 57 games before going down with an injury, giving Okamoto time to not just catch up, but go ahead.

The Blue Jays would also win this game, 5-3, which was not just Toronto’s third W in a row but also has it 1.5 back of a wild-card spot, tied with the Astros and just half-a-game behind the Twins, as Minnesota also lost.

Rafael Devers has his detractors due to his contract and his exit from the Red Sox in 2025, which means there are going to be fans and media members ready to pounce on him whenever he struggles. There were quite a few victory laps being run early in the season, as the Giants’ first baseman-DH had a paltry .537 OPS with just two homers at the end of April, but all he’s done since is mash. Since May 3, Devers is batting .277/.357/.593 with 17 homers, 20 doubles and even a triple. His .950 OPS in this stretch is better than anything he’s managed over a full season in his career, and this despite playing in the extremely pitcher-friendly — and lefty unfriendly — Oracle Park.

Devers has hit so well over the past two-plus months that his OPS+ for the season is now 126 — his overall line looks like he’s having a slightly down year instead of the catastrophe it appeared to be not all that long ago. And on Friday he added to the recovery with a solo homer in the bottom of the second inning, on a curve he golfed out of the bottom of the zone and deposited 347 feet away.

Rafael Devers still appears to be Rafael Devers. The Giants are still the Giants, though: San Francisco lost to the Rockies, 4-3, and are just one game up on Colorado in the NL West standings. Whether that means Devers will end up plying his powerful trade with another team soon, or will stick around specifically because his bat works in spite of his home park, is the kind of thing we might just have to wait and see on in the weeks leading up to the deadline.