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 the weekend in Major League Baseball:
[Roman’s Empire pun]
You know what the Red Sox–Yankees rivalry is missing these days? It’s still huge, don’t misunderstand, but more homegrown players that the opposing fan base dread to see come to town would do wonders for spicing it up. The Yankees have Aaron Judge, sure, but with all the Red Sox trades and homegrown stars walking away, their roster has been a bit more mercenary of late. That seems to be changing, though, as everyone was reminded of when star rookie Roman Anthony did his thing in his first trip to Yankee Stadium.
In the top of the sixth, with the Red Sox down 3-2, reliever Camilo Doval entered the game in place of Yankees’ starter Luis Gil. David Hamilton singled and Carlos Narváez walked, setting Anthony up to tie things up. And he did, with his own single:
Anthony wasn’t done, however. With the Red Sox up 4-3 in the ninth inning and Yerry De Los Santos on the mound, Boston’s right fielder went deep. Real deep.
While he hasn’t shown it off regularly just yet, Anthony has tremendous power. You have to remember that he’s just 21 years old with fewer than 60 MLB games under his belt at this point. But that shot is a reminder of the kind of thing he’s capable of doing, and the kind of thing the Red Sox expect him to do a lot more of in the future.
The rookie outfielder is now up to .286/.405/.408 on the season, with 5 home runs, 17 doubles and a lone triple 59 games. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however. Anthony struggled big time when he first arrived on the scene, as he had a line of .114/.291/.227 through his first 15 games. Since then, he’s batting .331/.437/.506, and his OPS ranks 19th in the majors in that stretch.
Boston took the first game of this four-game series, one which could make things very difficult for either team should they lose the majority of the games, given they’re both in the wild card race and aren’t that far ahead.
Brewers first to 80 wins
Unlike the Brewers, who won on Thursday to avoid dropping four straight to the Cubs, and in the process became the first team in the majors to reach 80 wins. The next-most wins in MLB this year, by the way, are the Tigers’ 76 — Milwaukee, even with this week’s 3-2 series loss to the Cubs (there was a makeup game from earlier in the season mixed in there), is well out in front of everyone.
Isaac Collins continued to deliver for the Brewers, as with one out and two runners on in the eighth inning, he hit a 2-run single to right field off of reliever Ryan Brasier to put Milwaukee up 4-1.
Collins, in what is his first full season in the majors, is batting .277/.376/.429. While he hasn’t piled up the extra-base hits, that on-base percentage is load-bearing, and has made him a valuable member of the Brewers’ lineup. He’s second on the team in OPS+, behind Andrew Vaughn, and tops among full-time players.
Cheer up, Cubs fans. Your team took three of five from the Brewers overall, and you got to see Pete Crow-Armstrong make this catch.
See, it’s not all bad.
Lindor sets Mets record
Francisco Lindor hit his 25th home run of the season on Thursday night, and it was a leadoff shot. He’s no stranger to those, as it was his eighth such dinger of the year. Which also happened to set a new franchise record for the Mets.
Lindor struggled through June and July, posting OPS of just .628 and .629 in those two months, respectively, but his bat has come back alive in August. Through 17 games this month, he’s hitting .356/.434/.644 with 5 homers, 6 doubles and more total bases than he managed in either of the last two months, despite having plenty of this one left to go.
Not all was well for the Mets, however. They ended up losing on Thursday, and with the Reds off, lost half-a-game in the wild card standings to them. Which might not sound like that big of a deal, except now Cincinnati sits, well, half-a-game back of the Mets, with New York headed to Atlanta to face a Braves team that’s 7-3 against them this year, and the Reds off to Arizona to take on the Diamondbacks.
Pasquantino does it again
Royals first baseman and DH Vinnie Pasquantino blew by his previous career-high in home runs of 19 back on Aug. 12. He’s been on a real tear on the homer front since, and on Thursday mashed his fourth in as many games — one per game.
Pasquantino is now batting .261/.323/.469 with 26 long balls, which is even better than it looks when you remember that Kauffman Stadium is the worst ballpark in the majors for lefty power hitters. Some power plays everywhere, however, and Pasquantino’s certainly has in 2025.
The Royals, by the way, are 24-14 over their last 38 games, which is the best record in the American League in that time frame. They’re two games back of a wild card spot now, and with the way they’ve been playing none of the Yankees, Red Sox or Mariners can afford to falter all that much in the weeks remaining in the season.
Soderstrom extends the streak
The Athletics lineup remains a force, and Tyler Soderstrom was at the center of it on Thursday against the Twins. He went 4-for-4 with a double and a walk, extending his hit streak to 19 games in the process. (While Soderstrom has multiple games in this stretch where he didn’t register a hit, in both instances it was because he was intentionally walked in his lone plate appearance.) He’s not just hitting a little bit and getting away with it, either: Soderstrom is batting .370/.439/.644 during the streak.
Don’t let Soderstrom’s performance distract you from what his teammate Nick Kurtz is up to, though. Like when he had yet another extra-base hit on Thursday — he leads the majors in that category, and all slash stats, since May 20.
The A’s have played 42 games without Kurtz, who was called up with the season already in progress, and he still already has 25 homers and 4.3 wins above replacement. Can you imagine where he might be if he’d been around from the start, or hadn’t stepped away for an IL stint?
Not to be outdone…
Jesús Sánchez did all he could to power the Astros to victory on Thursday, snapping their four-game skid. For the second time in his career, Houston’s right fielder logged five hits in a game. Here, it was a double and four singles.
He kicked things off with a single in the first, then lined another in the third. He then reached on a grounder in the fifth before advancing to second on a throwing error by Jackson Holliday. In the seventh, he got there the more traditional way with a double, and finally, in the ninth, picked up the last of the singles.
Houston would win 7-2, with Sánchez both driving in a run and scoring one himself in the process. That was their 70th dub of the season, meaning all of MLB’s division leaders have finally reached that threshold.
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