Last Night In Baseball: Rays Sweep, Braves Walk It Off and PCA Is Unstoppable

A fluke occurrence leads to a big W. Pete Crow-Armstrong is on fire. The Yankees made some history. Max Scherzer looked like Max Scherzer. Sunday's MLB action provided all that and much more.

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

Padres’ closer Mason Miller went over a year without allowing a home run. Now, in the last week, in consecutive appearances, he’s given up two of them. And the timing was not great, either, as Miller allowed a two-run shot to outfielder Jonny Deluca in the ninth inning, allowing the Rays to tie the game up 3-3.

To be fair to the usually dominant Miller, this second one was very nearly an out instead of a homer. However, the force of hitting the wall knocked the ball out of Samad Taylor’s glove and into the buffet behind the fence. 

Even worse is that Taylor was in there as a defensive replacement: he had been a pinch-hitter earlier on and stayed in the game. If the wall had been a bit higher, this never would have been a homer, but it was low enough to cause a collision significant enough to pop the ball out of the glove. The beauty of every ballpark being whatever its team wants it to be.

The Padres would actually go up 4-3 in the 11th on a sac fly by first baseman Ty France, but Tampa Bay would respond in the bottom of the inning with a pair — Deluca struck again, reaching on a run-scoring error by shortstop Xander Bogaerts, and then second baseman Jorge Mateo lined the winning single into left to score pinch-runner Kenny Piper.

The good news for San Diego — "good" news — is that the Diamondbacks also lost on Sunday, so the Padres remain just half-a-game out of the last wild-card spot. Not the worst outcome after being swept, but also not exactly great.

The Rays, meanwhile, are still 4.5 games up in the AL East despite the success of the Yankees over the weekend, thanks to this sweep. On that note…

Sunday did not go well for the Red Sox. The Yankees won, 16-1, with an offensive performance so dominant that even struggling trade deadline acquisition Heliot Ramos got in on it. 

So dominant that Austin Wells made history as a pinch-hitter: he had two homers in the eighth inning, the first player to ever enter as a pinch-hitter and end up belting two dingers in the same frame.

Wells entered the game in the sixth, where he made it a 6-0 game with a sac fly, and then he hit his ninth and 10th homers of the season in the eighth, the last of which gave the game its final score — the Sox had already waved the white flag at that point, as shortstop Andrew Monasterio was on the mound.

Deesha Thosar has takeaways for the entire series for you to read; the Yankees took three out of four against a Red Sox team that’s seemed unstoppable since July, winning both the weekend series and the season one against their rivals from Boston.

Thanks to the Padres being swept, the Marlins didn’t lose ground this weekend despite dropping the first two games of their series against the Nationals. Miami also avoided a sweep, thanks to Washington doing what it’s done far too many times this season: blowing a save.

The Nats were up 2-0 in the top of the ninth and put in Max Kranick to start the inning. And then the Marlins struck. A bunt single from right fielder Esteury Ruiz, a walk to first baseman Griffin Conine and a walk to infielder Leo Jiménez loaded the bases with one out. Tom Cosgrove would come on to relieve Kranick at this point, but he would not fare any better. Center fielder Jakob Marsee was hit by a pitch to make it a 2-1 game, then a combination sac fly and throwing error gave Miami the lead for good.

The scoring did not stop there, however: a walk to Heriberto Hernández put runners at the corners, and then a double steal sent Marsee across the plate and Hernández to second. Shortstop Otto Lopez would then hit his 10th homer of the year to make it a 6-2 game, and Michael Petersen would face the minimum in the ninth to close it out.

The Marlins are 3.5 back of the Diamondbacks for the last NL wild-card despite losing a series to the Nationals — there’s still plenty of reason left to hope there. Miami takes on Washington on Monday night, as well, to close out this four-game series and maybe secure a split.

The Braves are experiencing a very different "so there’s still a chance" than the Padres or Marlins, that’s for sure. Atlanta won its seventh-straight game on Sunday, thanks to a walk-off single by star first baseman Matt Olson in the 10th inning.

That completed a sweep of the Rockies while accomplishing a few other things as well. Starting pitcher Tyler Mahle no longer had a seemingly wasted strong start — he went 6 ⅔ allowing just one run with nine strikeouts against one walk. Reliever Dylan Lee was no longer on the hook for the loss after blowing a save post-Mahle, either. And, the W brought the Braves to 82 wins: Atlanta is tied with the Dodgers for the second-most wins in the National League, and also holds the head-to-head tiebreaker for the first-round bye that results following last week’s sweep of Los Angeles. Practically speaking, the Braves are a game up on the Dodgers in the standings now even if the two have the same record. Which makes the results of L.A.’s Sunday that much more important to both parties. 

The Dodgers took on the Tigers on Sunday in the rubber match of that series. Thanks to rookie infielder Kevin McGonigle, the score was tied 1-1 after four, but then Teoscar Hernández tapped into the old Teo for a moment and made it a 3-1 game with one swing of the bat in the sixth.

Hernández crushed that one, sending it 434 feet to left-center, at 106.5 mph off the bat. He’s had a below-average season at the plate both positionally and overall, but his 12th homer of the year was a big one in multiple meanings of the word.

It was also much-needed support, at the time, for starter Tyler Glasnow. Glasnow was making just his second start since returning from an extended stint on the IL that began in May caused by back spasms. He looked fantastic, allowing one run over seven frames while striking out six against three baserunners. With Shohei Ohtani experiencing knee soreness on Friday during his bullpen session, nixing a potential weekend start, Glasnow pitching like that is even more important to the Dodgers’ and their postseason hopes.

The Orioles find themselves just a game back of the hotly contested third AL wild-card after sweeping the Athletics. Shortstop Gunnar Henderson gets much of the credit for Sunday’s win, as he went 4-for-4 with three runs, five RBIs and a pair of homers in an 8-5 victory for Baltimore.

With two outs in the first, Henderson sent a Jeffrey Springs slider back 413 feet in the opposite direction to make it a 1-0 game…

…and then he would make it 7-5 Orioles with a go-ahead, three-run homer in the seventh that also went 413 feet. Despite going the same distance, this one certainly felt bigger.

Henderson would tack on another RBI in the eighth with a one-run triple, giving him 12 total bases for the day. He really did do most of the damage himself: the Orioles had just seven hits and 18 total bases on the day, and Henderson accounted for more than half of both.

Things have looked pretty bad for Max Scherzer at times in 2026, like "maybe the end is nigh" levels of off. He’s been pitching much better since coming off his second IL stint, though, posting a 3.60 ERA despite giving up seven runs in one of those seven starts. Sunday’s dominant start helped tip the scales once more: Scherzer went seven innings against the Mariners, and struck out 10 batters while allowing one hit and walk a piece, and no runs. 

That’s twice as many strikeouts as his previous season-high, and his first 10-K game since July 27, 2025, when he struck out 11 Tigers in seven innings. Scherzer’s performance against Seattle actually pushed him up the all-time strikeouts leaderboard: he’s now in sole possession of ninth place after leapfrogging Gaylord Perry, and has 3,535 — Scherzer is actually just 19 strikeouts behind Justin Verlander for the eighth-most ever, but it will take 39 to tie Don Sutton in seventh.

Toronto, by the way, is just 1.5 back of the Guardians for that third wild-card in the AL, and half-a-game behind the Orioles — both swept the weekend to keep pace with each other, and the Blue Jays’ success drove the Mariners to five back in the same race.

The Cubs lost to the Reds, 7-5, but there is a player whose fault that definitely is not: Pete Crow-Armstrong. The center fielder led off the game with his 37th homer of the year, putting him in a tie for second in the majors — it was also his sixth leadoff homer in August, and ninth for the season… just two behind Shohei Ohtani.

Oh, and that wasn’t all. PCA smashed his 38th long ball of the season, giving him sole possession of second and putting him just two behind league-leader Kyle Schwarber, to cut Cincinnati’s lead to 7-5.

That was a shot, too, 431 feet off the bat. It was all the offense Chicago would muster in the ninth, though, so it took the L. PCA, though: he went yard five times in two games, and leads the NL in slugging percentage (.577), OPS (.954), OPS+ (161), is maybe the best defensive outfielder on the planet, and leads the majors in wins above replacement (8.5) and total bases (304). Pretty good year.