Last Night In Baseball: The Pirates Walk Off In A Wild (And Necessary) Game

A walk-off error. Back-to-back jacks. Bryce Harper can’t make outs. Tuesday’s MLB action provided all that and much more.

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

The Pirates aren’t done with 2026 just yet. Pittsburgh isn’t having a red carpet rolled out for it by any means, but with 23 games to go the Bucs are five games back of the third wild-card spot in the National League — a tough assignment, like, “the Pirates’ playoff odds are less than 2%” tough, but the percent chance still exists, which is more than you can say about the Nationals, Reds, Mets and more.

Helping Pittsburgh out on Tuesday was a wild win against the Giants, that was coupled with losses by (1) the current holder of the NL’s final wild-card slot, the Padres and (2) the Diamondbacks, who are just half-a-game behind San Diego. The Marlins and Cardinals both won, so it wasn’t a perfect evening for the Pirates, but picking up a game on the teams furthest away is something.

And the Pirates pulled it off in a ridiculous way. Paul Skenes couldn’t get out of the fifth and allowed five runs on eight hits and three walks, bringing his ERA for the season to 3.97. Logan Webb was even worse: the Giants’ starter gave up nine runs in two innings of work, with all nine coming in the second, and while San Francisco’s bullpen was better than Pittsburgh’s, the latter team had a great head start, so a five-run eighth by the Giants merely tied the game at 12-12.

Then, disaster struck for the Giants, who had mostly kept the Pirates in check from the third onward. Carson Seymour came on in relief to face Pittsburgh in the ninth, and allowed the fourth hit of the day to second baseman Brandon Lowe to start. DH Nick Gonzalez would then single, and center fielder Oneil Cruz hit a grounder to force a ground out at second, but Lowe advanced to third and Cruz would move to second on defensive indifference shortly after. Catcher Rafael Flores Jr., who had entered as a defensive replacement earlier when Henry Davis was lifted for a pinch-hitter, hit a ball to third baseman Osleivis Basabe… and it never found the mitt at first.

It was a great scoop by Basabe, but he left the throw too short for it to get into Rafael Devers’ glove with ease — it just cleared the grass to the left of the infield dirt, and didn’t come to him clean enough to snag. The official scorer charged the error to Basabe, not Devers, and Lowe scored the walk-off run.

The Mets took the first game of their series against the Rays on Monday, and on Tuesday it looked like it might be more of the same when shortstop Francisco Lindor started with a leadoff homer.

And off former Mets starter Freddy Peralta, to boot. That would be all the offense Peralta would allow, however: he ended up looking more like his Brewers’ iteration than his Mets’ one, giving up three hits and no walks against seven strikeouts over six innings. And the Tampa Bay offense made sure that didn’t go to waste, either. Third baseman Junior Caminero tied the game in the bottom of the first with a single to left…

…and Tampa Bay got another in the bottom of the third on another single by first baseman Ryan Vilade. In the sixth, left fielder Chandler Simpson showed off his wheels scoring from first base to make it 3-1 — that ended up being the game-winning hit.

The Rays would add another three runs, but New York scored just one off the Tampa Bay bullpen. The Rays have 83 wins — no one else in the AL has 80 yet, but the closest is just 4.5 behind them in the AL East.

And that team, the Yankees, had their own success on Tuesday. Facing the Angels, New York opened the scoring with back-to-back homers by right fielder Spencer Jones and second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. in the first.

The Yankees would never trail in this one: the Angels put three on the board through six, but by that time the Yankees had already scored again, and would add another three for good measure to lead to a 7-3 dub. New York might be just far enough behind Tampa Bay to not catch them in the East — Baseball Prospectus has its AL East title odds at under 14%, there but not likely — but with the Red Sox losing and the Guardians trying to stay ahead of a bunch of sub-.500 teams, being up +8.5 in the wild-card race means New York is all but mathematically assured of a postseason spot barring true disaster.

The aforementioned Diamondbacks’ loss came at the hands of the Phillies, who had the best record in MLB in August and kicked off their September with another W. Philadelphia won 7-1, with right fielder Bryce Harper the standout thanks to a 4-for-4 effort.

Harper drove in one and scored another, with each knock a single — Harper has reached base in 34-straight games, too, and picked up a walk for five total times on base last night.

Jesús Luzardo was the other standout for the Phillies, going 6 ⅔ innings mostly scattering six hits in a 7-1 win for Philadelphia — his ERA is now down to 3.02 after a rough start to the year that saw it at 4.56 after his first June appearance. It’s 1.86 in 15 starts and 96 ⅔ innings since, which has done a lot for the Phillies’ success in the same stretch.

The Cardinals also pulled off back-to-back jacks, in their case against the Dodgers. Third baseman Ramón Urías hit the first dinger, and shortstop Thomas Saggese followed it up with a 415 footer, both off starter Eric Lauer.

St. Louis built up a seven run lead before the Dodgers responded with a three-run Mookie Betts double, but the Cardinals quickly erased most of that progress with a two-run long ball by right fielder Jordan Walker.

That one went 409 feet and 109.3 mph off the bat — what a season Walker is having, as he’s batting .288/.345/.505 with 28 homers. While the Cardinals would score four more, Walker’s blast turned out to be the game-winner, as St. Louis would win, 13-8. The Cards are now 69-70 and four games out of the last wild-card spot — like with the Pirates, winning when the Padres and D-backs did not is huge.

The Brewers were demolished by the Cubs on Monday, 17-3, but got a measure of revenge on Tuesday with a 9-4 victory. The good thing about baseball is that most of the time there’s another game the next day, and the losses all count the same in the standings no matter how lopsided they are.

Here, Robert Gasser was pulled after 4 ⅓ innings and three runs, but five relievers came on after he did and combined for just one more run allowed. The Cubs had built up a 3-0 lead, but the Brewers chipped away, and in the sixth DH Christian Yelich made it a 5-3 ballgame for Milwaukee.

Yelich would come around to score in the eighth when a Joey Ortiz homer served as an exclamation point on the game: he had just one hit, but scored twice and drove in two. Chicago isn’t mathematically eliminated from overtaking the Brewers in the NL Central, but at eight games back with the season’s remaining duration now measured in weeks, it’s no wonder the Cubs’ have a less than 5% probability of pulling it off.

The Guardians were in danger of losing possession of the third wild-card spot in the AL on Tuesday, as Cleveland began the day half-a-game up on the Orioles, with the Rangers creeping behind Baltimore at 1.5 back. While Texas won, the O’s did not, and the Guardians were able to pick up a win against the Blue Jays, who were also just 1.5 back on Tuesday morning. The AL wild-card race is just like that right now.

Cleveland got a pair of homers from Angels, but not in the “the Guardians traded for Jo Adell” sense. In the “the Guardians have an infielder named Angel Genao and an outfielder named Angel Martinez” one. Genao pinch-hit for Travis Bazzana in the seventh and bopped his second homer of the season to put Cleveland up 4-1, then Martinez hit his own two-run shot in the next inning to make it 6-1.

The Guardians are 1.5 up on both Texas and Baltimore, and now 2.5 ahead of Toronto. The Twins — who won a 15-2 laugher against the Tigers on Tuesday — are 3.5 behind. It’s going to be some last few weeks to secure that final postseason spot in the American League.